ATSDR Late with Vieques Report

Source:  http://www.elnuevodia.com/retrasadoelinformedeatsdr-831633.html

ATSDR Late with Vieques Report

Concern within the scientific Community

by José A. Delgado jdelgado@elnuevodia.com

WASHINGTON – The confidentiality with which the Federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) has handled the report that would officially discard conclusions made a decade ago that minimized health damages caused by military maneuvers on Vieques provokes concern within the
scientific community.

“They were supposed to act with diligence, speed and transparency, but we’ve seen none of these things”, said biologist, Arturo Massol, professor at the University of Puerto Rico/Mayaguez and one of the scientists who participated in a forum in November of 2009 in Atlanta, in which the head of
ATSDR made initial commitment to discard conclusions based upon previous studies.

After a preliminary declaration in November, 2009, to announce the agency’s decision to discard previous conclusions that rejected a causal relationship between Navy actions and negative effects in health of Viequenses, the next step was to put out the draft report last May.

The plan was to submit the report to public comment in May, 2010 for later review by the Federal Health Department. Then, public hearings were to take place in Vieques during the summer.

More than six months have passed and the report has circulated only amongst a small group, without any public discussion.

“They didn’t fulfill their promises”, recognized Puerto Rico’s Resident Commissioner in Washington, Pedro Pierluisi, who asked ATSDR interim director, Henry Falk, for a second meeting to clear up the situation.

Falk asked for time to prepare the meeting, according to Pierluisi.

Massol sustained that he knows at least one UPR/Mayaguez professor invited to comment on the draft report. “ They’ve circulated a document but have not discussed it with the participants in the November, 2009 Atlanda forum”, Massol added.

In conversation last week, Pierluisi suggested he had a copy of the report, but if this is true, he has also kept it confidential.

It also said it would recommend ‘biological monitoring’ on Vieques and a collaborative agreement with the PR Health Department to carry out an exhaustive health study on the island municipality.

It is rumored that new ATSDR recommendations might be included in the report by the White House Inter Agency Group on Puerto Rico that should come out this month. “I don’t know that’s the plan, but Vieques will be part of the White House report”, Pierluisi indicated

In November, 2009, after Puerto Rican scientists like Massol, Carmen Ortiz Roque and Carmen Colón de Jorge confronted ATSDR researches with their own studies, the federal agency announced it was discarding ‘some’ of the conclusions about contamination on Vieques.

It is also feared that the Federal Government looks to soften ATSDR policy change, since a law suit continues involving 7000 Viequenses related to adverse health effects from military exercises on Vieques.

Last week the Viequenses, through their lawyer, John Arthur Eaves, Jr., appealed the decision by San Juan federal judge, Daniel Dominguez, who dismissed Viequenses claims that the federal government make reparations for health damages.

In the past, Pierluisi has stated that “logic and common sense tells me that high levels of cancer and other chronic illnesses (on Vieques) must be related to the military practices”.