Republicans Attempt to Axe Program Monitoring Carcinogens

Source: Mother Jones

The National Toxicology Program, part of the National Institutes of Health, publishes the biannual Report on Carcinogens, which is one of the primary sources of up-to-date public information about chemicals that are known or suspected causes of cancer. The report has been published since 1980, in response to a directive from Congress. But if Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) gets his way, soon we might lose this detailed information about the chemicals putting us at risk.

Rehberg's proposed Labor, Health and Human Services funding bill for 2013 would eliminate the budget for the Report on Carcinogens (RoC) until the agency follows through with an additional follow up to its 2011 report. (Rehberg's proposal contains a number of highly political cuts, including all funding for President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act, Planned Parenthood, and family planning.)

As a bit of background, the 2011 RoC report listed formaldehyde as a "known carcinogen" and styrene an "anticipated carcinogen" for the first time. This, as one might imagine, caused the industries that use those chemicals to freak out.

A few months later, the industry's Republican allies in Congress appended a conference report to the 2012 Consolidated Appropriations Act directing the Health and Human Services to contract with the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to conduct a review of the RoC's determinations on those two chemicals. As NIH has already affirmed, the Report on Carcinogens is both peer-reviewed itself and drawn from independent, previously peer-reviewed literature.

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Read more: http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/08/republicans-attempt-axe-program-monitoring-carcinogens