On a similar note, the Texas AFL-CIO recently forwarded this piece to members:
3) In another example of how privatization of government services often mistreats the public, AP reports today on how private laboratories are increasingly being caught falsifying environmental safety data.
"The fraud has caused millions of people to fill their cars with substandard gasoline that may have violated clean air standards, or to drink water not properly tested for safety," AP reports.
AP said, for example, that officials making decisions at hazardous waste cleanup sites have relied on companies that fraudulently tested air, water and soil samples.
"In recent years, what has come to our attention is that outside (non (government)- labs are oftentimes in bed with the people who hired them, and conspired to commit environmental crime," said David Uhlmann, chief of the Justice Department's environmental crimes section, told AP. (Given the Bush White House's view on environmentalism, it might be fun to start a pool on how long Uhlmann will last.)
Among the examples in the article:
-- Lockheed Martin, which tried to take over the welfare intake system in Texas during the 1990s and might try again, hired workers who produced fraudulent test results at the Environmental Protection Agency's Chicago lab. Lockheed was suspended from performing tests.
-- In Texas, the government recently prosecuted the largest tester of underground fuel tanks. Tanknology-NDE International, of Austin, Texas, was ordered to pay $2.29 million in a criminal fine and restitution for false underground storage tank testing services, AP said. The company admitted that the fraud on tests that were supposed to detect petroleum leaks occurred at postal facilities, military bases and a NASA facility, among other sites.
-- Intertek Testing Services, of Richardson, Texas, was fined $9 million for falsifying results at its former laboratory in the Dallas suburb. The tests of air, soil, pesticides, nerve gas agents and other hazards were used to make decisions for severely polluted areas called "Superfund" sites, at Department of Defense facilities and other hazardous waste locations.
-- Caleb Brett U.S.A. Inc., of Houston, was sentenced to pay a $1 million fine and three years probation for misleading investigators about a scheme to falsify analyses on reformulated gasoline, a blended fuel that significantly reduces pollution in populated areas. The fraud resulted in distribution of 200 million to 300 million gallons of substandard gasoline in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
The safety and health of Americans depends on straightforward environmental testing. The companies hired in privatization schemes repeatedly place the interests of their shareholders above those of the public, something that government operations, for all their potential bureaucratic faults, will not do.
On Wed, 22 Jan 2003, Doug Henwood wrote:
> Chronicle of Higher Education - web daily - January 22, 2003
>
> Conflict of Interest Is Widespread in Biomedical Research, Study Finds
> By LILA GUTERMAN
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"At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid." - Friedrich Nietzsche
"Il etait enfin venu, le jour ou je fus un pourceau!" - Comte de Lautreamont, Les Chants de Maldoror, 4th Hymn, Strophe 6