The U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) was created to protect the public by assessing health risks at America’s most polluted sites. A Reuters investigation found it regularly downplays and disregards neighbors’ health concerns in reports that employ practices its own review board has called “virtually useless” and “not very good.”
In 68% of its findings, it declared communities safe from hazards or did not make any determination at all, a Reuters review of hundreds of agency reports shows. Reuters found at least 20 instances in which the agency dismissed health concerns that other government research or the ATSDR itself later identified as hazards.
That’s a small number of errors, considering the agency publishes hundreds of reports, said Patrick Breysse, who led the agency from 2014 until 2022.
Yet the errors can have devastating effects. Under the ATSDR’s watch, children were exposed to toxic levels of lead and up to 1 million military service members and their families were denied medical compensation for about two decades after drinking toxic water.
The ATSDR did not respond to questions for this story.
Polluters have used the agency’s faulty research to fend off lawsuits, deny victims compensation, criticize their opponents, and argue to delay, reduce or cancel cleanup of their toxic messes. Here are some examples.
Drummond Co Inc Norlite CorpNorth Birmingham, AL
2013: Arsenic and other carcinogens found in residents’ yards near the site are not a major health concern.
2014: EPA sampling finds arsenic, lead and other toxic substances in yards near the site pose an unacceptable risk to residents.
2017: In response to the EPA findings, the ATSDR revisits the site and agrees that contaminated soil in neighbors’ yards poses a health risk, especially to children.
For decades, lead, arsenic and other contaminants from industrial facilities in north Birmingham, Alabama, made their way into the neighborhoods nearby. In 2014, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed adding the area to a list of the country’s most toxic sites. One of the companies affected was Drummond Co, an Alabama-based coal company. The move likely would have made Drummond and four other companies responsible for millions of dollars in cleanup costs.
Drummond attorneys drafted a letter opposing the recommendation. The letter emphasized a 2013 ATSDR study of the surrounding industrial area that found no public health hazards.
The letter then made the rounds among state and federal officials. The company’s lawyers sent it to the governor’s office, which then shared it with officials at the Alabama Department of Environmental Management. They sent it to the EPA as their own. The same Drummond lawyers gave the state regulators talking points to use at a 2015 state hearing about the EPA’s proposal for the site, according to federal court records.
At that hearing, Lance LaFleur, director of the state agency, followed the attorneys’ guidance while rebutting the concerns of health advocates. “We are not equipped to second-guess what the ATSDR comes up with,” LaFleur said. LaFleur did not respond to a recent Reuters request for comment.
The ATSDR report angered the mostly Black community of 20,000 residents who live near the site, said Charlie Powell, a local health advocate. The community has high rates of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and other health conditions associated with industrial pollution, according to the Superfund Research Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Two years later, after the EPA had collected data that showed dangerously high levels of arsenic and lead in residents’ yards, the ATSDR issued another report reversing itself. The new report found that contaminated soil in yards near the site increased residents’ risk of cancer and lead poisoning. The report emphasized the risk to children, who play outside in their yards.
But by then, Drummond had won. Although the neighborhood near the company’s plant is eligible for federal funds to remove contaminated soil, the EPA withdrew a proposal that would have likely held Drummond responsible for part of the cleanup cost.
The EPA’s website says it still is negotiating with companies to recover cleanup costs. In an emailed statement to Reuters, the agency said protecting public health is “mission critical.”
In response to questions about its actions, Drummond told Reuters via email that the company’s comments at the time were based on the ATSDR’s 2013 conclusions “that with little exception soils in the area of the site did not present a public health hazard.” The corrected ATSDR report did not come out until four years later.
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1997: An ATSDR report concludes that cancer and other health problems are unlikely among adults exposed to contaminated drinking water at Camp Lejeune, a U.S. Marine Corps base.
2009: The ATSDR retracts the 1997 report, admitting it failed to identify benzene contamination and understated how long base residents and workers were exposed to dangerous chemicals.
2014: The ATSDR publishes a report showing potential harm from fuel and other contaminants in drinking water at Camp Lejeune.
On the eve of publishing a study about contaminated drinking water at a North Carolina Marine base, an environmental scientist working for a federal health agency gave those responsible for the pollution a chance to make substantial changes to the 1997 report, according to previously unreported internal communications reviewed by Reuters.
The Navy and Marines had maintained for years that workers and residents of Camp Lejeune Marine Corps base near Jacksonville, North Carolina, were not poisoned by chemical-tainted drinking water. A finding by the federal health agency, the ATSDR, of no health hazards, would go a long way toward clearing them of responsibility, epidemiologist Richard Clapp told Reuters. Clapp is former director of the Massachusetts Cancer Registry and worked with a group of former Camp Lejeune residents and workers to advocate for strong health studies at the base. Any finding that people were harmed by the water would be a blow to the prestige of the Navy and Marines and could cost the federal government billions in compensation claims, Clapp said.
Two months before the ATSDR published its report, Carole Hossom, the agency’s environmental health scientist, invited the Marines and Navy, to make changes, “preferably by phone,” according to a letter dated June 6, 1997, from Hossom to Camp Lejeune’s Environmental Management Department. After the phone calls, the ATSDR made “substantial” changes to the report, according to an internal Navy memo from July 1997. The memo does not describe the changes but notes that the Navy was concerned at the time that the ATSDR’s draft report had relied on incomplete or incorrect data. (The Marine Corps is technically part of the Navy.)
When the final report was published in August 1997, it dismissed health concerns for adults and missed that drinking water was contaminated with benzene, a cancer-causing chemical found in fuel. Reuters was unable to determine why the ATSDR failed to consider benzene contamination or what information and changes the Navy discussed with the agency. The agency told Congress it lost its file containing all supporting documentation, according to a 2010 Congressional report. Hossom did not respond to requests for comment.
The ATSDR study was a boon for the Navy and Marine leadership. The Navy and the Marine Corps used the agency’s report to dispute claims that the contaminated water caused health problems. Absent a finding of harm from the ATSDR, the Department of Veterans Affairs denied medical compensation for former service members who said the water made them sick.
Jerry Ensminger, a retired Marine who served at Camp Lejeune, and Mike Partain, who was born there, searched through thousands of Navy and Environmental Protection Agency records and found a 1984 water sampling report that showed benzene contamination in drinking water at the base. News coverage followed, and in 2009, facing criticism from Congress, the ATSDR withdrew the 1997 report, admitting it missed the benzene contamination and understated how long people were exposed to dangerous chemicals.
Under pressure from Congress, the ATSDR agreed to revisit Camp Lejeune. North Carolina senators Richard Burr and Kay Hagan blocked two senior Navy appointments in 2010 until the Navy agreed to pay for the cleanup, which has cost $40 million thus far.
The ATSDR began publishing studies in 2014 that tied the contaminated drinking water at Camp Lejeune to increased rates of mortality, cancer and other diseases, such as Parkinson’s, among people who lived and worked at the Marine base.
A Navy spokesperson said the Navy is working to address concerns regarding past exposure to contaminated drinking water at Camp Lejeune. These efforts include working with other federal agencies that are conducting health studies.
The VA had no policy to use the flawed 1997 ATSDR report to deny veterans’ medical claims, VA Press Secretary Terrence Hayes told Reuters via email. The agency is always learning more about toxic exposures and as it does, has “dramatically expanded health care and benefits for toxic exposed Veterans,” Hayes said.
In 2016, based on consultations with the ATSDR, the VA agreed to provide free health care to Camp Lejeune veterans who suffered from one of eight medical conditions linked to the contaminated water, including leukemia, and several cancers. Family members of veterans received reimbursements for out-of-pocket medical costs not covered by other insurance programs.
The ATSDR did not respond to questions for this story. Patrick Breysse, who led the agency from 2014 until 2022, said the military often pressured ATSDR, treating the agency like a subcontractor. He said ultimately the ATSDR did excellent work and identified serious health problems at the Marine base.
Denita McCall, who served as a Marine at Camp Lejeune in the early 1980s, was diagnosed with parathyroid cancer in 1997, about the same time the agency published its flawed report.
“One reason, I believe, my diagnosis was delayed was because the doctors at the VA relied on the ATSDR's 1997 Public Health Assessment,” she told the ATSDR in a 2008 email. “The VA Administration cited your 1997 Public Health Assessment in denying my claim for benefits.”
McCall died in July 2009, three months after the ATSDR admitted its 1997 report was wrong.
