Auchter-Tozzi (Doc Index)
 |
This article is part of the Tobacco portal on Sourcewatch funded from 2006 - 2009 by the American Legacy Foundation. |
|
This stub is a work-in-progress by the ScienceCorruption.com journalists's group. We are indexing the millions of documents stored at the San Francisco Uni's Legacy Tobacco Archive [1] With some entries you'll need to go to this site and type into the Search panel a (multi-digit) Bates number. You can search on names for other documents also. Send any corrections or additions to editor@sciencecorruption.com |
Thorne G Auchter and James J Tozzi ('Jim') were lobbying partners in a number of different operation which serviced the tobacco industry and a few other industries with poisoning or polluting problems. The specialised in creating fake institutions with scientific-sounding names. They also worked closely with George L Carlo who ran a half-dozen different companies and institutions which provided science corruption services.
Thorne Auchter had been Ronald Reagan's do-nothing director of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) while Jim Tozzi, another ex Reaganite, had been the deputy administrator of Office of Management & Budget (OMB) and head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). This was the administrative mechanism set in place by the Reagan administration specifically to cull regulations from the major health and environmental agencies (FDA, EPA, OSHA, CRC, etc). Tozzi left the OIRA under a cloud to become a consultant with the Beveridge & Diamond law firm (then working for the chemical industry). He then set up a range of business-fronts with Auchter (and also with George Carlo).
Auchter and Tozzi mainly focussed on the political lobbying and on promoting the idea of Regulatory Relief and Risk Assessment in order to bog down and limit the regulatory processes. Steven J Milloy (later of TASSC) worked with them for a while, and James MacRae, also from the OIRA later joined them.
The unique side of their lobbying business was the "Federal Focus Jazz Band" which proved to be enormously effective as a way of meeting and mingling with the rich and powerful in the Washington political scene. Jim Tozzi was a better-than-average trad jazz trumpet player who set up a small band of young enthusiasts, who were available on short notice. Auchter and Tozzi offered the 'Federal Focus Jazz Band' at base cost to other PR companies and event organisers, and this gave them direct access to the invited guests. Everyone likes to meet the musicians.
| COMPANIES & PERSONEL |
|---|
| Thorne G Auchter - James J Tozzi |
| James MacRea - George Carlo - Steve Milloy |
| Real businesses: Federal Focus Multinational Business Services (MBS) |
| Phantom organisations: Institute for Regulatory Policy Center for Regulatory Evaluation (CRE) Center for Regulatory Effectiveness (also CRE) Health Policy Institute (HPI) Center for the Study of Environmental Endocrine Effects (CSEEE) Center for Epidemiological Studies (CES) |
| 1993 IRP COALITIONS: |
| Coalition for Executive Order Coalition for Moratorium on Risk Assessments Coalition of Cities and States on Environmental Mandates |
| MISCELLANEOUS: |
| IAQ testing |
| DEPOSITIONS:: |
| (to come) |
Documents & Joint Timeline
1938 Jim Tozzi was born,
1945 Mar 6 Thorne G Auchter was born in Jacksonville, Florida.
1960 Tozzi got his Ph.D. in Economics and Business Administration from the University of Florida. He served as an officer in the US Army Corps of Engineers and tried to break into the trad jazz scene as a self-described “bottom-tier” musician in New Orleans,
1963: Biologist Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring is published and becomes a best seller. Carson brought to public attention the insidious impact on wildlife and ecosystems of aldrin, chlordane, dieldrin, DDT, endrin, lindane, pentachlorophenol, 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T. She described how pesticides and related chemicals were infiltrating ecosystems, and how they accumulated in the food chain with devastating results - which must inevitably extend to humans.
1968 Auchter graduated from Jacksonville University with a Bachelor of Arts degree. He then started working as a job site construction supervisor at Auchter Company, a family-owned construction firm based in Jacksonville.
1964 Tozzi gave up his jazz ambitions and began working in Washington at the Department of Defense, Office of the Secretary of the Army, where he worked on budget and strategic response issues. A major concern at this time was the problem of dioxins contaminants in Agent Orange, which had been used as a defoliant by the US Army and Airforce during the Vietnam War. The Army maintained that there were no health consequences of dioxins.
1965 Dow Chemicals invited other manufacturers of Agent Orange and other related herbicides to a meeting in their Midlands headquarters and showed them the evidence of dioxin's cancerous and mutagenic potential in their own laboratory test animals. Dow and some of the other manufacturers agreed to use a new German process which could reduce dioxin levels in their herbicides to under 1 ppm. The other's didn't change. [2]
1966 Old dumped electrical equipment in land-fills began leaking coolants into the environment. This coolantl made by Monsanto had a contaminant known as Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs). A chemist at the University o Stockholm, Soren Jensen, during his investigations into the environmental accumulation of DDT and other chlorinated pesticides in humans and wildlife, discovered that PCBs were also accumulating in Sweden's wildlife. Now PCBs were also becoming a toxic hazard in the environment.
1967 Jensen's finding (which had been largely discounted) that PCBs were now widely distributed in the pristine Swedish environment was confirmed by Shell Chemicals in the UK. Monsanto immediately sent a 'fire-fighting' team from Brussels to Sweden to talk to Jensen and win his cooperation in managing the public debate. [3] However the story leaked out as further investigators discovered PCBs in the environment; it was accumulating in the food chain of birds and threatening certain species.
1969-77 Tozzi was Chief of the Environment Branch of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under Presidents Nixon and Ford.
The Government had commissioned research in 1966 into the possibility that Agent Orange produced birth defects in the children of Vietnamese women. The funding for this research from Bionetic Research Laboratories (Bethesda, Maryland) was allowed to fizzle out, but Thomas Whiteside refused to drop the issue.
1969: Bionetics Research Laboratories report reveals 2,4,5-T as teratogenic (birth deforming) in mice.This report was belatedly released, and they had found significant birth defects in their test rodent; but this finding was rejected by the Nixon administration.
1970 Subsequently, a second study into Agent Orange and birth defects was conducted by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NEIHS). This also found significant reproductive defects in test mice. Now both the Department of Defense and the Department of Agriculture announced restrictions on the use of pesticides and herbicides with dioxin traces. Dow and the other chemical manufacturer appealed their rulings.
Monsanto was also having liver and kidney-damage problems with workers who were handling PCBs in a produce called Araclor, and in coolants used in electrical equipment. They had known about the problem from 1936, and by 1947 the PCBs was regarded in industrial situation as "highly toxic." Workers handling PCB laced chemical were told to use them with care, but now PCBs were also used as plasticizers in emulsion paints used in the home. The plastics industry also quietly removed vinyl chloride from aerosol sprays when it was discovered to be high toxic.
1970 The Nixon Administration creates the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). It was specifically to consider problems with toxic chemicals in the working environment.
1971-73 Tozzi, as head of the Environment Branch of the OMB had to deal with these dioxin and PCB problems, and then with the Times Beach, Missouri crisis. Unexplained deaths of horses and childhood illnesses at the town of Shenandoah caught the attention of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Their early results showed that the soil contained PCBs and chlorinated insecticides from toxic dumping.
In 1973 further tests revealed the presence of trichlorophenol which caused unexpected death of some of the test rabbits, and on July 30, 1974, the CDC found that, in addition to high levels of trichlorophenol and PCBs, the soil samples contained over 30 ppm of dioxin. This raised concerns about chemical dumping, but nothing was done about cleaning up the Times Beach area until 1979.
1973The EPA defeated Dow Chemical's court challenge to their restrictions on 2,4,5-T and announced that it was totally banning the herbicide including on rice crops and for forest management.
1974 June 28 The EPA now postponed its total ban on 2,4,5-T because it didn't have the analytical capability or resources to detect minute levels of dioxins across the country. The EPA had only one lawyer and one staff scientist working part-time on dioxins. Dow Chemicals, by contrast, had "enormous scientific and financial resources" and they assiduously cultivated allies in the Departments of Agriculture and Transportation.[1]
1975: Thorne Auchter became the Executive Vice President of the Auchter construction company in Jacksonville, Florida. He was now a fiercely anti-union head of the family business.
1976 Congress passed the Toxic Substances Control Act, which required the testing of any chemicals posing an unreasonable risk to the environment, and also the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), which regulated the transportation and disposal of toxic waste.
1977-81 Under President Jimmy Carter, Tozzi became the Assistant Director of the Office of Management and Budget (the No 3 position)
1978 The EPA, under pressure from Friends of the Earth, began a study in Alsea, Oregon, where a reported spate of miscarriages coincided with the spraying of forests. A public law suit had been brought against the Forest Service, claiming that it hadn't filed a proper Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).
1979 The problem of Times Beach returned. The EPA was tipped off that the pesticide company Northeastern Pharmaceutical and Chemical Co (NEPACCO) had buried toxic wastes in the area. They uncovered 90 corroded and leaking drums of waste with very high levels of dioxins (up to 2000 ppm). However little was done other than removing the waste. The EPA checked medical records and found them to correlate with areas sprayed. They reimposed the emergency suspension on the use of the herbicide 2,4,5-T, claiming that no safe level of dioxin exposure had been demonstrated (the Precautionary Principle approach)
Thomas Whiteside, who had kept studying the birth=deforming effects of 2,4,5-T now published, "The Pendulum and the Toxic Cloud: The Course of Dioxin Contamination" (New Haven: Yale University Press.
A Class action was filed against seven US manufacturers of Agent Orange, including Dow and Monsanto. The chemical companies defended their case by arguing "not proven" -- that the NOEL (No Observable Effects Level) had been established through animal studies. Their dioxin levels were well under any NOEL levels established by laboratory research.
1980: Auchter served as special events director for Florida during President Ronald Reagan's 1980 election campaign.
1980 As a result of Times Beach, Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). This established a multibillion-dollar Superfund to clean up old, abandoned toxic waste sites. CERCLA specified that liability extended back to the company which produced the toxic waste, thus ensuring that all parties in the chain of disposal were held liable for environmental damage or personal harm.
1980 Nov 19 The US Senate passed the Paperwork Reduction Act in the last months of the Carter Administration. Tozzi is now a Deputy Administrator with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and given responsibility for implementing it. This was the immediate predecessor of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA).
1981 January RONALD REAGAN BECOMES PRESIDENT OF THE USA.
1981 Feb 11: President Ronald Reagan nominated Auchter as Assistant Secretary of Labor, and therefore the head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) (which also regulates smoking in working environments). Reagan's direction to Auchter was to implement Regulatory Relief -- to reduce onerous government regulations -- and this led to public battles with the labor unions and a rise in environmental and health activism. It also resulted in Auchter associating with Tozzi at the OMB/OIRA.
Tozzi's new division, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) was now the central clearinghouse for all government forms. At this time he was one of four Deputy Administrators at the OMB, and his later associate, Jim MacRae was another.
1981-82 Tozzi's power extended beyond that of just controlling paperwork to becoming the gatekeeper for virtually all proposed regulations dealing with public health and safety. The OIRA became known among watchdog groups as a bureaucratic “black hole” where proposed regulations disappeared.
“Getting OMB to review regulations was my whole career,” Tozzi said. “Under the Reagan administration, every environmental regulation had to come to me. I was heavily criticized by the environmental groups and we were frequently called up to [congressional]
1981 May Dr Peter Infante, one of the top scientists at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, wrote a highly critical letter attacking formaldehyde.
When S. John Byington - the ex-CPSC lawyer now running the Formaldehyde Institute found out about the scientist's action, he wrote an angry letter to Infante's boss, OSHA head Thorne Auchter, in which he asked, "How do you control members of the bureauacy who seem to be operating freely within and without government?" Four weeks later, Infante received notice that he was to fired on grounds of insubordination and misrepresenting the agency using official stationery.
The event received heavy press attention and even led to a special congressional hearing. In the end Infante was not fired, in what Rep. Albert Gore (D-Tenn.) called "a victory for the integrity of science and for the right of free expression." However, in a sense, Byington got what he wanted -- Infante had been sobered by the ordeal, and OSHA may well change its position on formaldehyde altogether. [7]
1982–87: US Centers for Disease Control begins a long series of studies on Agent Orange and Vietnam veterans health effects.
1982 The Reagan Administration's political appointee, Rita Lavelle, now the EPA's Assistant Administrator for Solid Wastes and Emergency Response, was in charge of the Superfund Office. She established the levels of contamination that would qualify for clean-up action under the Superfund program. Her Scientific Advisory Board (with heavy industry input) advised her to set the levels high to "buy time" until the EPA risk assessment forced it lower.
1982A public interest group, the Environmental Defense Fund who were highly critical of the Reagan deregulation policy attacked the EPA's lack of action over Times Beach. Rita Lavelle, an assistant administrator at the EPA (under Anne Gorsuch Burford) stalled the clean up by requesting a delay while they scoped the dimensions of the problem by testing 600 soil samples for contamination.
1982 Dec 23 A flood caused Times Beach to be evacuated, and since the EPA had completed its soil analysis and found dioxin contamination was widespread, the recommendations of the Center for Disease Control was that Times Beach be evacuated permanently. The EPA report confirmed that dioxins were 100-times the hazardous level. The residents petitioned President Ronald Reagan asking for a buyout under the Superfund scheme.
1983 Jan-Feb Reagan's Times Beach Dioxin Task Force worked with the WhiteHouse and had representatives from the EPA, CDC, FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) and the Army Corps of Engineers (Tozzi's old outfit). The Task Force forced Anne Gorsuch Burford (the do-nothing administrator of the EPA) to finally announce that the government would buy-out 800 residential properties at Times Beach for $36.7 million. The general public now had clear evidence of what happens with toxic dumps and lax chemical regulations.
A month later Burford resigned over allegations of mismanagement of the Superfund program. The Justice Department and a Congressional committee then investigated charges that Burford's deputy, Rita Lavelle, showed favoritism toward her former employer, Aerojet General in hazardous clean-up matters.[2]. Lavelle was sentenced to six months in prison for lying to Congressional investigators and obstruction of justice.
1983 The federal government sued NEPACCO (United States v. Northeastern Pharmaceutical and Chemical Co) under the provisions of CERCLA, and forced them to repay the federal government for its cleanup efforts at the farm with the buried ninety drums of its chemical waste. Also 14,000-odd citizens’ suits were filed against NEPACCO and its officers.
In this year Tozzi left the OIRA and joined the law firm Beverage & Diamond, which had a lobby arm which worked for the chemical industry. This was the law firm of William Ruckelshaus, who had been the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and a founder of the so-called science of Risk Assessment. (Ruckelhaus wrote the first textbook). It also employed William Hedeman]] the EPA's ex Deputy Director, and an ex State Attorney-General, J Marshall Coleman -- all of whom had decided it was more profitable to be a lobbyist for industry.
Their main clients were Dow Chemical (which brought Tozzi into contact with George L Carlo on the Agent Orange problem) and American Industrial Health Council (AIHC) (controlled by the Chemical Manufacturing Association). They also had as clients, the Edison Electric Institute (opposed to climate change regulations), and the Society of the Plastic Industry (fighting to retain formaldehyde and other chemicals in the environment).
1983 Sep 27 Hill & Knowlton and Valis Associates (run by Wayne Valis who has also just left the Reagan White House) have run a workshop on the Toxic Torts Clearinghouse which Katherine L Becker of the Tobacco Institute attended. The Clearinghouse is still in its early formation stages, and they want funding from asbestos, chemical, tobacco companies etc. (any with poisoning and polluting problems). In return for funding the Tobacco Institute would be given a seat on the board.
Workshop speakers included:
- Thorne Auchter (later a business associate of Valis)
In his presentation, Thorne Auchter, head of OSHA, devoted much of his time to criticizing a recent Nader report on OSHA and to answering Washington Post reports on his actions in the ethylene dibromide matter. Auchter told the audience industry must be "equally concerned about appearance, as well as substance."
Referring to the Nader and Post items, he said "this type of public relations problem" can be avoided through a centralized information-sharing entity - a clearinghouse. In his view, such a clearinghouse would help industry deal with the "subculture of health activists." - Rep James J Florio (D-NJ) (He helped write the Superfund legislation, and was a critic of EPA's toxic sites cleanup operations)[8]
- Jim Tozzi (also a later associate of Valis)
a former high-ranking official at the Office of Management and Budget (OIRA), spoke of the "enormous potential cost" of proposed toxic victim compensation systems, citing as an example the black lung program and its costs.* According to Tozzi, if the asbestos victim compensation system proposed in H.R. 3175 were established, the costs would be nearly $30 billion annually. Because this system would be funded by the asbestos industry, the program would necessitate a $1,000 per ton tax. (Asbestos presently sells for $340 a ton.)
As further proof of the economic burden likely to result from victim compensation, he listed the number of possible claimants for various "toxicants": silica, 3.2 million persons; cotton dust, 500,000 persons; and, radiation, 750,000 persons. - J. Marshall Coleman, Esq., Beveridge & Diamond, (Tozzi now worked for them) former Attorney General for Virginia, was the only person to mention smoking during the workshop. Coleman believes the present tort and workers compensation systems can handle any toxic victim compensation. He called the absestos claims situation a "unique case". Speaking about cancer, Coleman said its cause can "rarely" be pinpointed to one factor. Rather, he continued, the "vast majority of cases" of cancer are "owed to other things, like smoking...not toxic wastes."
- S. John Byington, a lawyer with Pillsbury Madison & Sutro spoke in support of Auchter. He was "former Chairman of the Consumer Products Safety Commission and also (not admitted) head of the formaldehyde Institute. Formaldehyde is considered to be a IAQ problem and health hazard.
The Tobacco Institute saw the Clearinghouse as a potential threat, as much as a solution. They imagined the Chemical Industry Association, might use it to divert attention to cigarettes, rather than chemicals [9]
- Attached is a copy of a speech made by Jim Tozzi.
1983 Sep: A coalition of unions called for Auchter's resignation because of the "systematic and insidious dismantling of OSHA."
1984 Mar Auchter resigned and became president of the B.B. Andersen Companies, a construction and development group located in Kansas. It later transpired that in 1981, while at the OSHA, he had dropped a proposed $12,680 penalty for safety violations against one of the Andersen companies.
1984 Dec 3 Bhopal Disaster
The catastrophic release of the toxic chemical methyl isocyanate (a pesticide) at Union Carbide's plant in Bhopal, India kills at least 3,800 immediately, and results in thousands of later deaths, affecting half a million people. The disaster sparks worldwide concern and prompted OSHA to inspect all U.S. facilities manufacturing or processing this chemical, and leads OSHA to increase inspections of chemical plants. (in 1985-86)
- [Bhopal was the straw that broke the OSHA-deregulation ideology. President Reagan realised that the tide of public opinion had turned against deregulation. They were no longer supporting the overall relaxation of standards that had gone on under the reign of James G Watt (Sec of Interior), Anne Gorsuch Burford at the EPA, and Thorne Auchter at the OSHA.
1985 The EPA published its own Risk Assessment of dioxins, which were the main contaminant of Times Beach and Bhopal, and the main concern of Agent Orange used in Vietnam. The tagged dioxin as "one of the most potent carcinogens known." The EPA's conservative risk assessment estimated that exposure to only 0.006 picograms/kilogram of body weight raised the life-time risk of cancer to one in a million (the recognised level of concern). This was about one-thousandths the generally-accepted level.
Industries which were effected now began a concerted effort to overturn this assessment model by a blend of scientific research, lobbying and public relations.
1986 Jan Jim Tozzi has established Multinational Business Services (MBS) as "Regulatory and Trade Counsellors". He appears to have been set MBS up while he was still at the law firm Beveridge & Diamond. At this time, or slightly later, he joined forces with Thorne Auchter to also create Federal Focus -- supposedly a "non-profit' charitable organisation, but actually a PR and lobbying front. The EPA was becoming increasingly concerned with the need to regulate the quality of indoor air which disturbed the tobacco industry and William Hedeman, the EPA's ex-Deputy Director was contracted to provide consulting services to MBS.
1988 Tozzi created Federal Focus Jazz Band, Inc. a unique form of corporate lobbying which utilized the fact that he was a moderately-good trad-jazz horn player. Federal Focus claimed to have its own jazz band, but essentially this was a made-up group contracted when needed. It provided live-music to other lobbyists, PR businesses or political parties/think-tanks, etc. when they were putting on a political social event in Washington DC.
In effect, this ploy gave Tozzi and Auchter automatic access to politicians, party leaders, political aides, bureaucrats and corporate patrons attending these events by the best social-event organisers in the business. It allowed Auchter and Tozzi to have personal contacts with the major power-players -- and gave them access to the powerful, out of all proportion to their own contact lists. Their web-site gives the history of the band in a slightly modified form (by Dave Robinson):
Few Americans youngsters have heard the exciting sound of collective improvisation, or are familiar with the work of Armstrong, Morton, Beiderbecke, Bechet, Teagarden and other jazz pioneers.
Enter Dr. Jim Tozzi, a former career government official, now director of Multinational Business Services, Inc., a Washington, D.C. - based regulatory and trade consulting firm. Dr. Tozzi came to love New Orleans jazz, while a resident of the Crescent City, and hit upon a unique way of aiding its preservation: the continuing sponsorship of a carefully tutored youth group, under the aegis of Federal Focus, Inc., a non-profit corporation of which Dr. Tozzi is chairman.
[They] would select the band members from area wide auditions; those selected would be paid for weekly rehearsals and frequent gigs; and Federal Focus would provide for private tutoring, transportation, uniforms, and quality instruments as needed. Federal Focus would line up quality gigs on Capital Hill and other prestigious locations, and I would select repertoire, conduct rehearsals and coach the band in the various styles of traditional jazz.
For help in putting the word out into the schools, I turned to the Potomac River Jazz Club, one of the country's largest and most active jazz support organizations. With their help, auditions were held in the fall if '88; and in January '89 the Federal Focus Jazz Band was born. By April the band was gigging regularly.
The band will continue so long as talented musicians are interested in learning the genre can be found -- and funding is available to keep it afloat. Federal Focus, Inc., depends on tax-deductible contributions from culturally concerned individuals and corporations to supplement its own substantial investment in the program. [10]
1989 January GEORGE H.W. BUSH BECOMES PRESIDENT OF THE USA.
1989-93 Under President HW Bush, James MacRae was the Acting Administrator of the Office of Management and Budget.
1991: Thorne G Auchter and James J Tozzi established the Institute for Regulatory Policy (IRP) for Philip Morris. Auchter was listed as the Director of the IRP, but it appears to have no staff or functions other than to provide a front for publications and the release of manipulated studies
During 1991 Auchter also wrote to Philip Morris officials using the letterhead of Wayne Valis' Coalition for Uniform Risk Evaluation (CURE) which was another lobbying front group that they appeared to utilize (actually controlled by Philip Morris). He had been at the White House to discuss the drafting of an Presidential Executive Order.
1992 Tozzi became a member of the Environmental Financial Advisory Board (EFAB). The EFAB provides advice to the Administrator and Program Offices of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on the economics of environmental protection.
1993-96 Under President Bill Clinton, James MacRae, Tozzi's old associate, has succeeded him as head of the OIRA.
1993 Auchter and Tozzi go on a spree of 'Coalition Building', by bringing lobbyists from various industries together under the banner of the Institute for Regulatory Policy (IRP). Tom Humber at Burson-Marsteller promoted the IRP to Ellen Merlo at Philip Morris as ...
“an existing mechanism that currently is in the best position to assemble and mobilize a wide variety of business groups, corporations, local governments and other parties concerned about or victimized by EPA excesses.” {It boasted that IRP had already assembled] “three different coalitions which support sound science—Coalition for Executive Order, Coalition for Moratorium on Risk Assessments, Coalition of Cities and States on Environmental Mandates.”[11]
1994 A Philip Morris overview of the problem with getting high enough exchange rates of indoor with outdoor air through FACT (PM's own Filtered Air Control Technology) displacement ventilation (very expensive). This note also contains details of Various ongoing studies on ETS
- Signifiant Studies being Monitored (Genuine studies)
- Ross C Brownson - one of the largest on ETS and lung-cancer reported no significant risk.
- Heather Stockwell - large US study in 1992. No overall increase in lung cancer. Gio Gori was trying to get access to this raw data (but obviously finding resistance).
- Elizabeth Fontham - large ETS/lung cancer (60% completed in 1991). Marginal positive finding seen by Fontham as evidence of causal relationships.
- Anna H Wu-Williams - large case-control study. Not found anything of significance.
- Trade Organizations
- American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA)
- Total Indoor Environmental Quality (TIEQ) coalition which includes 19 companies including RJ Reynolds. Philip Morris may join.
- Consultants
- Barrer Associates: EPA consultants who keep us informed on all EPA activities.
- Shook Hardy & Bacon (lawyers)
- Jim Tozzi. He is organising an ILSI Seminar which the EPA will join unless they "back out as a result of the Tox Forum events". Also crypticaly mentioned was IRIS, which was SH&B's "Integrated Risk Information System."
- Thorne Auchter was discussing costs of increased regulation with Mayoral groups.
- Patrick R Tyson, reports from a lawyer-lobbyist (Constagny, Brooks & Smith, Atlanta) He was the ex director of the OSHA who became a PM consultant on workplace health matters.
- CIAR (Center for Indoor Air Research)
Personal monitoring study and confounder study. [12]
1994Auchter and Tozzi create the Center for Regulatory Effectiveness.
1995 Mar Cass R Sunstein, Professor of Jurisprudence at the Uni of Chicago -- who was to become the Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in the Obama administration, is associated with John D Graham's Harvard Center for Risk Analysis. He is a member of the Harvard Group on Risk Management Reform (chaired by RJ Reynolds Tobacco heir, C Boyden Gray) [13]
1996: Tozzi and Auchter now had another associate, James MacRea. They created the Center for Regulatory Effectiveness (CRE) . Auchter then became the Executive Director of CRE. Later he was the CEO of 'Grace Digital Media' owned by Cheryl Reagan, who also runs Federal News Service.
1997 Apr 24 The Center for Regulatory Effectiveness has sent a memo to all members of Congress, and also a blind copy to Philip Morris. Tit offers a "newly released White Paper" on the subject of the "National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQSs) being reivewed by the EPA as part of the Clean Air Act. It reminds the Congressmen that..
CRE's Executive Director, Thorne Auchter', is a former Administrator of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), in the U.S. Department of Labor. CRE's co-founders and co-Directors, Jim Tozzi and Jim MacRae, are former Deputy Administrators of OMB's regulatory review office (the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, OIRA); both have spent most of their careers working on Federal regulatory issues and processes. [14]
1998 Oct 12 Matt Winokur now running the WRA (Worldwide Regulatory Affairs) division at Philip Morris is being advised by Jim Tozzi of MBS on "Bill Language in the Conference Report" which states that the OMB must
require Federal awarding agencies to ensure that "all data produced under an award [eg, a grant to conduct epidemiological research] will be made available to the public through the procedures established under the Freedom of Information Act."
[This applies to universities] And also
The Committee urges the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to develop, with public and Federal agency involvement, rules providing policy and procedural guidance to Federal agencies for ensuring and maximizing the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information (including statistical information) disseminated by non-Federal entities with financial support from the Federal government,
They see an opportunity to exploit this change.
CRE members will be very interested in this, because it would direct the release of ozone/PM epidemiological data. We are exploring the idea of putting a coalition together. Please advise us of any potential members we should contact.
1998 Oct 20 Tozzi is reporting to Matt Winoker at Philip Morris's Worldwide Regulatory Affairs on the National Toxicology Program (NTP Review of Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) which is about to declare ETS as a "known human carcinogen". He has already prepared a denial which can be given as testimony before the Board of Scientific Counselors. [[16]
1998 Oct 21 Tozzi is setting up a meeting with Matt Winokur, Tom Borelli (both Philip Morris) and John Hoel (Shook Hardy & Bacon lawyer/lobbyist). [17] The subject of the meeting was the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) and the "bar and tavern program" that Tozzi and Auchter were running for the tobacco industry. Tozzi wanted to promote a device which Honeywell had produced -- an "air scrubbing" device which could reduce the level of smoke in bars and taverns. [18]
1998 Nov 20 Tozzi is setting up a meeting with the Clinton WhiteHouse Office of Management and Budget on data access and data integrity. He is advising Matt Winokur at Philip Morris that the timing of our meeting is perfect. on the {?Shelby amendment?] [19]
1998 Dec 2-3 The Board of Scientific Counselors at the NTP voted unanimously to recommend that ETS (second-hand smoke) should be listed under "known to be a human carcinogen". This recommendation was to be passed to the Executive Committee, chaired by Linda Rosenstock, the Director of NIOSH (early 1999) Tozzi has sent Philip Morris a detailed report.
He noted that some presentations to the committee were made by:
- Roger Jenkins of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) on behalf of the Center for Indoor Air Research (CIAR). He attacked some of the figures used in the EPA Risk Assessment.
- Keith Philips of Covance Laboratories who had done a series of studies on housewife exposure in 12 European Cities for the CIAR.
- Chris Coggins made a presentation for Lorillard Tobacco. He said they had ignored a large body of evidence obtained from German mouse studies.
- Paul S Levy of the University of Chicago appeared for RJ Reynolds. He criticised the use of meta-analysis in epidemiological studies.
- Richard Carchman appeared for Philip Morris
- William J Butler of Environmental Risk Analysis also appeared for RJ Reynolds. He attacked the Fontham and Brownson studies.
- Gerhard Scherer appeared for the German Association of Cigarette Manufacturers
- Gio Batta Gori of the Health Policy Center
- Ronald G Marks (Univerity of Florida) appeared for RJ Reynolds
- Maurice LeVois (LeVois Associates) described his publication with Paul Switzer on "recall bias". He and Max Layard have published also on "publication bias".
They also looked again at the chemical TCDD (dioxin) and decided that this also was a probable human carcinogen. Kim Hooper of the Californian Department of Health said TCDD is "almost certainly" a human carcinogen. (And) Given the powerful animal data — that TCDD is an "incredibly potent" and "really an amazing" carcinogen in rats and mice — Hooper wondered why there was even a debate. Those commenting on behalf of the manufacturers were:
- Jim Tozzi (MBS) Unknown who he represented.
- Nathan J Karch representing the Vinyl Institute (Karch & Assocaites)
- Raymond Greenberg representing the Chlorine Chemisty Council
- Thomas Starr (Environ Corp.) on behalf of the American Forest & Paper Association. [20] All of the above worked for the tobacco industry on occasions.]
1998 Dec 24On Xmas Eve Winokur at Philip Morris send a contact for Tozzi/MBS to Jan Goodheart who is the Manager Regulatory Affiars at the WRA (and Asia/Latin America). It is a multipart contract "for the Regulatory Support work (that) Jim does." He says the "language comes straight from last years (contracts)" [21] The WRA Contract Request form (which should never be trusted to be honest) shows that the Project was to monitor the government regulatory agencies:
- Parts A & B - both tobacco project (a) provide risk assessment information on passive smoking legislation or regulations (b) monitor the EPA, OSHA and the National Toxicology Program (NTP)
- Part C - "cuts across both tobacco and non (tobacco) "(this) could be broaden beyond nitrosamines' and "define as regulatory issues that affect all PM operations in the US" (c) provide advice on nitrosamines in food, beer and tobacco
- Parts D & E - "address the non-tobacco" (d) provide information on endocrine disrupters, food inspection programs, and preventative health programs.
The monthly retainer was $12,500 and total fees and expenses were not to exceed $150,000. [[22]
2000 Dec: Tozzi was a major behind-the-scenes architect of the Data Quality Act (DQA) which he helped to become law in December 2000 as a stealth rider to the Treasury and General Government Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2001. Since 2001 he has lobbied for regulated industries through the use of DQA. Among his accomplishments was the successful recertification of an herbicide, atrazine, by the EPA, despite laboratory and field studies showing that the chemical is an endocrine disruptor that causes frogs to become hermaphroditic. [23]
Tozzi's role in the DQA was analyzed as a case study in policy entrepreneurship in a National Science Foundation-funded study, "Lobbying and Policymaking: The Public Pursuit of Private Interests," by R. Kenneth Godwin, Scott Ainsworth and Erik K. Godwin. The article "Policy Entrepreneurs: The Power of Audacity" published by RegBlog, an online publication of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, discussed Tozzi's work on both the PRA and the DQA as examples of policy entrepreneurship.
2001-06 Under President George W Bush, John Graham, the notorious head of the Harvard Center for Risk Assessment becomes the head of the OIRA for six years only. Graham is an old Risk Assessment associate of Tozzi when they both worked together for the tobacco industry.
2001 Tozzi’s latest, if not his crowning achievement, is the Data Quality Act, which he largely wrote and helped become law in 2001 from his position as head of the Center for Regulatory Effectiveness (CRE). That law subjects the quality of data underlying virtually all significant regulations to review by OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). It took effect Oct. 1, when all agencies had filed guidelines to ensure the data they use to justify new rules are sound. Agencies also had filed procedures allowing outside parties to challenge and correct faulty data and analyses. The act — and now its enforcement by OIRA head John Graham — has been widely seen as the most significant expansion in regulatory review in more than half a century. [24]
- [Note: John Graham was a full-time corporate lobbyist, who ran the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis very largely with tobacco industry money before being elevated to the OIRA by President Bush.]
2009 Under President Obama, Cass Sunstein, an old associate of John Graham takes his position as head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) --the old Tozzi do-nothing-job.
