Joseph V Rodricks
Joseph Rodricks, was one of the founders of Environ Corp. and a promoter of Risk Science. He was also an occasional lobbyist with the American Industrial Health Council (AIHC) and his company Environ Corp provided a range of consulting services to the tobacco industry, including toxic substance reviews and some fake Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) testing -- designed to discount the role of second-hand smoke in office pollution.
The company operated under a few variations on the name:
- ENVIRON Corp. (upper and lower case variations) and Environ Ltd.
- ENV Services Inc. -- one name used by the IAQ testing division
- Environmental Corporation
Associates
- Joseph V Rodricks, (co-founded the company in 1983)
- Vsilos H Frankos
- Robert G Tardiff (joined in 1985)
- Dr Lawrence Fishbein Senior Science Adviser (from 1988 [He also ran a CMA newsletter??])
- Thomas Starr (joined in 1990)
- Dr Duncan D Turnbull (1991)
- Stephen L Brown and Resha Putzrath rdesaseop[phtu8
- Julian D Marshal and Stanley R Hayes 1998Æ÷.,
- Dr Lurissa Rudenko (1993)
Documents & Timeline
1983 May 26 Lawyer Stanley L Temko of Covington & Burling who worked virtually full-time for the tobacco industry has been looking for possible scientific recruits for the Council for Tobacco Research's (CTR's) Committee of Counsel (the lawyers who handle bribes and secret payments). These are euphemistically called 'consultants", and he has been going through the members on the Select Committee on GRAS Substances which decides what chemicals in the environment and food supply are Generally Recognised As Safe. He has identified a few who might be interested in working secretly for the tobacco industry:
Drs La Du Jr, and Plaa were seen as vague possibilities, while Dr Michael B Shimkin was definitely rejected. (He was an anti-smoking associate of Ernst Wynder, and member of the American Society of Preventative Oncology)
- Dr Joseph F Borzelleca was specifically recommended as an excellent choice.(He was recruited later)
- Dr Joseph V Rodricks, Director, Life Sciences Division of Clements Associates Inc in Washington DC was afforded the full treatment.
He was a chemist who had served in the FDA and came highly recommended. He later also worked for RJ Reynolds.
- Dr Charles J Kensler, Senior VP at Arthur D Little Inc (Lorillard had contacted him and the ADL company in 1973)
- Gerald Wogan, a toxicologist in the Food Department of MIT (He later worked for RJ Reynolds on the endorsement of the Premier cigarette)
- Leo Goldberg the retired chairman of the Chemical Industry Institute of Toxicology (CIIT)
1983 Mar 8 The first appearance of the business name Environ Corp. in the tobacco archives is in an Occupational Health & Safety Letter. Joseph V Rodricks is listed along with some others as an author of a report "Risk Assessments in the Federal Government: Managing the Process". (Vincent T Covello and JJ Cohrssen were the principle authors).[2]
Their paper notes that the "... basic problem with risk assessment is the sparseness and uncertainty of the scientific knowledge of the health hazards addressed. Although evidence of health effects of a few chemicals, such as asbestos, has been clear, in many cases the evidence is meager and indirect. To make regulatory judgements on the basis of animal data, risk assessors must rely on a series of assumptions." [3]
1983 (The Proceedings of the International Workshop on ...) The Analysis of Actual Versus Perceived Risks edited by:
- Vincent T Corvello, National Science Foundation (later Columbia Uni, School of Public Health)
- W Gary Flamm, FDA -- who later became a full-time science lobbyist and corrupter for the tobacco industry.
- Joseph V Rodricks, listed now at Environ Corporation, Washington DC
- Robert G Tardiff, National Academy of Science (who later joined Rodricks at Environ Corp.
- [Note the first page is not connected with the main document] [4]
1987-89 An RJ Reynolds account of expenditure on (perhaps) legitimate research, list a large number of outside nicotine research consultants who don't figure in the secret CTR Special Project #4 accounts. These are consultation projects for RJ Reynolds Tobacco. The most notable ones are:
| 1987 | 1988 | 1989 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| * Dr JE Trosko, Michigan State University | $85,397 | nil | nil |
| * Dr Francis JC Roe (Note the rounded 'retainer payment) | nil | $7,194 | $10,000 |
| * Environ Corp. Jolanda Janczewski who did fake IAQ testing The Environ Corporation also did Toxic reviews. Also the services of Dr Joseph V Rodricks [5] | nil $25,000 $2,659 | $14,600 $ 467 $17,648 | $50,000 $50,000 $ 736 |
1992 He has edited a book "Calculated Risk" which says about Acceptable Risk:
"For some types of carcinogens, thresholds might even be envisioned to exist because of relevant pharmacokinetic factors . For example, some chenucals that must be activated metabolically to become carcinogenic may be handled through nonlinear metabolic processes, with the result that thresholds for their carcinogenic effects may exist ...." "Regulators have adopted the assumption of low dose linearity in cancer risk assessment, variously justified as scientifically correct and as responsible public health policy . Corollary assumptions are the one-molecule-one-hit hypotheseis, the exclusion of no-effect thresholds, and the equivalency of response in experimental rodents and man. While our understanding of the carcinogenesis process remains tentative, these generalizations are not sustained by the limited scientific evidence available, not even as interim working hypotheses. .." (Gori, Reg . Tox & Pharmacol, 16 : 10-20)...[6]
- [He is quoting Gio Batta Gori !
