Posted on 27-1-2002
Privatised
Technology Puts Profit First
Wednesday, January 22, 2003, Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Private laboratories are increasingly being caught
falsifying
test results for water supplies, petroleum products, underground
tanks, and
soil, hampering the government's ability to ensure Americans
are protected
by environmental laws, investigators say.
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, the officials said. In addition,
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.
The EPA's watchdog against fraud, Inspector General Nikki Tinsley,
has
called the rise of lab fraud a disturbing trend. "If it was
my drinking
water I'd consider it very serious," she said, declining to
identify
locations affected by the ongoing investigation. Private laboratories
test
products that are regulated by anti-pollution laws, and the
results allow
companies to certify that they're meeting the requirements of
environmental
protection laws. In one instance three years ago, investigators
discovered
fraudulent test results by contract employees at the Environmental
Protection Agency's lab in Chicago. The head of the laboratory
was
transferred and the contractor, Lockheed Martin, was suspended
from
performing tests.
The Justice Department and Environmental Protection Agency have
prosecuted
dozens of employees and laboratories the past several years
for fraudulent
testing. Uhlmann, the Justice Department official, said the
prosecutions
have grown but statistics are not kept on lab fraud cases. The
growing
number of cases stretch from New England, where a chemist for
municipal
water made up test results, to Texas, where the government recently
prosecuted the largest tester of underground fuel tanks. Officials
said
they aren't certain whether an increasing number of labs are
falsifying
tests, or whether more are simply being caught through more
aggressive
investigations and whistle-blowers. Tinsley said there were
numerous
reasons for lab misconduct: poor training, ineffective ethics
programs,
shrinking markets, and efforts to cut costs. In some cases,
the labs duped
the companies that submitted samples for testing. In other instances,
the
companies were part of a conspiracy with the labs, officials
said.
Sometimes the fraud included "driveway tests," so-named because
employees
generate them on a computer in their own driveways, without
ever visiting
the facilities.
Whatever the case, lab fraud hampers an environmental protection
system
that frequently relies on voluntary compliance by companies
backed by test
results, officials said. "If we can't rely upon science with
supporting lab
results, then we don't know what's out there for the public
to eat or drink
or use," said J.P. Suarez, the EPA's assistant administrator
for
enforcement and compliance assurance. "When people may not be
getting
harmed, they may be getting ripped off, using products that
are not what
they're paying for. And companies are paying for services they're
not
getting," he said.
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