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.