COLUMN RIGHT/ JONATHAN H. ADLER : Dioxin Joins List of Costly False Alarms : Environmental legislation can cost jobs and raise prices. Some is based on disputed science.

In 1983, the 2,242 residents of Times Beach, Mo., were forcibly evacuated from their homes and relocated by the Environmental Protection Agency. The reason? Ten years earlier, waste oil containing traces of dioxin was used for dust control on Times Beach streets. Even though little was known at the time about the toxicity of dioxin and its potential to cause cancer in humans at low to moderate doses, the EPA ordered the town evacuated and scheduled it for demolition.

Today, Times Beach is still empty, but now the Centers for Disease Control says that the dioxin levels found there did not represent a significant health risk. In fact, some recent data suggest that exposure to dioxin levels 60 to 70 times greater than those encountered in Missouri has no measurable effect on cancer rates.

Indeed, the World Health Organization has established an exposure standard for dioxin that is 1,600 times greater than that of the EPA. Nevertheless, in the next several years the federal government will spend an additional $20 million, and Syntex, the maker of the dioxin, will shell out $100 million to demolish the town and incinerate the soil. All of this money will be spent even though scientists say dioxin levels at Times Beach are not a health risk.

This is not the only example of science being ignored by those who direct environmental policy. As a result of the Clean Air Act amendments of 1977, the federal government spent more than $500 million to research the suspected environmental damage from acid rain. The study concluded that fears of acidic rainfall destroying forests and decimating fish populations were unfounded. Of the few lakes that were found to be acidic--fewer than 5% of the 7,000 lakes studied--90% were acidic before the Industrial Revolution. Simply adding crushed limestone could reduce the acidity in these lakes at a fraction of the cost of emissions reductions.

The Senate devoted only an hour to the acid-rain study and it was never introduced in the House. Still, Congress passed the most comprehensive acid-rain legislation in this nation’s history--legislation that will cost industry, and therefore consumers, about $5 billion annually for the next 50 years. The coal industries in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia will be forced to lay off thousands of workers, severely impacting that region’s economy.

The list goes on. Alarmist fears that chemical and pesticide residues, such as Alar on apples, could cause cancer were overstated by policy-makers and the media over the objections of many in the scientific community. The EPA banned Alar, and the livelihood of hundreds of apple growers was threatened by consumer fears.

In addition, the Institute for Evaluating Health Risks has called for a reconsideration of claims about the carcinogenicity of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), even though American industry is about to spend as much as $1 billion for their removal.

Perhaps most significant is that several noted scientists, such as Dr. Bruce Ames of UC Berkeley, are challenging the validity of animal tests used by the EPA to determine the human-cancer risk from various substances.

Similarly, it should come as no surprise that the mother of all environmental catastrophes, global warming, is also anything but a scientifically established certainty. While proponents point to theories and computer models, skeptics note that existing data and the historical record have yet to identify any warming trend from the emissions of the so-called greenhouse gases. They even challenge the notion that the nominal increase in temperature now being predicted--one or two degrees--would have disastrous consequences. Nevertheless, few critics of the global-warming theory have ever been invited to testify before Congress alongside their alarmist brethren in the policy community.

It is troubling that environmental concerns are being managed without the incorporation of existing scientific data and research. Environmental legislation can be very expensive, costing jobs and increasing consumer prices. America has spent more than $1 trillion on environmental protection since the mid-1970s and continues to spend more than $100 million annually.

These are costs Americans should not have to bear unless they bring certain benefits. Before this nation embarks on yet another costly program aimed at curbing “toxics,” limiting air pollution or addressing global warming it is important that those who direct our nation’s policies listen to those who have scientifically studied and researched the issues. Anything less is pure folly.