Johnson Gets Thumbs up

ADMINISTRATION

A senate panel voted last week to confirm Stephen L. Johnson to be EPA administrator after he pulled the plug on a proposed controversial study of children's exposure to chemicals.

The Senate Environment & Public Works Committee voted 17 to 1 for Johnson, a 24-year veteran of the agency who has been acting administrator since January. The Senate had been expected to confirm Johnson in coming days, but Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) blocked that vote in a last-minute maneuver.

Johnson canceled the controversial research project after Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) threatened to stop a vote on his nomination because of it. The proposed Children's Health & Environmental Exposure Research Study was intended to determine how pesticides and common household chemicals get into the blood of babies and toddlers (C&EN, Nov. 15, 2004, page 7). The American Chemistry Council gave EPA some $2 million to help fund the project.

EPA suspended the study in November 2004, pending further scientific review. But Boxer and Nelson said they would block Johnson's nomination unless he scratched the research.

"I have concluded that the study cannot go forward, regardless of the outcome of the independent review," Johnson said on April 8 in announcing cancellation of the project. "EPA must conduct quality, credible research in an atmosphere absent of gross misrepresentation and controversy."

Carper is blocking a vote on Johnson because EPA has refused for two years to analyze bipartisan legislation that he is championing to control sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury, and carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. Carper wants EPA to compare economic and health benefits of his legislation with the Bush Administration's Clear Skies proposal, which would control SO₂, NO_x, and mercury but not CO₂.