Chromium Evidence Buried, Report Says

Those manuscripts were submitted to OSHA.

"Maybe there's a reason they did it that way. I don't know. But on the surface, it doesn't look very good," said Herman Gibb, an environmental consultant who led a seminal Environmental Protection Agency study of 70,000 chromium workers in Baltimore.

Kenneth Mundt, a scientist with Arlington-based Environ, which conducted the study for the Chromium Coalition, said the decision to split the data was based on "scientific issues," including differences in the way samples were obtained at the U.S. and German plants.

He did not have an explanation for why he ultimately lumped workers together differently than they were in the initial, unpublished version -- a change that blended the intermediate-exposure workers with the low-exposure workers and resulted in a finding of no risk.

Mundt said he was under no pressure from his industry sponsors to doctor the data.

Joel Barnhart of Elementis Chromium in Corpus Christi, Tex. -- who served as chairman of the Chromium Coalition -- said he could not recall how decisions were made with regard to the analysis and publication of the data.

"I feel confident that no one I'm aware of was trying to intentionally hide what they thought was useful information," Barnhart said.

Chromium representatives have told OSHA that a 1 microgram standard would cost the industry more than $5 billion a year and would force the closing of more than half the nation's electroplating shops -- most of which are small and cannot afford new controls.

Asked for a reaction to evidence that data relevant to a legal rulemaking were withheld from the agency, an OSHA spokesperson said only: "Our focus is to meet the court-imposed February 28, 2006, deadline to issue a final rule. We fully expect to meet our deadline."