Following the setting of standards in 1985 the EPA came under intense industry pressure to revise them. This pressure was stepped up when, in 1985, dioxin was accidentally found in the discharges from pulp and paper mills that used chlorine for bleaching the paper white. Fish downstream from those mills were also found to be contaminated and tests showed that dioxin was present in the manufactured paper goods. These tests were part of an ongoing study called The National Dioxin Study.

The American Paper Institute set up a 'crisis management team' to deal with the situation. Leaked documents, obtained by Greenpeace, show that the administrator of the EPA met with representatives of the pulp and paper industry and promised that the EPA would revise downward its risk assessment of dioxin to ease the problem for the industry. He also agreed to notify the industry as soon as the EPA received any requests for information about the study under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and that it would not release any results of testing before publication of the final report on the study. The EPA would then send the American Paper Institute a letter saying that testing data was preliminary and meaningless (Harrison and Hoberg 1991; Gibbs CCHW 1995, p.13).

Attempts by environmental activists Paul Merrell and Carol Van Strum to get results of these tests from the EPA in 1986 through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) were initially fruitless until Greenpeace obtained the leaked documents and Merrell and Van Strum used them in court: "Suddenly the EPA found thousands of pages of documents responsive to our FOIA request that they had previously denied even existed" (Quoted in Gibbs CCHW 1995, p.13).

In 1987 the EPA released its National Dioxin Study, following the publication of a Greenpeace report alleging an EPA cover up and collusion between the EPA and the paper industry. By this time the Paper Institute was well prepared with a public relations strategy. It used PR firm Burson-Marsteller to publicise the EPA letter saying the pulp and paper mill data in the report was meaningless (Bailey 1992; Harrison and Hoberg 1991). The Institute also advised members approached by the media to behave as if it was "old news" and to "suggest that this is a story that was covered way-back-when..."

I would suggest we use the background statement we already have prepared because it is written in a tone that suggests that what is going on has been going on for a long time. I also would include the article from Scientific American which suggests that dioxin may not be all that serious a health problem....We might not want to include the above material in a formal kit. That might give the appearance we consider this a major event. Instead we might send some material, only when asked, in a regular API envelope. (Quoted in Thorner 1987)

True to its word, the EPA stated in 1987 that it may have overestimated the risks of dioxin citing the Monsanto and BASF studies as key evidence.

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Additional Material

Bailey, Jeff, 1992, 'Dueling Studies: How Two Industries Created a Fresh Spin on the Dioxin Debate', Wall Street Journal, 20 February, p. A4.

Fumento, Michael, 1993, Science Under Siege: Balancing Technology and the Environment (New York: William Morrow and Co).

Gibbs, Lois Marie and The Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste, 1995, Dying from Dioxin (Boston, MA: South End Press).

Harrison, Kathryn and George Hoberg, 1991, 'Setting the Environmental Agenda in Canada and the United States: The Cases of Dioxin and Radon', Canadian Journal of Political Science, Vol. XXIV, No. 1, pp. 3-27.

Thorner, John, 1987, 'The 'That's Old News' Strategy', Harper's Magazine (February) , pp. 22, 26

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