UPDATE - 9/26/12 : Mr. Milloy sent me the following in response to the EPA’s statement:

The alleged “independent” safety and ethics evaluation is conducted by the University of North Carolina (UNC) for EPA on a contract basis. In addition to UNC being an EPA contractor (ka-ching), the EPA extramural grants database indicates that the EPA has given UNC $33,602,103 for 92 projects (ka-ching,ka-ching). UNC documents indicate that UNC received from EPA $8,252,644.45 in 2004;$4,586,728.98 in 2005; $8,884,433.00 in 2006; and $5,696,188.32 in 2010. Documents for other years could not be found. We report. You decide. Does that sound “independent” to you?



SEE RELATED:

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-

UPDATE - 4:30 PM EST: The Environmental Protection Agency has sent me the following e-mail statement responding to the lawsuit Mr. Milloy has filed against them:

EPA is one of 15 federal departments and agencies that conduct or support research with human subjects under the governance of the Common Rule. All human exposure studies conducted by EPA scientists are independently evaluated for safety and ethics, and the results are peer-reviewed. The complaint has been referred to the Department of Justice and further inquiry regarding litigation should be directed to them.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-

A follow up from a Water Cooler post back in April. Steven Milloy, a biostatistician and securities lawyer who runs the site junkscience.com, is suing the Environmental Protection Agency over what he discovered through evidence from a Freedom of Information Act request. According to the National Legal and Policy Center, Milloy found out through the FOIA that the EPA was conducting “ disturbing experiments that exposed humans to inhalable particulates the agency has said are deadly.”: NLPC reports: (bolding is mine)