Science:
In 1997 the Environmental Protection Agency revised the
Clean Air
Act and implemented new air pollution policies based
on the 1993 results of the
Six
Cities Study. The study, which measured the health
of 8000 Americans for more than a decade, tied air
pollution directly to some deaths. Now the House Science
Committee, chaired by US Representative Lamar Smith
(R-TX), has filed a formal subpoena for the data
behind the study—the first such request in 20
years. Smith has repeatedly requested the data from the
EPA, as well as that of a related study by the American Cancer
Society, which he says he will provide to "independent"
scientists for evaluation. The EPA has resisted providing the
base data because that would violate the confidentiality
agreements that the participants signed. C. Arden Pope of
Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah—one of the
study's authors—believes that even removing directly
identifying information such as names and addresses will not
provide adequate protection because the data could still be
compared with public records to identify the
participants.
