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(AP) - A report describing potential health
threats near the Great Lakes region's most heavily polluted sites
will be made public after changes are made to fix flaws with draft
versions, a federal official said Thursday.

      The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has drawn
criticism from members of Congress, scientists and a U.S.-Canadian
agency for withholding the report. It had been scheduled for
release last summer.

      Reviewers inside and outside the CDC found "a number of
problems" with the study, CDC spokesman Glen Nowak said. "It's
being worked on."

      The roughly 400-page document uses statistics from a variety of
health and environmental databases to assess risks for more than 9
million people living near 26 areas on the U.S. side of the lakes
that are polluted with toxins such as PCBs, mercury and dioxins.

      Many of the counties where the sites are located have abnormally
high rates of cancer and other health problems such as infant
mortality, according to a report summary posted on the Web site of
the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit journalism
organization based in Washington, D.C.

      The report does not say the toxic waste sites caused any of the
health problems but raises questions for further study, said Peter
Orris, a scientist who has reviewed it independently of the CDC.

      "It takes information that was already available to the public
and organizes it in a way that will be helpful to communities,"
said Orris, a professor of occupational and health sciences at the
University of Illinois School of Public Health in Chicago. "With
all its blemishes, I think it ought to come out."


      The report was requested in 2001 by the International Joint
Commission, an independent panel that advises U.S. and Canadian
officials on Great Lakes water quality issues. The CDC's Agency for
Toxic Substances and Disease Registry conducted the study.

      The commission and the toxics agency had planned to release the
findings in July 2007. But shortly beforehand, the toxics agency
notified the commission that revisions were needed, said commission
spokesman Frank Bevacqua.

      In a December letter to toxics agency Director Howard Frumkin,
the commission said it "strongly supports publication of the
report."

      U.S. Rep. Brad Miller, D-N.C., chairman of the House
Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, also called for
release of the July version and called the delay "disturbing."

      Nowak said CDC studies typically undergo numerous revisions
before release.

      One weakness of the Great Lakes study, he said, was its
correlation of environmental data from specific toxic waste sites
with health data from entire counties. The waste sites typically
occupy a relatively small part of one or more counties.

      Additionally, it linked health and environmental statistics that
in some cases were from different time periods, he said.

      Although the study was not designed to establish a
cause-and-effect relationship between the toxic pollution and
elevated illness levels, some of its wording "implied just the
opposite" and concerned some reviewers, Nowak said.


      "They wanted to make sure the right inferences were made and
the information wasn't presented in a confusing fashion," he said.

      David Carpenter, director of the Institute for Health and the
Environment with the University at Albany in New York, said he
twice had reviewed the draft and recommended its publication.

      "I don't know of any improvements that could be made," said
Carpenter, a member of the International Joint Commission's science
advisory board. 

He said he respected Frumkin but feared the final
version of the report might be watered down.

      The Bush administration "has been very much attempting to
downplay the role of toxins around the Great Lakes," Carpenter
said.

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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has drawn
criticism from members of Congress, scientists and a U.S.-Canadian
agency for withholding the report. It had been scheduled for
release last summer.

Agency criticized for withholding Great Lakes health risk report

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