EPA’s Secret Gas Chamber Experiments: A Deceitful Failure
Scientists Andrew Ghio, Jon Sobus, Joachim Pleil and Michael Madden, with laboratory director Wayne Cascio, administered this toxic mix of diesel and particulate matter to 41 people. In all, they gassed 81 subjects with various mixes of diesel, particulate and ozone in five different experiments — tagged with the science fiction-like names Omegacon, Xcon, Kingcon, Depoz and Lamarck.
No, these are not mad scientists from some 1930s D-list horror movie; they’re employees of the Environmental Protection Agency who used human subjects in an air pollution test chamber at the EPA’s Human Studies Facility in Chapel Hill, N.C., in 2010 and 2011.
The consent form that volunteers signed for the Omegacon cocktail pumped into Subject No. 1 lacked the warning that particulate exposure can cause death in older people with cardiovascular disease. EPA accepted a 58-year old woman with Stage 1 hypertension, premature atrial contractions, osteoarthritis, gall bladder removal and a family history of heart disease. EPA’s scientists were humane enough to turn off the gas when she suffered atrial fibrillation, and hospitalized her overnight for observation.
The quintet of EPA gas chamber experimenters were producing risk assessment studies ordered by then-agency head Lisa Jackson to justify the Obama administration’s push for crushing new clean air regulations, which they claimed would prevent tens of thousands of premature deaths each year by reducing emissions.
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