Another Case of Being Bushwhacked by "Senior People Not Typically in the Review Process"

Delay Of Report Is Blamed On Politics

Document Suggests Public Health Risks Near Great Lakes

By Kari Lydersen

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, February 18, 2008; A03

CHICAGO -- The lead author and peer reviewers of a government report raising the possibility of public health threats from industrial contamination throughout the Great Lakes region are charging that the report is being suppressed because of the questions it raises. The author also alleges that he was demoted because of the report.

Chris De Rosa, former director of the division of toxicology and environmental medicine at the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), charges that the report he wrote was a significant factor in his reassignment to a non-supervisory "special assistant" position last year.

. . . "Unfortunately the draft (De Rosa) thought was final wasn't provided to the senior scientists and managers of ATSDR until about a week or two before he thought it would be published," Nowak said. "At that…