NEWS RELEASE

Committee on Energy and Commerce
Rep. John D. Dingell, Chairman

Dingell, Stupak Move to Protect Great Lakes Report Whistleblower

Washington, DC – Key lawmakers today wrote the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), instructing the agency not to take retaliatory actions against a prominent scientist who played an instrumental role in preparing a report on the health effects of pollution in the Great Lakes.

In a letter to CDC, Reps. John D. Dingell (D-MI), the Chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Bart Stupak (D-MI), the Chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, questioned whether Dr. Christopher De Rosa has been penalized for acting as a whistleblower in a number of prominent cases and warned the agency against penalizing employees who step forward with information that is embarrassing to the agency.

“Courageous individuals who are willing to go public with evidence of wrongdoing are critical to ferreting out waste, fraud and abuse in government agencies,” said Dingell. “These individuals deserve to be commended, not punished. The Committee will fully investigate how CDC has treated Dr. De Rosa to determine whether it has violated federal whistleblower laws and whether their behavior has been otherwise proper.”

“Our Great Lakes are a national treasure and Dr. De Rosa’s efforts to protect them should not subject him to harassment or retaliation,” said Stupak. “Our Committee intends to examine thoroughly, not only the circumstances of Dr. De Rosa’s demotion, but how CDC has treated all those employees who were involved with the Great Lakes Report. We will not tolerate punitive actions against whistleblowers or individuals who expose embarrassing information about an agency.”

In their letter, the lawmakers note that De Rosa has been a key figure in several issues that may have caused embarrassment to CDC management. In addition to being the lead author of the Great Lakes Report and pushing for the report’s publication, De Rosa acted as a whistleblower in the matter of formaldehyde exposures in the Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers provided to Hurricane Katrina victims. De Rosa also insisted that a public health alert be maintained for 1,4-dioxane, a substance used in cosmetics that is a reproductive hazard and a carcinogenic.

Last fall, De Rosa was removed from his position and demoted. In February, De Rosa was made the subject of a 90-day “Personal Improvement Plan” (PIP), which is a formal step toward termination.

In February, Dingell and Stupak launched an investigation into the withholding of the Great Lakes Report, officially entitled “Public Health Implications of Hazardous Substances in the Twenty-Six U.S. Great Lakes Areas of Concern.” While the report was completed in July 2007, following several years of work and extensive scientific peer review, CDC had blocked the report from being released to the public. After the Committee launched its investigation, CDC finally made the report public and referred it to the Institutes of Medicine for a full scientific review.

Read the letter »

-30-