The feds are still dodging the Charleston Gazette's requests for information on the toxic water spill in West Virginia.
Last Thursday, I wrote that the Gazette–frustrated by the lack of a response to repeated calls left for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)–reached the CDC's director at home. He promptly booted them to the press office. That didn't seem to be the way an important public health agency should act during a public health emergency.
After I posted, I asked Irene Wielawski and Felice Freyer, the co-chairs of the Right to Know Committee of the Association of Health Care Journalists, whether they could shed any light on the CDC's behavior. Wielawski contacted the Department of Health and Human Services, where she reached Mark Weber of public affairs.
She emailed me to tell me what he had told her. He said the department held a media call late Thursday to answer questions. He told Wielawski that the CDC was working through state health officials to convey information but due to outstanding questions and continuing alarm, it decided to set up the call to speak directly to reporters.
A media call is progress of a sort, but it isn't a substitute for making federal officials available for questioning in person and on the phone as the situation develops.
And the problem continues.
On Saturday, the paper's Ken Ward Jr. wrote that Larry F. Cseh, an emergency response coordinator for the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, "has not responded to repeated phone messages or emails." That's especially disturbing because Cseh, Ward reports, was "involved in developing the CDC's emergency health guidance for Crude MCHM," the chemical that contaminated the water.
The Society of Environmental Journalists and the Society of Professional Journalists sent a "letter of complaint" to the EPA and CDC and their press offices urging them to "adopt specific practices to end press office stonewalling and increase transparency, especially in times of crisis."
Why should such a letter be necessary? It's public health we're talking about here. People who don't want to interact with the public should not be in public health–or they should not be employed by the government. The American people are skittish enough about chemical contamination. Stonewalling doesn't comfort them.
-Paul Raeburn
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