Posted on: Wednesday, February 18, 2004

EDITORIAL
Don't play politics with our health

For three years, it has been well-documented that the gasoline additive MTBE has tainted drinking water in some communities and has caused cancer in lab mice, suggesting its potential as a human carcinogen.

Nonetheless, the Bush administration's EPA shelved a proposal to ban MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether), according to a report by the Associated Press. Never mind that the Clinton administration found "the environmental harm of the additive leaching into ground water overshadowed its beneficial effects to the air."

Instead of moving forward with the ban, the EPA withdrew the MTBE rule and punted the issue to Congress, where the legislation has stalled amid efforts to shelter makers of MTBE from product defect lawsuits.

If the ban had gone as planned, MTBE would have been phased out by now. Instead,17 states have taken it upon themselves to ban the additive, and dozens of communities are suing the oil industry.

This has been a costly policy decision. At the very least, the job of issuing an MTBE ban should be returned to the EPA, which clearly dropped the ball three years ago.