Reel 2284 Interview with Marvin Legator
The table of contents and transcript for Dr. Legator's reel 2284 were tagged by David Todd on July 3 and 4, 2009.
  Transcript
 | DT: If you could resume
with your story about the Waxahachie situation. |
| ML: Right. Yeah, we
published on that in a peer-reviewed journal and I hope we had some influence in
that community, you know, in making both them aware and also the—the
regulatory agency. And I believe we have been able to reduce the
particulate emissions from that particular plant. |
| Then—then we—I
should say a group of my colleagues did a study on Butadiene and—in a
workplace, and the outcome of that was truly a positive in that the
outcome with Butadiene was one of the factors in reducing the exposure
from, you know, I told you a thousandth to about one to two parts to
one part per million, so that was kind of satisfying. So we—we do
have I think many times positive outcomes from our studies. The
reason is data is lacking and if you supply the data you can make some
intelligent judgments. |
| DT: Well, looking towards the future, do you have any advice
for either your fellow researchers or for the government or for affected
communities on how they can… |
| ML: I’d—I’d like to see our
regulatory agencies become closer aligned with the populations that they
are supposedly monitoring. There’s often a disconnect between a
community and the regulators. And many times if you go into a
community and you ask who the villain is believe it or not it’s not the
toxic waste generator it’s the officials from the state and federal
agencies who they think are there to protect them and very quickly learn
that they don’t. And so that’s where the greatest animosity comes
almost in every community I’ve been to—at. And again, the reason
is because of this deception about there is no problem when these people
know they’re having a problem. So I’d like to see the government
agencies do a better job of interacting with communities than
we’re doing really right now. I would obviously like to see
something we call the Precautionary Principle come into use. The
Precautionary Principle says that if indeed you don’t have the safety
data you don’t have a market. In other words, we get the data
before people are exposed, but that’ll be a long time in coming I’m
afraid. And the good news is we have some extremely good tools
that have developed because of molecular biology that allow us to have
more information than we ever would dream possible five, ten years ago. |
| DW: You work with data and you work with numbers, but you frequently said that, "we see these people, we see these people." You see them, but the government agency people see numbers on a white sheet of paper. There's a humanity approach, there's a bureaucracy approach. Has it either been
rewarding or frustrating to have to ride that boundary between sick
people who you know and data that they say lies or is misleading. |
| ML: Yeah, good point. I mean if you were—if you were a government official sitting in North Carolina and putting pins on a map you’re not going to be nearly as excited about the pins on a map as if you were down there actually talking to these people and listening to them. So there’s a tremendous disconnect between that. The second thing that I think—I hate to say it, but I think plays a very key role. If you look at a government employee of which I was one and you look at these poor people here with not many resources and you know that if you say anything that’ll antagonize the large toxic waste generator there may be hell to pay from your superior. We see this happening with whistle blowers all the time. So you don’t have any—anything to worry
about here, but you sure as hell do if you really involve the toxic
waste generators. And, you know, we often talk about the revolving
door and this is operating beautifully now. Usually if you’re in
government and do the right thing you will get a job in one of the
industries that you regulated. We see this going all the time.
So there’s—there’s many reasons, not appropriate ones, but there are
many reasons why the individuals who are exposed do not get the
attention and do not get the programs that they really need. |
| DW: As a crusading scientist yourself, do you feel that in
your long and successful career you’ve paid a price that these things
have been leveled against you but you would do it again anyway or not
so? |
| ML: Well, I—I—I think the
answer is yes and I think it really—it really is a point of judgment,
okay? You don’t rush out with something that you think may be not
really factual, but if you come out with good data, peer-reviewed stuff,
it’s very hard to refute. And—and that’s basically our—our—our
really—our lifeline is publishing in credible journals and then going
from there. |
| DT: Well thank you for work on that, and for participating in the interview. |
| ML: Was that adequate? Was that pretty good, guys? That's from little Finland. Those guys turn out more data than anyone else. And they're a much safer country than we are. |
| ML: One of the dismal failures of toxicology that I hope some day will be corrected is the fact that our medical students get almost no toxicology while they're going through medical school. And I think this has a tremendous meaning. If we could get to the medical students, and show them the importance of toxicology, before they're out there practicing, I think we'd have a whole new advocacy group. |
 Contents
 | Interview title |
| Interview start |
| Particulates in Waxahachie, Texas |
| Butadiene in the workplace |
| Alignment of regulators and communities |
| Precautionary principle |
| Agency officials' fear of toxic waste generators |
| Agency/industry revolving door |
| Risk of scientists challenging industry |
| Need for medical school curriculum to include toxicology |
| End of reel 2284 and entire interview |
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