Re: WorkCompCentral 12.01 Group Petitions ACOEM for Transpar

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WorkCompCentral – Group Petitions ACOEM for Review of Mold
Guidelines

By Greg Jones, reporter
December 1, 2010

A group of physicians, attorneys and concerned citizens is
asking the American College of Occupational and Environmental
Medicine to allow the public to review and comment on
proposed revisions to the college’s position paper on the
health effects of mold exposure.

More than 90 individuals have signed the petition, which was
submitted to ACOEM and a number of governmental officials,
including President Barack Obama, Health and U.S. Human
Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. Attorney General
Eric Holder and the chairpersons and ranking members of the
House and Senate labor committees. The petition calls for a
two-week review period before revisions are finalized.
“I feel almost certain that if public comment is not allowed,
what they’re going to continue to attempt to promote is that
moldy workplaces are not a source of injury for workers who
were not immunocompromised prior,” said Sharon Kramer, a mold
activist who organized the petition. “The spin in this
document is going to be that prior healthy workers are not at
risk from mold.”

Kramer said the paper amounts to “aiding and abetting
interstate insurer unfair advantage in workers’ comp claim
handling practices,” and that it also “legitimized a
litigation defense argument.”

Dodd Fisher, an attorney with the Fisher Davis firm in Grosse
Pointe, Mich., who handles toxic tort and mold exposure
cases, said the paper is commonly cited by defense attorneys
and courts tend to give it greater credit than they should.
“It makes it sound like 5,000 or 6,000 doctors are backing up
this statement, at least from the appearance of a scientific
consensus statement,” he said. “The argument the defense
makes is this is a universally accepted position document
that expresses the general or universal acceptance of
environmental physicians.”

Kramer, Dodd and the other signatories claim that ACOEM’s
position paper on mold wasn’t properly reviewed and isn’t
based on scientific evidence.

ACOEM confirmed that it is revising the 2002 position paper,
but did not return calls asking for additional information
about the reasons for the revisions, when the revisions will
be finalized or who is involved in the revision process.
The ACOEM position paper, titled “Adverse Human Health
Effects Associated with Molds in the IndoorEnvironment,”
relied in part on a test in which mice were exposed to a
specific strain of mold and suffered no significant health
effects. That test was extrapolated to reach the conclusion
that exposure to mold will have no effects on humans.

The paper states that exposure to mold, and specifically
secondary metabolites they produce called mycotoxins, does
not harm human health. It urges treating physicians to
evaluate other possible diagnoses when a patient claims to
suffer from a health condition caused by exposure to mold.
Additionally, it says the possibility that mold exposure
caused a symptom should be entertained only after all other
possible causes are excluded “and when mold exposure is known
to be uncommonly high.”

The paper says mold exposure is a problem only for people
with severely impaired immune systems, and concludes with the
claim that “scientific evidence does not support the
proposition that human health has been adversely affected by
inhaled mycotoxins in home, school or office environments.”
That conclusion is challenged by a study by the Institute of
Medicine (IOM), published in 2004, reporting a link
between “mold and other factors related to damp conditions in
homes and buildings to asthma symptoms in some people with
the chronic disorder, as well as to coughing, wheezing and
upper respiratory tract symptoms in otherwise healthy
people.” The IOM report does caution that there is not
sufficient evidence to draw conclusions about other health
implications related to mold.

Kramer agreed that the research into the health effects of
mold exposure is incomplete, but that doesn’t mean that there
are no effects.

“Absence of evidence is not the same thing as evidence of
absence,” she said. “While it is perfectly acceptable to say
this is plausible and more research is needed — that would be
absence of evidence — what is not science is to take math,
add it to a rat study and profess to prove evidence of
absence.”

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) also looked
into the issue in 2008 and determined that additional
research was necessary, but that there was some evidence to
link adverse health effects with exposure to mold.
Dodd, the Grosse Pointe attorney who also teaches a toxic
torts class at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law,
said his concern is for attorneys and clients unaware of all
the articles criticizing the ACOEM paper. Without knowing
about the alleged deficiencies, an attorney will have a hard
time overcoming the apparent weight of themold statement, he
said.

The International Journal of Occupational and Environmental
Health and Wall Street Journal published articles critical of
the ACOEM mold statement, which Dodd says has helped his
cause.

“Since the Wall Street Journal article and since the IJOEH
articles, it’s not as difficult for me to deal with the
issues, but if you’re a litigator and you don’t have the
information I have to combat that position statement, you’re
going to have a very difficult time addressing the court,” he
said.

The articles questioned the use of Bruce Kelman and Bryan
Hardin to author the ACOEM paper, because they were
toxicologists and defense witnesses who testified that there
was no health effect caused by exposure to mold.
Additionally, ACOEM was criticized for not disclosing this
fact.

The Wall Street Journal article, published in September 2007,
notes that Ted Guidotti, president of ACOEM at the time, said
there was no need to disclose that information because doing
so would suggest that the paper expressed Hardin and Kelman’s
position rather than a consensus opinion of the organization.
Hardin and Kelman now work for Washington-based Veritox, an
expert witness and toxicology consulting company. Calls to
Veritox were not returned.

The company went by the name GlobalTox before it was called
Veritox.

In an article in the International Journal of Occupational
and Environmental Health, Dr. James Craner, a boardcertified
occupational and environmental medicine practitioner based in
Reno, Nev., notes that the focus of GlobalTox and its expert
witnesses “was on dismissing mold as a toxicological hazard.”
The article, titled, “A Critique of the ACOEM Statement on
Mold,” published in 2008, concludes with a call for a
transparency policy at ACOEM and a more rigorous system of
peer review at ACOEM’s Journal of Occupational and
Environmental Medicine, where the mold statement was first
published.

Craner, who is an ACOEM member, told WorkCompCentral that the
overall tone and focus of the mold statement is incorrect and
it should be withdrawn and completely rewritten.

“The foundation of the writing of that paper is so corrupt
that to quote-unquote rewrite it is almost an impossible
task; it’s almost an insult,” he said. “Developing
organizational guidelines and position statements needs to
start with the constituent holders.”

In a lawsuit against the Roswell (N.M.) Independent School
District, the San Antonio-based law firm of Chunn, Price and
Harris, relied on these articles as part of a motion to
exclude or limit the testimony of an expert who relied on the
ACOEM paper.

David Harris, a partner with the firm, said on the morning he
and Lonnie Chunn were expecting to argue the motion to
exclude, the judge dismissed the case. The judge said Paige
Taylor, the student claiming exposure, would graduate by the
time the court could issue an order and because Taylor was
not seeking monetary damages, the court would lack
jurisdiction to issue an injunction in that case.

“If I ever get on the plaintiff’s side again, I feel very
confident that anyone who tries to rely on the ACOEM paper,
they’re just going to be in for a world of hurt,” Harris
said. “It’s just nonsensical the extrapolations that were
made.”

Kramer said she does not expect ACOEM to respond to her
petition or to calls for more transparency in the drafting of
position papers. She said the occupational medicine field is
conflicted because it has to balance the interest of patients
while also limiting liability for employers and insurers.
“One way to do that is to make the workplace safe for the
workers so there is limited injury, but another way to do
that is to write papers that deny the workplace is causing
injury,” she said. “Occupational physicians sit on a fence
and have to look at what’s in the best interest of the
workers and the employer. With the mold statement, they fell
off the fence.”

The 2002 ACOEM mold paper can be viewed here:
http://www.acoem.org/guidelines.aspx?id.

To read the 2008 GAO report, click here:
http://www.workcompcentral.com/pdf/2010/misc/GAOreport.pdf.

To read the 2004 IOM report, click here:
http://www.workcompcentral.com/pdf/2010/misc/IOM2004Report.pdf
.
To view the letter that accompanied the petition, click here:
http://katysexposure.wordpress.com/2010/11/29/citizens-
taxpayers-and-concerned-scientists-urge-transparency-in-
workers-comp-medical-association-guidelines-used-to-determine-
environmentally-injured-workerscomp-insurer-benefits-request/.

END OF WorkCompCentral ARTICLE.

TO READ THE REST OF THE MATTER AND VIEW VIDEOS OF TESTIMONY
BEFORE THE CA INSURANCE FRAUD ASSESSMENT COMMISSION REGARDING
WORKERS COMP INSURER FRAUD WITH THE AID OF ACOEM'S MOLD
STATEMENT, GO TO:

Katy's Exposure Website http://katysexposure.wordpress.com

Video: Integrity in Health Marketing Advocate, Sharon Kramer,
discussing insurer fraud cost shifting scheme before the
California Insurance Fraud Assessment Commission, November
16, 2010

Video: Mold Injured Worker, Tim Hack, discussing workers comp
insurer, Covair, denial/delay of claims for San Diego County,
Toyota of Poway injured workers before the California
Insurance Fraud Assessment Commission, November 16, 2010

Video: Ca Insurance Fraud Assessment Commissioners stating
California District Attorneys’ offices have a responsibility
to investigate insurer frauds, November 16, 2010.

Video: How the workers comp insurer scam works with the aid
of ACOEM, US Chamber of Commerce, the University of
California and various government entities and agencies;
while aiding insurer cost shifting for mold injured workers
onto taxpayers via government funded disability programs.

Video: ACOEM & US Chamber Mold Statement Author, Bruce
Kelman, discussing his perjury to establish false reason for
Kramer’s purported malice while strategically litigating to
silence her & Kelman’s attempt to force Kramer to endorse the
worker’s comp insurer cost shifting, “science” of ACOEM/US
Chamber before he would cease litigating. This occurred after
he defeated Kramer’s anti-SLAPP motion with Chair of the
California Commission on Judicial Performance, Judith
McConnell, turning a blind eye to Kramer’s uncontroverted
evidence of Kelman’s perjury used to make up a false reason
for Kramer’s purported malice.

PRESIDING JUSTICE CANDIDATE JUDITH MCCONNELL & NINE
SUBORDINATE SAN DIEGO JUDICUARIES~ASSISTING WITH STRATEGIC
LITIGATION BY CRIMINAL MEANS BY ACOEM/US CHAMBER MOLD
STATEMENT AUTHORS TO SILENCE WHISTLEBLOWER KRAMER THEREBY
AIDING INSURER FRAUD

On 12/09/10, Sharon Kramer wrote:
> Shared with permission from WorkCompCentral
>
> Group Petitions ACOEM for Review of Mold Guidelines:
> Top [12/01/10]
> By Greg Jones, reporter
> http://freepdfhosting.com/715a485427.pdf