02 Feb 2005

EXPERTS SAY HEALTH STUDIES PROMOTED BY LAWYERS AND ACTIVISTS ARE FLAWED, BIASED AND INCONCLUSIVE

No Connection Between Health Problems in the Oriente and Texaco Petroleum's Past Oil Activities

Poor Sanitation, Insufficient Medical Care, Malnutrition and Use of Pesticides are More Likely Causes of Health Problems

Promoters of Lawsuit Against ChevronTexaco Conveniently Ignore the Facts

QUITO, Ecuador, February 2, 2005 - Leading international epidemiologists and medical experts have thoroughly analyzed and discounted the health studies promoted by the American lawyers and activists supporting the lawsuit against ChevronTexaco, agreeing that they are biased and flawed, and often ignore the more plausible causes of the health problems of the Oriente region.

At a technical briefing for journalists sponsored by ChevronTexaco today, two independent and respected scientists discussed their analyses of the various reports promoted by the lawyers suing ChevronTexaco claiming a number of different health problems associated with Texaco Petroleum's past involvement in an oil consortium with Petroecuador, the state-owned oil company. A company scientist also presented additional critiques from other independent epidemiologists and physicians.

"ChevronTexaco invited some of the world's leading epidemiologists and medical and scientific experts to review the various studies that the plaintiffs have been promoting," said Dr. Ken Satin, Staff Epidemiologist for ChevronTexaco Energy Technology Company. "Each of these experts independently reached the same conclusions: the studies are both flawed and biased, and none of them establish a credible link between oil exposure and the alleged health problems of the region. In fact, the plaintiffs' lawyers promoting these studies conveniently ignore the fact that in many instances the studies' authors acknowledge they do not establish a link, and they also ignore the other non-oil related factors that have been shown to cause the health problems raised by the plaintiffs."

According to the analysis of Dr. Alvaro Felipe Dávalos Pérez (PDF, 36KB), Ecuadorian expert in tropical medicine, "There is no clear evidence that proves oil and its derivatives are a direct cause of risk of cancer. Until now, all the studies that have been conducted only generate hypotheses without presenting clear statistical and unbiased data."

In their review of the various studies, Dr. Felix Arellano (PDF, 50KB) (member of the Board of Directors of the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology) and Dr. Ken Rothman (PDF, 50KB) (Professor of Epidemiology and Medicine at Boston University and founding editor of the journal, Epidemiology), who are co-founders of Risk Management Resources, a consulting company in the fields of risk management, epidemiology and pharmacovigilance, concluded, "As a body of data, these reports collectively contain little material information about the relation between oil development in the Ecuadorian Amazon region and cancer among residents of that region."

Dr. Lowell Sever (PDF, 103KB), Professor of Epidemiology, University of Texas-Houston, School of Public Health, found, "There is little or no evidence that would support a causal relationship between oil contamination and health effects. Even some of the evidence suggesting an association is highly questionable… Review of the documents related to health status and human rights in Ecuador in general suggests that the problems observed are unrelated to oil contamination. The documents that put the health problems into the context of oil contaminated communities versus others tend to ignore potentially important differences between these types of communities in factors other than oil contamination."

Dr. Laura Green (PDF, 31KB), a board-certified toxicologist, Diplomat of the American Board of Toxicology, lecturer in the Division of Toxicology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Senior Scientist and President of Cambridge Environmental concluded, "With regard to alleged adverse health effects of the oil operations per se, many of the studies provide little to no evidence of health impacts, and are further compromised by uncertainties, flaws, data gaps and instances of over-interpretation of very limited data."

Dr. David J. Hewitt (PDF, 59KB), Director of Occupational Health Services for the Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health (Little Rock, Arkansas), found, "A causal relationship between living near areas of oil exploration in Ecuador and health conditions such as adverse pregnancy outcomes and cancer cannot be supported based on an inability to satisfy basic criteria for establishing causation. These deficiencies include:

  • Health effects which are not consistent with known health effects of the reported chemicals;
  • Incomplete exposure assessment;
  • No objective verification of exposure or magnitude (dose-response) of exposure in study participants;
  • Significant methodological problems in health studies which precludes any type of causal conclusion;
  • Other potential causes for reported health effects were not reliably excluded.

Commenting on these scientific findings, Ricardo Reis Veiga, vice president general counsel, Latin America Products for ChevronTexaco, said, "These analyses, when taken together with the results of the initial site inspections which have shown no harmful levels of oil-related contaminants in soil or water, establish beyond a doubt that there is absolutely no validity to the allegations made in the lawsuit that suggest a link between health problems in the region and Texaco Petroleum's past involvement in the oil consortium. At the same time, because it isn't convenient to their case, the American lawyers who brought this suit completely ignore the well-documented evidence of the true contributors to these various maladies.

"Those who are promoting the lawsuit against ChevronTexaco have spent more than a decade trying to fool the press, the public and the courts," Veiga continued. "But what have they done over these many years to help the people they claim to represent? If these lawyers were truly concerned with the well-being of the people of the Oriente, they would encourage the government of Ecuador to address the basic public health and socioeconomic problems facing the region."

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