I came to Washington near the time of the second anniversary of the President's inauguration. The first lawsuit I was presented was the suit brought by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), very soon thereafter joined by the Chemical Manufacturers Association (CMA) as a co-plaintiff, to compel the establishment of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) and the performance of certain functions. The American Petroleum Institute has just recently petitioned to intervene, but the judge has yet to pass on its petition.

I reviewed the complaint and took a look at who the plaintiffs were. I was told that it is not often that we find EDF and CMA on the same side and making the same arguments. I read the statute and § 104(i). There is virtually no legislative history for that section, but there is a fairly clear statutory mandate. The section basically states: there is hereby created an Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry and it shall perform various functions. I was faced with what seemed to be a difficult position to argue.

To put it briefly, we now have an Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Notice was published in the Federal Register on April 25, 1983. The Agency was created under the auspices of the Centers for Disease Control [14 ELR 10121] (CDC) in Atlanta. An Administrator and Assistant Administrator have been appointed and a staff, originally assigned to the temporary Superfund Implementation Project, has been permanently assigned to the Agency.

The overall purpose of the Agency is to focus on the lack of scientific data dealing with the relationship between toxic substances and disease. The functions of the Agency are set forth fairly clearly in the statute, and had been carried out, in part, by the CDC before the Agency was established. The first mandated function is to create both a registry of persons exposed to toxic substances and a list of serious diseases and illnesses. The registry requirement is apparently designed to facilitate another mandated function, that is, to conduct studies to determine the relationship between toxic substances and illnesses. The Agency is to undertake those studies and will probably be working with universities and medical centers in that effort. Currently the Agency is engaged in the preliminary efforts to establish the registry and to undertake the health effects studies. These tasks comprise the first items on its agenda and were also the issues that drew the most attention in the lawsuit.

Another function is to create a computerized inventory and means to access medical literature dealing with the subject of toxic substances and the illnesses that they might cause. I believe that the expectation was to establish a system along the lines of Medline or other types of services that enable one to gain access not only to the immediately available libraries but also to various studies that have been done and perhaps, with the cooperation of private industry, to non-proprietary information.

Another of the functions is to maintain a list of all sites that have been closed to the public because of toxic substance contamination.

The final required function of the Agency is one that CDC has been performing for some time now — to provide technical assistance and coordination of efforts to treat public health emergencies. These include emergencies that arise out of situations such as Love Canal, New York and Times Beach, Missouri, as well as toxic spills that might occur with the rupture of a railroad tanker, for instance. That effort will now continue under the auspices of the ATSDR.

The Agency's thrust is to create some reliable data concerning the medical basis for illnesses that might be caused by exposure to toxic substances. In that effort we require credibility and good science. It is important that those of you who are interested see that the integrity of the Agency and its studies is maintained.