Point Reyes Light - November 10, 2005

Somewhat Logically

By John Hulls

A human life has to be worth something and in the US, if you spend $7 million on regulations to save a life, that is considered "cost effective." This may sound like a pretty macabre piece of arcane accounting, but it’s really a way of seeing what rules work and which ones don’t and where we should spend our regulatory dollars.

John Morral, of the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has tracked the cost-effectiveness of US regulations for 20 years; he concludes that our regulators are getting it right less than half the time.

Regulations on childproof lighters has cost less than $100,000 per life saved, as has workplace respiratory protection. The 1967 rule on auto-steering-column standards has saved lives at a cost of $200,000 per life saved.

In contrast, formaldehyde restrictions have so far cost a whopping $78 million per life saved. Landfill regulations have cost a monumental $100 million per life saved – and many small towns their disposal sites.

Mindlessly trying to zero out all risk is dangerous in its own right. As Kip Viscusi of Harvard said, spending more than $15 million to save a life is counterproductive, for it means that you are diverting money from far more cost-effective protections.

Some low cost examples? Banning certain trans-fats in food would cost of $3,000 per life. Providing free mammograms to all adult women would save more lives at an even lower cost.

The California State Water Resources Control Board spelled out its procedures in 1977: "In a case where it is alleged that onsite wastewater-treatment systems are contributing to receiving-water pollution, water samples and explicit data must be provided which clearly support such allegations and which pinpoint the source on the basis of this data…and weighing their risk…."

"Safety" is the factor on which the public is being sold proposed Tomales Bay TMDL (limits on contamination) regulations and proposed statewide septic-system rules.

The Light has asked San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board what it considers acceptable levels of human exposure to e-coli bacteria, and the paper has received the vague response: "We have a mandate to protect." (As Dyan White told me again at a recent RWQCB hearing.)

In merely going about their daily lives, human beings carry on their bodies an average of 0.14 grams of fecally contaminated matter. (This, incidentally, is why it is a state law that you shower before going into a public swimming pool.)

Dr. Mansour Samadpour of the University of Washington is a leader in the use of DNA analysis to track where bacteria are coming from. As Dr. Samadpour told The Light when explaining about risk and bacterial source tracking in Tomales Bay: "If you want zero risk from e-coli, first kill all the mammals, and that goes especially for humans."

The state and regional water boards’ "public-health" case for the proposed Tomales Bay pathogen standards and the proposed statewide septic regulations is not based on findings of significant risk. Their case offers no scientific connection between the proposed rules and improved public safety.

Nor are the proposed regulations based on findings that septic systems are a major health hazards. The risk to homeowners of the proposed regulations themselves, however, is not slight. Already unnecessary septic regulations are hitting people in West Marin seeking to retire. Some are finding their houses worth tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars less than they thought. This, of course, affects both sales and reverse mortgages.

Let’s have the regulators do a proper risk assessment or we will find ourselves off the top of the OMB charts of worst "cost effectiveness." We could end up spending $75 million without preventing even a couple of cases of people getting the runs from eating tainted shellfish.

And that’s nothing to the heart attacks we may see when people really get hit with the cost of the new septic regulations.