Michael Fumento

"If Congress wants to put up dead babies versus polluters’ profits, they should just go ahead," taunted the executive director of the far-left Physicians for Social Responsibility in response to a recent EPA study linking air pollution to Sudden Infant Deaths Syndrome (SIDS).

Yet the apolitical Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Alliance announced, "A causal relationship between particulate air pollution and SIDS has not been demonstrated by the current study."

Why the conflicting statements?

Simply put, the EPA is fighting to implement new air pollution regulations that could cost more than $100 billion a year and inflict tremendous lifestyle changes on the public. The proposals have come under fire from both Congress and many highly respected scientists who question whether they will save any lives.

Yet, even the EPA has admitted that virtually all if not all of the deaths prevented would be in sick, elderly persons already close to death. That’s not a great selling point.

Hence the remarkably good "fortune" of this study appearing at just this time, leading to such headlines as, "Study: Pollution Kills Many Infants," (Salt Lake Tribune), "Air Pollution Puts Babies Susceptible to SIDS at Risk," (Gannett News Service), and "SIDS, Air Pollution Linked" (United Press International).

The report found that "infants born in cities with high levels of soot in the air were as much as 26 percent more likely to die of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and 40 percent more likely to die of respiratory diseases."

But there’s a lot more to the story.

First, galleys of the article were leaked by its lead author, Tracey Woodruff, to radical environmental groups like Clean Air Trust, and to select sympathetic reporters. Those reporters then eagerly relayed the words of a Trust official: "The science suggests strongly that air pollution is killing infants."

It was more than a month before critics and independent-minded reporters could actually read it in the actual government medical journal, Environmental Health Perspectives. The need for the spin-doctoring becomes apparent when you actually look at the study. For one, it found that overall infant mortality in the most polluted areas was merely 10 percent higher than in the least polluted areas. Epidemiology is a crude tool, and most epidemiologists would tell you that a 10 percent increase probably means nothing.

There were other major apparent problems. Curiously, for example, infants in the low birthweight category who would presumably be more likely to be harmed by pollutants showed no statistically significant increase in risk.

Despite its flaws, EPA Administrator Carol Browner seized on the study to push for the new air pollution standards. But the study didn’t even measure what the EPA is now proposing to regulate — fine particles. It measured larger ones, those the EPA already regulates. Thus, it was largely irrelevant to the EPA’s proposals.

Indeed, the main cause of SIDS doesn’t appear to be outdoor pollution of any type. Children of the age in the study — all less than a year old — spend virtually their entire time indoors. Indeed, the average American adult spends 93 percent of his time indoors.

The greater problem may actually be indoor air pollution.

Precisely, says Fred Rueter, vice-president of Consad Research Corporation, a Pittsburgh-based non-profit research group. "That study is probably the strongest evidence yet that something other than particulates is the cause of mortality [death] because this is a population that is not going to get much exposure to outdoor air," Rueter says. "I would search for the culprits in indoor air."

Rocking parents with alarming false SIDS information distracts them from preventative actions that work.