Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Dr. Steve Wing resigns from Water Environment Research Foundation COmmittee because of
research tainted by sludge industry financial conflicts of interest
November 4, 2004
Lola Olabode, M.P.H.
Project Manager
Human and Environmental Health
Water Environment Research Foundation
635 Slaters Lane, Suite 300
Alexandria, VA 22314-1170
Dear Ms. Olabode:
As I have indicated to you and other members of the WERF PSC nominating committee by email and phone, financial
conflicts of interest undermine trust in scientific research. Concerns about this problem are widespread in the
scientific and public interest communities as evidenced by conflict of interest disclosure policies of prominent
peer-reviewed journals, articles in leading scientific publications, congressional hearings, and the growing literature
on scientific research ethics. Involvement of people and institutions with financial interests in planning research into
health and environmental impacts of land-applied sludge constitutes a clear conflict of interest because the design,
analysis and results of these studies could have important financial repercussions for sludge appliers.
Environmental and occupational health research has a long history of being distorted by financial conflicts of interest.
Cases of the tobacco, lead, asbestos, pharmaceutical and chemical industries are widely known. During a historical
period when the public is increasingly aware of these problems and distrustful of science and medicine, it is unwise to
build a research program on a foundation, your PSC nominating committee, that has failed to address obvious
conflicts of interest. You will produce more reliable and trustworthy research by adopting a strong conflict of interest
policy at all stages of the process of developing and reviewing requests for proposals and managing funded
research. To the extent that WERF as an organization is unable to do this, it will be necessary to ask other
institutions to manage the process.
Given these problems and your unwillingness to address them, i must resign from the PSC nominating committee. 1
hope you will seriously consider my concerns.
Sincerely,
Steve Wing
Department of Epidemiology
University of North Carolina