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Senior CDC official reassigned
Dr. Howard Frumkin, the embattled director of a little-known, but important division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been reassigned to a position with less authority, a smaller staff and a lower budget.
Frumkin had led the CDC's Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) and the National Center for Environmental Health since 2005. For the past two years he had endured scathing criticism from Congress and the media for ATSDR's poor handling of public health problems created by the formaldehyde-contaminated trailers that the government provided to Hurricane Katrina victims.
The agency, which assesses public health risks posed by environmental hazards, also was criticized for understating the health risks of several other, less-publicized cases.