EDF Health

Selected tag(s): Chemical identity

A sea of red herrings is behind opposition to EPA’s proposal to enhance chemical reporting

By Richard Denison / Published: April 7, 2011

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist. Allison Tracy is a Chemicals Policy Fellow.

With the chemical industry and now Congressional Republicans mounting a last-minute effort to derail the EPA’s long-time-in-coming enhancements to its Inventory Update Reporting (IUR) rule (see our last post), it’s worth examining their main objections.  That examination reveals a sea of red herrings.  Here are a few of the smelliest ones, discussed in detail in this post:

Red herring #1:  EPA has failed to indicate how it will use the information it collects.

Red herring #2:  Small businesses would be excessively burdened.

Red herring #3:  More frequent reporting is a “needless” burden on the industry.

Red herring #4:  EPA is expanding the IUR from data reporting to data-gathering.

Red herring #5:  EPA’s requirement for retroactive reporting is unfair.

Red herring #6:  Requiring electronic reporting is too inflexible.

Read More »

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EPA’s right-to-know effort declassifies the chemicals in 42 health and safety studies

By Richard Denison / Published: March 24, 2011

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.

EPA has just released today the full versions — showing the identities of the chemicals in question — of 41 “substantial risk” notices of health and safety studies it had previously received from companies that had denied the public’s right to know those identities by claiming them to be confidential business information (CBI).  These notices had been submitted pursuant to Section 8(e) of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).  One additional notice of a health and safety study that EPA had received under Section 8(d) of TSCA was also released today with its chemical identified.

What’s most significant about today’s posting is that it makes publicly available the identities of chemicals associated with health and safety data that:

  1. the submitting companies themselves believed the data “reasonably supports the conclusion that [the chemical] presents a substantial risk of injury to health or the environment;” and
  2. should have been publicly available all along, based on the plain language of TSCA that disallows health and safety studies to be claimed CBI in the first place.

Read More »

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EPA’s TSCA CBI policy change yields first increment in restoring public’s chemical right-to-know

By Richard Denison / Published: February 10, 2011

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.

The number 14 is getting to be kind of a magic number when it comes to EPA policy and practice relating to confidential business information (CBI) under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

I reported earlier that it had been longstanding EPA practice to allow the vast majority of CBI claims made for data submitted by industry under TSCA to stand indefinitely without any review.  In fact, EPA reported in 2005 that it reviewed an average of only 14 – yes, that’s 14 – CBI claims per year out of the thousands of such claims asserted.

But today the number 14 took on a more positive, if still a bit faint, tint:  That’s the number of chemicals the identities of which EPA announced it will soon reveal in association with data it has received that “reasonably supports the conclusion that [the chemical] presents a substantial risk of injury to health or the environment.” While we’ll have to wait another month, and possibly more, to see the chemicals and their associated risk data, these chemicals represent the first installment in what I hope will become a steady flow arising from EPA’s new policy to review, challenge and likely deny CBI claims that seek to mask the names of chemicals that are the subjects of health and safety studies required to be submitted to the Agency. Read More »

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Enduring TSCA myths: Absence of evidence of harm = evidence of absence of harm

By Richard Denison / Published: February 7, 2011

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.

A subcommittee of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held a hearing on reform of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) last week.  It’s good to have attention drawn to the issue so early in the new Congress.

But – especially if you missed Senator Lautenberg’s opening statement and the testimony of EPA Assistant Administrator Steve Owens – you may well have come away from the hearing with the impression that TSCA is basically working quite well and really only needs a few tweaks, or what the chemical industry loves to call “modernization.”

Nothing could be further from the truth, of course.  This 35-year-old law is not only outdated, it’s proven ineffectual in myriad ways.  The false impression that all TSCA needs is a little polishing-up was, unfortunately, bolstered by the invoking of two particularly pernicious myths about TSCA by some of the other hearing witnesses.

The first myth, which I’ll deal with in this post, is that EPA’s new chemicals program has worked very well – so often repeated by some former EPA officials that it has become virtual dogma.

The second myth, which I’ll address in a subsequent post, is that we can confidently rely on existing information to identify all of the chemicals of concern on the market today, and safely set aside the rest.  Read More »

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Reporting deferred is right-to-know denied: ACC seeks major delays in EPA chemical reporting program

By Richard Denison / Published: November 2, 2010

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist. Allison Tracy is a Chemicals Policy Fellow.

Well, in its comments on EPA’s proposed rule to enhance chemical information reporting under the TSCA Inventory Update Rule (IUR), it took the American Chemistry Council (ACC) all of 5 paragraphs to get through the lip service it no doubt felt it had to pay to supporting EPA’s proposals “in principle,” and then proceed to devote 31 pages to arguments opposing virtually every element of EPA’s proposals.

Cunningly on its part, ACC’s arguments often do not oppose outright the EPA proposals.  Rather, it seeks to put off their implementation for as long as possible.  EPA’s proposed rule calls for reporting in 2011 that would provide information for years 2006 and forward.  In contrast, ACC would have EPA put off implementation of all of its proposed IUR enhancements, with the result that both EPA and the public would not get any of the additional information until at least 2015.

Like we said in the title of this post:  Reporting deferred is right-to-know denied.

We’ll be posting more about ACC’s comments in the coming weeks, but in this post, we’ll consider the core argument ACC makes for deferral:  that “the business of chemistry is product-focused, not substance focused.”  ACC would have us believe their member companies don’t know what chemicals are in any of the products (i.e., mixtures of chemicals) they make and sell.

This argument warrants – ahem – additional scrutiny.  Read More »

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Affirming a thing of beauty: Comments filed today support new EPA CBI policy

By Richard Denison / Published: August 25, 2010

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.

Today EDF joined with Earthjustice and 24 other health, labor and environmental organizations in filing comments with EPA that support its recently announced policy change restoring the public’s right to know the identities of all chemicals for which health and safety data have been submitted to the agency.

I have already done a post on the details of EPA’s new policy, which I termed “a thing of beauty.”  The comments we filed today – in response to EPA’s request when it issued its new policy back in May – make clear that the policy reflects both the clear meaning of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and the clear intent of its drafters.   Read More »

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