Monthly Archives: December 2017

Federal court of appeals gives EPA one year to update lead-based paint standards

By Tom Neltner, Senior Director, Safer Chemicals Initiative / Published: December 29, 2017

Tom Neltner, J.D., is Chemicals Policy Director

Update: On July 2, 2018, EPA issued the proposed rule after the court gave it a 90-day extension. The agency has one year – until July 1, 2019 – to issue a final rule. Blog clarified on timing.

This week, the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals directed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to update its regulations defining lead-based paint and how much lead in dust represents a hazard. The court gave EPA 90 days to issue a proposed rule and one year later to publish a final rule with an option to convince the court that it needs additional time. The court said the agency had unreasonably delayed action on a citizen’s petition submitted in 2009. The science showing the need for action has only become more compelling in the eight years since EPA acknowledged the shortcoming of its rules. Rather than drag out this litigation, the agency should move quickly to revise its lead-based paint hazard standards to better protect children’s health.

EPA set the dust-lead hazard standard in 2001 after determining that a child living in a home with those levels had only a 1 to 5% chance of having an elevated blood lead level (EBLL) as defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The scientific evidence now shows that the risk is greater than previously estimated. In addition, CDC has tightened its definition of an EBLL. As a result, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, the risk to a child of having an EBLL in a home that meets EPA’s current dust-lead hazard standard is more than 50%.

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Posted in Health policy, Lead, Regulation / Tagged , , , , , | Comments are closed

Dourson emails show he was paid by and worked closely with ACC when providing states “advice” on chemicals made by ACC members

By Richard Denison / Published: December 21, 2017

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

[Use this link to see all of our posts on Dourson.]

I blogged last week about how a trove of emails recently released by the New York Times shines a light on the cozy relationship between Michael Dourson, who just withdrew his nomination to run the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) toxics office, and the American Chemistry Council (ACC), the main chemical industry trade association.  [pullquote]Dourson email to ACC staffer: “We should talk while I am still able to do so directly. I am not sure what limitations I will have with outside groups.”[/pullquote]You might ask why I’m blogging again about these emails.  It’s because they provide a rare and fascinating inside look at how – and how closely – paid consultants, who often tout themselves to the public and state and federal agencies as independent and objective arbiters of sound science, work with industry.  In this post I’ll describe what the emails tell us about Dourson’s work with state governments – and point to a “Bcc” in one of those emails that raises a big red flag.   Read More »

Posted in Health policy, Industry influence, TSCA reform / Tagged , , | Read 1 Response

We are what we eat: New paper outlines how the regulatory gaps in the US threaten our health

By Sarah Vogel / Published: December 20, 2017

Sarah Vogel, Ph.D., is Vice-President for Health.

In a new paper published in PLoS Biology today, Maricel Maffini, Tom Neltner and I detail the regulatory gaps in how the US manages chemicals in food. We explore how failures in our current regulatory system put the public’s health at risk as exemplified in the case of perchlorate, a chemical allowed in food and a well-known endocrine disrupting compound. Perchlorate’s ability to disrupt normal functioning of the thyroid means that even low levels of exposure, especially in those with inadequate iodine intake, can adversely impact the developing brains of infants and children. It is not a chemical that should be in the food of pregnant women, infants and children. And yet it is, and the levels children consume have increased in recent years.

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Systematic slowdown: EPA indefinitely delays virtually all proposed actions to restrict chemicals under TSCA

By Richard Denison / Published: December 20, 2017

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist.  My colleague Ryan O’Connell assisted in the research described in this post.

By the time the long-awaited reforms of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) passed in June of 2016, nearly all stakeholders had come to agree that we needed a stronger federal chemical safety system, one that gave EPA more authority and more resources to act.  Only through this could public confidence in the system begin to be restored – to the benefit of both business and public health.

That was then.  A scant 18 months later, the law is being implemented by an Administration hell-bent on rolling back existing or indefinitely delaying new health protections, even those called for by large bipartisan majorities in Congress.  And the chemical industry?  So much for the influence of its better angels who supported reform.  It’s now going for broke, grabbing what it can while it can.[pullquote]Virtually every proposed action that would impose restrictions or conditions on specific chemicals has been either moved to the “long-term action” attic or simply deleted altogether.[/pullquote]

Yesterday, the New York Times and The Intercept ran stories spotlighting EPA’s decision to back-burner proposed restrictions on high-risk uses of three highly toxic chemicals – trichloroethylene (TCE), methylene chloride (MC), and N-methylpyrrolidone (NMP) – relegating them to the bureaucratic dustbin of “long-term actions.”  Not coincidentally, the chemical industry has strongly opposed all of the proposed restrictions.

But those aren’t the only proposed actions on chemicals for which this EPA has applied the brakes.  An examination of EPA’s two most recent semi-annual “unified agendas” – that trumpeted by the President last week, and the preceding one issued this past April – reveals a much broader and more disturbing pattern:  Virtually every proposed action that would impose restrictions or conditions on specific chemicals has been either moved to the “long-term action” attic or simply deleted altogether.   Read More »

Posted in Health policy, Industry influence, Regulation, TSCA reform / Tagged , | Read 1 Response

Good news and bad news for children: FDA’s 2014 to 2016 food testing for lead

By Tom Neltner, Senior Director, Safer Chemicals Initiative / Published: December 18, 2017

Tom Neltner, J.D., is Chemicals Policy Director and Maricel Maffini, Consultant

In Environmental Defense Fund’s June 2017 “Lead in food: A hidden health threat” report, we evaluated the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) publicly available data for 2003 to 2013 from its Total Diet Study (TDS). Since the 1970s, the TDS has tracked metals, pesticides, and nutrients in food. We found that 20% of baby food samples had detectable levels of lead compared to 14% for other foods. We also identified eight food types where more than 40% of samples had detectable lead. Finally, based on an analysis from EPA, we estimated that more than 1 million young children exceeded FDA’s limit for lead and that eliminating lead from food would save society an estimated $27 billion annually.

In November 2017, FDA publicly released TDS data for 2014 and 2015. And this December, the agency provided us with TDS data for 2016 in response to our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. We evaluated the combined information[1] and have an update that is both good news and bad news. The good news is that the overall trends for detectable rates of lead in baby food and other food, especially in 2016, appear to be on the decline. There is a similar downward trend in apple and grape juice, especially the ones marketed as baby food. Unfortunately, there appeared to be stubbornly high rates of detectable lead in teething biscuits, arrowroot cookies, and baby food carrots and sweet potatoes.

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Posted in FDA, Food, Health policy, Health science, Lead, Public health, Regulation / Tagged , , , , | Comments are closed

A parting gift from Dourson: A trove of revealing emails

By Richard Denison / Published: December 15, 2017

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

[Use this link to see all of our posts on Dourson.]

Earlier this week, the New York Times reported on the withdrawal of the nomination of Michael Dourson to head the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) chemical safety office – which we applauded as a win for public health.  The Times article mentioned and provided a link to a 400-page trove of emails to and from Dourson that were obtained through a FOIA request filed in August by Greenpeace to the University of Cincinnati, where Dourson previously worked.

The emails shine a rare spotlight on a network, of which Dourson and the American Chemistry Council (ACC) are a part, that operates largely out of public view.  It involves a coordinated effort between the chemical industry and its private and academic consultants to generate science that invariably supports the safety of the industry’s chemicals, and pushes back against any regulatory and academic science that indicates otherwise.  The emails make for very interesting reading, if you can skip through the myriad emails about scheduling calls and meetings (which make up the bulk of any of our inboxes, I suspect).

To pique your interest, let me start with one email relating to Dourson’s nomination.   Read More »

Posted in Health policy, Industry influence / Tagged , | Comments are closed