Monthly Archives: December 2018

Trump Administration’s lead action plan is a missed opportunity to protect kids from lead

By Tom Neltner, Senior Director, Safer Chemicals Initiative / Published: December 20, 2018

Tom Neltner, J.D., Chemicals Policy Director

Yesterday, the President’s Task Force on Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks to Children released its long-delayed Federal Action Plan to Reduce Childhood Lead Exposures and Associated Health Impacts (Lead Action Plan). A year ago the Task Force described this document as a federal lead strategy that would identify clear goals and objectives to “serve as a ‘roadmap’ for federal agencies on actions to take to reduce childhood lead exposure.” It requested feedback on the approach and received over 700 public comments.

The Trump Administration’s Lead Action Plan falls far short of what was promised. To understand what the Plan is and what it is not, we compared it to two earlier documents from the Task Force: 1) A federal lead strategy released in February 2000 by the Clinton Administration focused on reducing exposure to lead-based paint; and 2) An inventory of key federal programs released in November 2016 by the Obama Administration summarizing the activities of the 17 federal agencies and departments with responsibilities to protect children from lead.

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Posted in Health policy, Lead, Public health, Regulation / Tagged , , , | Read 2 Responses

The Trump EPA’s first risk evaluation under the new TSCA is a house of cards

By Richard Denison / Published: December 19, 2018

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

I’ve been blogging about the deep problems surrounding the first draft risk evaluation the Trump Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released under the recently amended Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).  This risk evaluation, which is now out for public comment, is on a chemical commonly called Pigment Violet 29, or PV29.  Among the many problems that immediately jumped out as we began our review of this draft evaluation are EPA’s reliance on clearly inadequate health and environmental hazard data to conclude the chemical is safe, as well as EPA’s illegal withholding from the public of the little hazard information it does have.[pullquote]I suppose if you start with almost no reliable data on a chemical, are dead set against using your enhanced authorities to get any more data, and are hell-bent on finding the chemical is safe, this is how you might choose to conduct a risk evaluation.[/pullquote]

This post will look at the other half of the risk equation, exposure.  EPA has even less information on exposures to PV29 than it does on hazard.  EPA has no actual data on the levels of PV29 released to or present in air, soil, sediment, surface water, people, other organisms, workplaces or products containing or made from the chemical.  It lacks any data from, and hasn’t used its authorities to require, monitoring in workplaces or any environmental media.

So what does EPA have?   Read More »

Posted in Health policy, Health science, Industry influence, Regulation, TSCA reform / Tagged , , , | Comments are closed

Exhibit PV29: Why this EPA can’t be trusted to forthrightly assess chemical risks under TSCA

By Richard Denison / Published: December 13, 2018

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

I blogged last week about the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) illegal and hypocritical decision to deny the public access to health and safety studies conducted on the first chemical to undergo a risk evaluation under the reformed Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).  In its draft risk evaluation, now out for public comment, EPA relied on these secret studies to assert that the chemical, commonly known as Pigment Violet 29, or PV29, is safe, so EPA’s denial of public access matters a great deal.

EPA asserts that these studies are entitled to protection as confidential business information (CBI) under TSCA, when in fact TSCA explicitly does not extend CBI protection to such studies.  The only health and environmental information on this chemical that is public are brief summaries of those studies that were prepared by the companies that make the chemical, and were submitted to the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) when the chemical was registered under the European Union’s REACH Regulation.  (EPA erroneously states that the studies were “summarized by ECHA.”  This is simply not the case:  Registrants, not ECHA, develop the summaries that are then made available in the registration “dossiers” for REACH chemicals.)

As we review EPA’s draft risk evaluation for PV29, we are finding that EPA’s assertions cannot be trusted even about what these summaries state are the findings of the underlying studies.  I’ll discuss one such case in this post.   Read More »

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California Water Board makes misleading claim that only four water systems have lead lines

By Tom Neltner, Senior Director, Safer Chemicals Initiative / Published: December 7, 2018

Tom Neltner, J.D., Chemicals Policy Director

[Update 12/14/18: The California Water Boards added a webpage providing more background for customers on the inventory requirement, including the clarification that “user service line” does not include the service line on private property. This clarification was also added to the Status Map webpage.]

The California Water Board posted the results of its statewide inventory of lead service lines (LSLs) in community water systems (CWSs) yesterday. They also became the first in the nation to post the results in an interactive online map. We are pleased to see the state take this important step, but are disappointed that the press release it sent out to announce the map’s launch undermines its efforts with misleading and confusing statements.

The central problem is that the press release fails to be clear that the inventory does not cover the portion of the service line between the meter and the home or building.  As a result, a CWS that removed all of the lead pipes between the main under the street and the meter but left them on private property was listed as having no LSLs. A customer would justifiably – but mistakenly – assume that LSLs were not an issue in their community.

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The Trump EPA’s latest TSCA gift to the chemical industry is illegal and the height of hypocrisy

By Richard Denison / Published: December 4, 2018

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

‘Tis the season for giving, but it’s not quite keeping in the spirit to have our Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) pile on giveaways to the chemical industry.  The latest one I’ll discuss in this post is not only in direct violation of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA); it exposes this EPA’s two-facedness when it comes to making public the information EPA relies on in making regulatory decisions that affect our health and our environment.[pullquote]EPA’s failure to make health and safety studies available to the public is blatantly illegal and a slap in the face to the 2016 bipartisan reforms to TSCA that sought to increase public access to information on chemical risks.[/pullquote]

First some background.  It has been a long time since EPA has proposed a rule to require testing to determine the hazards of a chemical; the last time was way back in 2011.  (That proposed rule was never finalized.  And despite Congress’ major expansion of EPA’s authority to require testing when reforming TSCA in 2016, EPA has steadfastly refused to even consider use of that new authority.)

The American Chemistry Council (ACC) filed comments opposing the 2011 proposed rule.  As I blogged about at the time, ACC insisted that, instead of calling on its members to provide the health and safety data sought through the proposed rule, EPA should seek to get it from the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA). ACC asserted that ECHA likely had already received the requested data under the European Union’s (EU) REACH Regulation.  I noted that’s not as easy as it sounds, because the chemical industry itself has thrown up major roadblocks to such inter-governmental data sharing.  But here’s the rub:  ACC further argued that, should EPA succeed in obtaining the health and safety data submitted to ECHA, EPA could and should deny public access to those data – despite the fact that TSCA clearly prohibits EPA from withholding health and safety studies.  ACC added that the public should make do with mere summaries of the studies, summaries that were prepared by the companies making the subject chemicals.

At the time, EPA was having none of this.  It indicated that if necessary it could use, and was considering using, its subpoena authority under section 11(c) of TSCA to get the studies from the companies that had submitted them to ECHA; see pages 16-17 of this 2013 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

That was then.  Now, with a former ACC senior official essentially running the TSCA office at EPA, the agency is virtually following ACC’s script.   Read More »

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