Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist.
Late Friday is getting to be a popular time for the toxics office at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to publicly release the peer review reports of its Scientific Advisory Committee on Chemicals (SACC).
As EPA did for the Committee’s peer review report on the agency’s first draft risk evaluation under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), EPA quietly posted sometime quite late last Friday the SACC’s reports on the next two chemicals: the likely carcinogenic solvent 1,4-dioxane and the developmentally toxic flame retardant hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD).
Even a quick read of the Executive Summaries of those reports amply illustrates why EPA sought to bury them. I’ll focus here on 1,4-dioxane.
The SACC did note that the content and organization of this draft risk evaluation was “much improved” over the first one for Pigment Violet 29. So much for the good news; things went downhill from there for EPA. Read More