Monthly Archives: April 2020

EPA refuses to extend TCE comment deadline, ignoring requests from Congress, health groups

By Joanna Slaney / Published: April 28, 2020

Joanna Slaney, Legislative Director and Lindsay McCormick, Program Manager. 

Yesterday, in the midst of the COVID-19 national emergency, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) closed the comment period on an extremely flawed draft risk evaluation on the toxic chemical, trichloroethylene (TCE).

Due to the many scientific and legal concerns raised by the draft risk evaluation, and its significance for any future regulation of TCE, the draft needs thorough and careful review from experts, the public, and other affected stakeholders. However, EPA refused to delay the deadline for the draft risk evaluation’s comment period, despite the growing hardships and major disruptions resulting from the current COVID-19 crisis.  EPA now seems intent on racing to the finish line with its flawed evaluation, ignoring multiple requests to ensure the document is fully vetted:

  • Congress: In two separate letters from the House and Senate, Members of Congress raised concerns with EPA moving forward with various rulemakings and scientific reviews without sufficient opportunity for expert and public input in light of the pandemic – explicitly referencing the TCE draft risk evaluation as a prime example.
  • Health groups: Health organizations whose staff and members are on the front lines of the pandemic requested that EPA extend the public comment period until after the national emergency is lifted due to severe capacity constraints. EPA did not respond.
  • Impacted communities: In early March, nearly 300 people from communities grappling with TCE contamination asked EPA to hold a public meeting to allow them “to ask questions of the agency and engage in critical dialogue.” EPA denied the request.

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Posted in Health policy, TSCA reform / Tagged , , | Authors: / Comments are closed

Michigan utilities report much lower percentages of service lines of lead or unknown material than Wisconsin or Illinois

By Tom Neltner, Senior Director, Safer Chemicals Initiative / Published: April 21, 2020

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

Note to readers: As we all grapple with the grave global health challenge from COVID-19, we want to acknowledge the essential service that the public health professionals at water utilities provide in delivering safe water not only for drinking but for washing our hands and our surroundings. In the meantime, we are continuing to work towards improved health and environmental protections – including reducing lead in drinking water. We’ll plan to keep sharing developments regarding lead in drinking water that may be useful to you. In the meantime, please stay safe and healthy.

Lead service line (LSL) inventories provide useful insights into the location and number of LSLs in states and the funding needed to fully replace these lines. In previous blogs, we examined mandatory reporting by utilities of service line material in Illinois and Wisconsin.[1] Here, we examined a March 2020 preliminary report by the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) summarizing data submitted by 1,029 utilities. Unlike the annual reporting in Illinois and Wisconsin, Michigan required utilities to submit a preliminary inventory by January 1, 2020 and requires a complete inventory before 2025. While the preliminary report allows lines to be designated as unknown, the material must be determined by 2025. This is a two-step process, rather than the annual report approach that California has taken.

Michigan reports less than 100,000 LSLs and 276,000 lines of unknown material that may be lead

The state’s preliminary report is based on 1,029 utilities[2] (74% of the state’s 1,386 total) with 2.40 million service lines (90% of the 2.66 million total).[3] This reporting rate is lower than what Illinois experienced at a similar stage in the first year of mandatory reporting.

For the 1,029 utilities that reported, utilities reported 99,000 (4% of total) lead, 21,000 (0.9%) galvanized steel,[4] 177,000 (7%) of unknown material but likely to be lead, and 276,000 (12%) as unknown with no information. If all of the four categories are actually lead (which is unlikely), there would be 573,000 (23%) LSLs in Michigan.

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Former chemical industry official Beck, now at Trump White House, again interferes to weaken EPA action on dangerous chemicals: This time it’s PFAS

By Richard Denison / Published: April 20, 2020

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

It was only in February that Reveal News’ Elizabeth Shogren exposed the Trump White House’s role in dramatically weakening the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) draft risk evaluation for the solvent trichloroethylene (TCE), which is linked to fetal heart defects at low doses.  The White House’s 11th-hour intervention, led by former chemical industry official Dr. Nancy Beck, forced EPA to rely on a different health effect that would allow 500 times greater exposures to the ubiquitous toxic chemical.

There was every reason to expect this episode was not a one-off, given Beck’s other actions both while at EPA and once arriving at the White House.  Sure enough, last week Ellen Knickmeyer of the Associated Press exposed another such incident, this time involving a group of chemicals collectively known as “perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances” or PFAS that are showing up as environmental contaminants all over the country.[pullquote]Beck’s first order of business was to compel her former colleagues at EPA to submit the proposed PFAS rule for White House review, which neither the Obama administration nor the Trump administration up to that point had deemed necessary.[/pullquote]

Knickmeyer reported on documents obtained by Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, ranking member of the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee, that detail Beck’s largely successful effort to scale back a rule EPA first proposed in 2015.  Called a Significant New Use Rule, or SNUR, it would require companies seeking to import products containing certain PFAS to notify EPA in advance, thereby allowing EPA to determine whether to allow the import and impose needed restrictions.  Sen. Carper made the documents public via a letter he sent to EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler calling on EPA to finalize the original rule instead of the watered-down re-proposed rule EPA released for public comment in February.  Read More »

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

The next infrastructure stimulus bill is the right place for lead pipe replacement funding – to create jobs, save money and provide safer water for all

By Joanna Slaney / Published: April 16, 2020

Joanna Slaney, Legislative Director and Tom Neltner, J.D., Chemicals Policy Director.

Note to readers: As we all grapple with the grave global health challenge from COVID-19, we want to acknowledge the essential service that the public health professionals at water utilities provide in delivering safe water not only for drinking but for washing our hands and our surroundings.

During the past few weeks, Congress has taken extraordinary measures to provide much-needed emergency relief to people as we collectively struggle with the COVID-19 crises. Over the coming months, lawmakers have said they will turn their attention to providing funding to stimulate the economy with a focus on water infrastructure as a priority. Lead pipe replacement should be an essential part of that effort.

To guide the Congressional effort, EDF and hundreds of others signed onto U.S. Water Alliance’s COVID-19 Relief and Recovery: Guiding Principles to Secure Our Water Future. The four principles are:

  1. Ensure water is reliable and affordable to all
  2. Strengthen water utilities of all sizes
  3. Close the water access gap
  4. Fuel economic recovery by investing in water systems

In line with of our support for these principles, EDF is advocating that Congress provide $45 billion for water utilities to fully replace lead service lines (LSL) – the lead pipes connecting a home to the water main under the street. Today, there are more than nine million homes still serviced by LSLs in the country, exposing millions of children and adults to the myriad of harms associated with lead. For children, these harms include undermining brain development. In adults, lead has been shown to cause heart disease, cancer, and impact the neurological, reproductive, and immune systems. While there is broad consensus that LSLs must be fully removed to protect public health, funding challenges have stymied progress.

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Latest Wisconsin data on water service lines provides important insights, reveals over 150,000 lead pipes

By Tom Neltner, Senior Director, Safer Chemicals Initiative / Published: April 16, 2020

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

Note to readers: As we all grapple with the grave global health challenge from COVID-19, we want to acknowledge the essential service that the public health professionals at water utilities provide in delivering safe water not only for drinking but for washing our hands and our surroundings. In the meantime, we are continuing to work towards improved health and environmental protections – including reducing lead in drinking water. We’ll plan to keep sharing developments regarding lead in drinking water that may be useful to you. In the meantime, please stay safe and healthy.

With the comment period now closed on the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed revisions to its Lead and Copper Rule (LCR), agency staff are busy reviewing the 687 distinct comments submitted to the docket with a goal of finalizing the rule by the end of the year. To help water professionals plan ahead, the cover article in the March edition of Journal AWWA walks readers through the proposal and its implications. It ends with six suggestions to water systems that include developing a service line material inventory and identifying funding strategies to accelerate full lead service line (LSL) replacement.

With this suggestion in mind, we are continuing our work evaluating state efforts to develop LSL inventories by taking a closer look at reporting by Wisconsin municipal and private water utilities[1] to the state Public Service Commission (PSC) for calendar year 2018.[2] Of the other states with mandatory inventory reporting, we have previously covered Illinois in detail and will evaluate Michigan’s newly released reports soon. The only other state with mandatory reporting is California, but it has limited value because it only covers the portion of the service line owned by the utility and excludes the portion on private property.

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Posted in Drinking water, Lead / Tagged , , , | Comments are closed

Best practices for reducing cadmium in food: New review from FDA scientists

By Tom Neltner, Senior Director, Safer Chemicals Initiative / Published: April 7, 2020

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

Note to readers: As we all grapple with the grave global health challenge from COVID19, we want to acknowledge the essential services that the professionals at the Food and Drug Administration and in the food production, processing and retail industries provide in continuing to deliver food. In the meantime, we are continuing to work towards improved health protections – including reducing chemicals in food. We’ll plan to keep sharing developments that may be useful to you. In the meantime, please stay safe and healthy.

Two years ago, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) put cadmium on our radar when the Toxic Elements Working Group included cadmium together with arsenic, lead and mercury as metals affecting children’s neurological development. As part of that effort, FDA committed to look at all four metals across all foods instead of one contaminant, one food at a time. Last year, FDA’s scientists published a peer-reviewed article assessing children’s exposure to lead and cadmium in the diet. They found that spinach, lettuce, sunflower seeds, potato chips and wheat cereal were among the top 10 foods with the highest cadmium concentration.

New review of mitigation strategies

This year, FDA’s scientists published in a peer-reviewed journal a review of mitigation strategies to reduce dietary exposure to cadmium. Because plants uptake cadmium from the soil and “70 to 80% of dietary cadmium intake in humans comes from plant-based food,” the article focuses on methods to “reduce or prevent initial uptake by plants.” The authors explained that cadmium enters the food supply through natural and manmade sources, highlighting that cadmium often is a contaminant in phosphate fertilizers. Cadmium is also a contaminant in zinc used to galvanize steel.

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