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Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.
On February 22, the Advocacy Office of the Small Business Administration, an agency of the Federal Government, held a meeting without any public notice and from which the press was barred. And while the office’s mission is supposed to be to provide “an independent voice for small business within the federal government,” many if not most of the attendees were from large companies and the trade associations and Washington lobbyists that represent their interests.
This meeting was the latest in a long and continuing series of so-called “environmental roundtables” that serve as a basis for the SBA’s Advocacy Office to weigh in against environmental or workplace regulations that big business opposes.
There are no records from these meetings that are made publicly available. Agendas and attendee lists are not disclosed, though I was able to obtain an agenda for this particular meeting at the last minute. I noted with interest that the first half of the meeting focused on the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) program, which provides health assessments of chemicals used by public health and environmental officials around the world.
The key draw in this meeting: a senior official from the American Chemistry Council (ACC), whose dominant members are huge global chemical companies like ExxonMobil, BASF, Dow and DuPont – in short, Big Chem. The ACC official spent a full hour coaching representatives of Big Chem and other global mining companies and automobile corporations like GM in how to pick apart and challenge recent documents developed by the IRIS program. IRIS has become a focal point of the chemical industry’s multi-front attack on independent government science. Here is the deck of Powerpoint slides used by the ACC representative and the other industry speaker. (more…)
Sarah Vogel, Ph.D., is Managing Director of EDF’s Health Program.
Breast cancer is a personal issue for too many of us. For six years I have watched the disease overtake a very dear friend’s life. First diagnosed at 32, she underwent radical treatments— surgeries, radiation and chemo— and three years later faced metastatic breast cancer that is now ravaging her body.
She is one of the three million women in the U.S. currently facing, or who have been treated for, for breast cancer. She is also one of a growing number of women under 50 getting the disease with no family history of breast cancer.
Many women today live longer with or after the disease due to remarkable advancements in medicine, but treatment is not a path anyone would choose. It takes a heavy emotional and physical toll, and often comes with serious impacts on a women’s life, such as the loss of fertility and the risk of reoccurrence. Medical costs for treatment of breast cancer totaled $17.35 billion in 2012. And even with advances in treatment, in 2012, more than 40,000 women died from the disease.
The question every woman must ask is: “What can I do to prevent the disease for myself or my daughter?” (more…)
Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist. Alissa Sasso is a Chemicals Policy Fellow.
Well, it’s finally hit the street: Today, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released information on the manufacture and use of nearly 7,700 industrial chemicals in 2011. The data were collected last year under a revamped Chemical Data Reporting (CDR) program, and is the first update of such information since way back in 2005, the year of Hurricane Katrina and Star Wars Episode III.
In releasing the data, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson noted: “The CDR data also highlight the clear need for TSCA reform. Updating this critical law will ensure that EPA has access to the tools and resources it needs to quickly and effectively assess potentially harmful chemicals, and safeguard the health of families across the country.”
Getting even to this point has been a long and bumpy road. Just getting from the proposed to a final CDR rule took over 16 months, with EPA having to endure not one but two nearly six-month regulatory reviews by the Office of Management and Budget and the chemical industry’s efforts to delay and dilute the rule. It then took another year for EPA to collect the data, in no small part thanks to repeated efforts by the chemical industry and its allies in Congress to further delay the program.
Finally, it’s taken EPA six more months to compile and process the data in preparation for today’s release – though that’s a decided improvement over the 21 months it took EPA to release the data collected in the last cycle (the faster pace due in part to a requirement this time around for electronic reporting, a feature the chemical industry and its Congressional allies opposed).
So what do the new data reveal? EPA has provided some nice summary materials, which we won’t duplicate here. See especially the table on this page. We’ll have more to say on this as we further analyze the data, but here are a few important things to note:
More to come, so stay tuned!
Rachel Shaffer is a research assistant. Jennifer McPartland, Ph.D., is a Health Scientist.
BPA, DDT, PCBs, PBDEs, phthalates, PFOA … Forgive the alphabet soup, but chances are you’ve heard of at least some of these endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), which have been the subject of a lot of public and media attention in the last several years. Research has begun to uncover the ways in which these chemicals can interact with the body’s hormone – or endocrine – system to disrupt various natural biological processes, including metabolism, the reproductive system, and development of the brain and nervous systems.
While the endocrine-disrupting properties of the chemicals named above have been confirmed, scientists suspect there may be many more such chemicals in our environment, in the products we use, and in our bodies. How can we identify them?
Legislation enacted in 1996 required the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to develop a screening program to identify potential EDCs. More than 10 years later, EPA finally launched the Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program (EDSP). Testing is being conducted in two phases, or “tiers.” In “Tier 1,” a screening battery of validated in vivo and in vitro assays is used to identify chemicals with potential to interfere with the endocrine system. Chemicals flagged in the first tier of testing are then subject to “Tier 2” testing intended to determine the specific effect and the lowest dose at which it occurs. (We should note this program is very controversial and the subject of ongoing debate, but that is not the subject of this post.)
EPA has identified an estimated 9,700 chemicals to be screened – a very daunting task given the time- and resource-intensive nature of the testing battery EPA has established. Might there be a way to expedite the identification and testing of the more problematic chemicals? A study published earlier this year in Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP) investigates a possible approach: using in vitro high-throughput (HT) assays developed through EPA’s ToxCast and Tox21 programs to target and prioritize chemicals for further testing under the EDSP. While use of these assays poses its own challenges, might it at least help in determining an appropriate testing sequence? (more…)
Alissa Sasso is a Chemicals Policy Fellow.
The European Union is maintaining a steady pace as it works to address chemicals of concern: Last month, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) added 54 Substances of Very High Concern (SVHCs) to the Candidate List for Authorisation under its REACH Regulation, bringing the total number of substances on the list to 138. ECHA posted a press release listing the new SVHCs and describing some of the more interesting additions, which we’ve highlighted below.
For 23 of the additions, REACH’s Member State Committee (MSC) reviewed public comments during the comment period on draft SVHC proposals before voting unanimously to add all of them onto the Candidate List. The other 31 new additions were not challenged during the public comment period, and hence moved directly onto the candidate list without MSC consultation.
The majority of the new SVHCs, like most substances already on the list, are classified as carcinogen, mutagenic and/or toxic to reproduction (CMRs). But it’s with the other new listings that it gets really interesting. (more…)
Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.
Lest anyone thought that efforts by state legislators to protect their citizens from toxic chemical exposures would slacken despite Congress’ inability to take such action, this week’s announcement that legislators in at least 26 states are introducing such bills should dispel that notion.
Safer States, a national coalition of state-based environmental health organizations, notes that “between 2003 and 2011, 19 states adopted 93 chemical safety policies. The majority of legislation passed with healthy bipartisan support – 99% of Democratic legislators and 75% of Republican legislators voted in favor of bills, and both Republican and Democratic governors signed them into law.”
That trend shows no signs of abating in 2013, based on a list of state legislative activities underway, compiled by Safer States (more detail here): At least 26 states are each to consider multiple legislation and policy changes this year that will:
The chemical industry frequently argues it just can’t live with a “patchwork” of requirements that vary from state to state. But that’s just what it’s creating by dragging its feet on reform of the federal Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which has never been amended since its adoption nearly four decades ago.
State legislators, like nature, abhor a vacuum.
