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Tom Neltner, J.D., is Chemicals Policy Director
Lead poisoning prevention advocates should mark May 14, 2021 as a consequential day in our collective efforts to protect public health. Last week, two decisions and a preliminary report were issued that lay a solid foundation for further progress. When translated into action, the decisions and report should result in significantly reduced lead exposure for children. These developments were:
These actions put added urgency to President Biden’s America Jobs Plan that includes $45 billion in federal funding to fully replace the nation’s 9 million lead service lines and $213 billion for housing – both critical aspects of our nation’s infrastructure that need a lead poisoning prevention-oriented upgrade. We encourage Congress to provide at least $19 billion as part of an investment in housing to reduce lead-based paint hazards in pre-1940 housing, especially by replacing old, single-pane windows to get the combined benefits of safer and more energy efficient homes.
Tom Neltner, J.D., Chemicals Policy Director and Maricel Maffini, Ph.D., Consultant
Yesterday, The Guardian published a powerful story by reporter Tom Perkins detailing how chemical manufacturers hid evidence of dangerous health impacts from certain types of PFAS and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) did not take sufficient and swift action to protect the public.
The story is largely based on data revealed in the FDA’s response to a Freedom of Information Act request by EDF and Environmental Working Group. The analysis showed that two major PFAS manufacturers, Daikin and DuPont, withheld safety information from the agency both by 1) not submitting it when the agency was considering whether the chemical should be on the market, and 2) not alerting the FDA when later analysis revealed a problem.
The companies’ failures are disturbing. What FDA did (or, more precisely, failed to do) after finding out is also disconcerting. While the agency’s scientists have taken strides to more fully understand the harm posed by PFAS, management has failed to adequately translate the science into timely action to protect people from toxic chemicals like these in their food.
Tom Neltner, Chemicals Policy Director.
Last month, two California trade associations submitted disconcerting comments to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as the agency considers what to do with the revised Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) published in the waning days of the Trump Administration. The associations – the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA) and the California Municipal Utilities Association (CMUA) – represent 90% of the state’s drinking water utilities.
The trade associations are asking EPA to allow water utilities to tell the agency, the state, their customers, and the public that they have no lead service lines (LSLs) even when they know it may well be false. This would seriously undermine one of the most important positive aspects of the revised LCR – the service line inventory. California’s unusual definition of a “user service line” has been a long-running problem: it does not include the portion of the service line on private property. This definition is narrower than the federal one – and even the state’s definition of an LSL that has been in place for more than a quarter century.
Under EPA’s revised LCR, utilities can only claim that they have no LSLs – and thus avoid the need to comply with the rule’s more protective sampling and corrosion control requirements for systems with LSLs – if they are confident there are no LSLs based the entire length of the service line, including the portion on private property. The two state trade associations are asking EPA to put the burden of determining the composition of this portion of the service line entirely on the customer, allowing a utility to ignore a lead pipe if the customer does not provide the information. This approach will render the inventory effectively useless and misleading.
Tom Neltner, Chemicals Policy Director.
Earlier this year, the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) released ground breaking guidance to help utilities in the state develop their “Complete Distribution System Materials Inventory” (CDSMI) that is due in 2025. The guidance is important because it explicitly allows utilities to use predictive tools to prepare an accurate materials inventory that is essential to effective lead service line (LSL) replacement efforts. Because the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) service line inventory in its revised Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) has many elements in common with Michigan’s inventory, we encourage EPA and other states to look closely at Michigan’s guidance as a model to help all utilities develop accurate service line inventories.
Michigan’s inventory requirement and guidance
Michigan’s version of the LCR requires utilities to fully replace all LSLs – the portion on both public and private property – at an average rate of 5% per year by 2040.[1] The key to compliance is an accurate CDSMI that must be submitted to EGLE and made public by January 1, 2025.
EGLE states that the CDSMI’s purpose “is to characterize, record, and maintain a comprehensive inventory of distribution system materials, including service line materials on both public and private property.” It supports effective asset management planning, LSL replacement efforts, and notification of those served by an LSL.
Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist.
Reprinted by permission from The Environmental Forum®, May/June 2021. MAY/ JUNE 2021 | 55
Copyright © 2021, Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, D.C. www.eli.org.
[NOTE: This post is my contribution to a debate on TSCA implementation published by ELI. I wrote this piece, which ELI titled “Reversing New Chemicals Program a Priority,” in late March.]
As with so much else these past four years, implementation of the 2016 reforms to the Toxic Substances Control Act was not normal.
Despite bipartisan support for TSCA’s overhaul and the chemical industry’s acknowledgment that it needed a stronger federal system to restore public confidence in its products, this progress evaporated virtually overnight with the ascendance of the most anti-environmental and anti-public health administration in our lifetimes.
Nowhere was this more apparent than in the Trump EPA’s systematic undermining of the new TSCA’s enhancements of safety reviews for the hundreds of new chemicals entering commerce each year. The chemical industry, its army of law firms, and its political plants inside EPA went for broke. (more…)
Tom Neltner, Chemicals Policy Director.
The FDA’s critical role in the COVID-19 pandemic has brought intense interest in whom President Biden will nominate to lead the agency as its new commissioner.
While COVID-19 is the priority, the FDA obviously has many vital other responsibilities. Though it doesn’t get that much attention, one of the important roles of the agency is to protect the public from unsafe chemicals in food. Frankly, their record has been disappointing, but the new administration has an opportunity to fix some key problems that scientists and doctors have been warning us about for years.
Here are ten things the new FDA Commissioner should do to keep unsafe chemicals out of our food. The list ranges from actions on specific chemicals to broader reforms.
