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Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist.
We have blogged repeatedly about the ways in which the Trump EPA is compromising workers’ health, either by failing to identify the significant risks they face, or wishing away the risks EPA does identify by erroneously assuming that existing industry practices and OSHA regulations are taking care of any possible problem.[pullquote]If EPA uses PPE assumptions to erase unreasonable risks, then it won’t regulate the chemical and will forgo its only opportunity to ensure that PPE is actually used. If EPA does find unreasonable risk even with its PPE assumptions, by understating the magnitude of that risk, any subsequent regulation EPA promulgates will be underprotective.[/pullquote]
All of this is contrary to the mandate Congress gave EPA when it reformed the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) in 2016. The new TSCA strengthens EPA’s authority and mandate to protect workers, explicitly identifying them as a “potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulation.” But under this administration, EPA has instituted many policies and practices that undercut the protections afforded workers under TSCA.
A key policy driver is EPA’s assertion – absent any empirical evidence to support it – that workers throughout chemical supply chains will always wear effective personal protective equipment (PPE). There are many legal, scientific and policy problems with this assumption, and it is only one of many questionable aspects of the Trump EPA’s handling of risks to workers.
But just how big a difference does this assumption make? Let’s look at the agency’s draft risk evaluation for the carcinogenic solvent 1-Bromopropane (1-BP), which is currently undergoing public comment and peer review. (more…)
Tom Neltner, J.D., Chemicals Policy Director and Lindsay McCormick, Program Manager.
Chicago is the epicenter for lead service lines (LSLs) in the United States. In a report submitted to Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) in April, Chicago Water reported having 392,614 LSLs – 75% of the total service lines in its water system that serves 2.7 million people living in the city and the city’s 125 suburbs. The number of LSLs is over three times higher than any other city. For additional context, this number represents 58% of the known LSLs in Illinois and 6% of the estimated 6.1 million LSLs in the country.
Chicago Water also reported an additional 120,760 service lines as unknown material that may be lead. Only 7,299 (2%) of its total service lines are made of something other than lead.
These numbers are based on the second year of mandatory reporting that IEPA makes publicly available. Earlier this year, we summarized the first year of reporting. In the second year of reporting, IEPA improved the program by allowing CWSs to separately report lines of unknown material where the utility was confident they were not LSLs – most likely because the lines were installed after the date the CWS stopped allowing use of lead. So the remaining lines of “unknown material” were more likely to be lead. In addition, all community water systems (CWSs) in the state reported in the second year.[1] Given these improvements, we looked more closely at the data.
Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist.
Late on Friday, EPA quietly posted the final peer review report of the Scientific Advisory Committee on Chemicals (SACC) for pigment violet 29, the first chemical for which EPA issued a draft risk evaluation under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) as amended in 2016.
No wonder EPA posted it late Friday with no announcement. The peer reviewers’ report confirms what EDF and others have been saying since release of the draft: EPA has fallen far short of supporting its sweeping conclusion that the chemical does not present unreasonable risk, including to vulnerable subpopulations. The report also faults EPA’s use of systematic review, and reiterates that EPA needs to submit its method to the National Academy of Sciences for review. (more…)
Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist.
Earlier this month, EDF and other NGOs filed a notice of intent (NOI) to sue the Environmental Protection Agency for violations of the Toxic Substances Control Act and its own regulations that deny the public timely access to information on chemicals companies seek to bring onto the market.
Members of the public have a right to know about chemicals entering the market because they may well be exposed to them. And they have a right to know about and meaningfully participate in EPA’s review of the safety of those chemicals because such transparency, accountability, and public participation are fundamental to good government, as well as being required by the law.
This week the industry law firm Bergeson & Campbell (B&C) offered a commentary on the NOI, lamenting it as “hugely distracting and draw[ing] resources and [EPA] management’s attention away from other priorities.” Note that B&C represents many companies that submit new chemicals to EPA for review under TSCA and has been a central actor in the chemical industry’s efforts to weaken those reviews.
In its commentary, B&C acknowledges that the NOI has identified real legal violations committed by EPA, and that these violations result in the public having less information about the agency’s new chemicals program. But B&C asserts that the violations don’t really matter because they have been going on for a long time, not just under this administration. While that is true in some cases, the argument ignores the two elephants in the room. (more…)
Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist.
Readers of this blog know that Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) has voiced strong opposition to a number of decisions made by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that aim to limit the risks it finds when evaluating the safety of chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
These decisions include:
Through these decisions, EPA increases the likelihood that it will either not find unreasonable risk and thereby avoid regulating the chemical, or if that can’t be accomplished, find risks that are low enough that it can impose few restrictions, thereby burdening industry as little as possible.
In response to each of these decisions, EPA has received dozens of highly critical comments on its draft risk evaluations from state and local governments, labor and health groups, environmental NGOs and members of the scientific community. And in the first several peer reviews conducted by its Scientific Advisory Committee on Chemicals (SACC), many of the scientists voiced quite similar concerns during the committee’s public meetings (as of yet, final peer review reports have not been issued).
Rather than address the problems, EPA has adopted a new tactic to stifle the criticism, one that is quite chilling (literally and figuratively): It is telling the SACC that these issues are off-limits to the peer reviewers because they represent policy decisions that are beyond the charge given to the SACC. This is beyond the pale, for several reasons. (more…)
This week, EPA held its Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals (SACC) meeting to peer review its draft risk assessment on 1-bromopropane – one of the first 10 chemicals being evaluated under the reformed Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
EDF provided both oral comments and written comments to the SACC, raising the following issues:
Recently EPA has publicly stated that a number of the topics above are policy decisions outside the SACC’s charge (particularly, 1, 3 and 5). In our comments, EDF strongly disagreed, noting that all three decisions have major direct scientific consequences, and clearly lead EPA to underestimate the chemical’s risk – to the environment, the general population, workers, and vulnerable subpopulations.
For our full set of oral and written comments, see here.
