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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.
Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist.
In numerous assessment documents issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) developed in its implementation of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), EPA cites as a source the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA). ECHA is the agency that administers the European Union’s (EU) REACH Regulation, which (unlike TSCA) requires the registration of chemicals in commerce by companies that wish to continue to produce and use the chemicals in the EU.
When companies register chemicals under REACH, they are required to develop and submit a “dossier” of certain information on production and use as well as on physical-chemical properties, fate, hazard, exposures and risks. ECHA then makes information available on its website.
In its draft risk evaluations for the first 10 chemicals undergoing evaluations under TSCA, as well as in some of its support documents for high-priority substance designations under TSCA, EPA has heavily relied on these dossiers. But in doing so, EPA has grossly mischaracterized the source and nature of the data it references as coming from ECHA.
EDF has been raising concerns about EPA’s mischaracterizations for some time now (see section 1.E of our comments on EPA’s draft risk evaluation for 1,4-dioxane), but they persist. And as recently as yesterday, members of the peer review panel reviewing EPA’s draft documents have been led by EPA statements and citations to assume a degree of completeness and government review of these data that is simply false.
EPA needs to immediately cease and desist in its mischaracterizations. (more…)
Rachel Shaffer is a consultant. Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist.
As we highlighted in a previous post, EDF filed extensive comments on EPA’s draft risk evaluation for 1,4-dioxane. Among the many concerns we raised was a decision by the Trump EPA to completely dismiss female mouse liver cancer data used by EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) program as key inputs to its cancer risk modeling conducted in 2013. The Agency appears to be trying every trick in the trade – such as excluding most exposure sources and routes – in its effort to conclude that the chemical presents few or no risks to human health or the environment. Read on for more on this latest one. (more…)
