Lindsay McCormick is a Project Manager.
Yesterday, EPA proposed a rule to ban methylene chloride and either ban or restrict the use of N-methylpyrrolidone in paint stripping products, subject to certain national security exemptions. This proposal is the third such proposed action by the agency in the past month (see here and here). Below, find a short description of these chemicals and EPA’s proposed actions.
Lindsay McCormick is a Project Manager.
As promised in Tuesday’s blog post, we’ve compiled additional information on the 10 chemicals EPA selected as the first to undergo risk evaluations under the new TSCA.
Click on the image to the right to see:
persistence & bioaccumulation characteristics of these chemicals in its TSCA Work Plan for Chemical Assessments;
[pullquote]Washington, DC’s water utility launched a helpful interactive map allowing residents to see whether water pipes are lead, non-lead, or if there’s no available information for nearly every building and public water source across DC – including residences, restaurants, retailers, schools, drinking water fountains, and even the White House and Smithsonian.
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Lindsay McCormick is a Research Analyst.
When I moved to Washington, DC four years ago the phrase “lead service lines” did not roll off my tongue. That began to change as I became aware of DC’s historical lead problems – and dramatically so in the wake of the crisis in Flint, Michigan.
But I’m not alone. Even though experts estimate that up to 10 million homes across the U.S. have lead service lines – lead pipes connecting the drinking water main in the street to the home – it’s an issue that is not well understood by most Americans.
And that should come as no surprise given that few water utilities across the U.S. can even say with confidence where the lead services lines are in their systems, and fewer still proactively share what information they have with customers. Lead service lines are an aging infrastructure, typically found in communities with older housing. Local recordkeeping over the years has been inconsistent, leaving many utilities today to rely on incomplete, difficult to access, or non-electronic historical records. Many communities appear to have no documentation of when they ceased installing lead service lines altogether.
Lindsay McCormick is a Research Analyst.
Chemical and Engineering News (C&EN) recently featured an article on simple, silicone wristbands used to detect chemicals in the everyday environment. Developed by researchers from Oregon State University, these wearable wristbands act like sponges to absorb chemicals in the air, water and everyday consumer products. EDF sees exciting promise in this technology, and has begun using this tool to make the invisible world of chemicals, visible.
The C&EN article highlighted two new studies which used the wristbands to characterize flame retardant exposure – the first two published studies to demonstrate that the wristband technology can be effectively used for this purpose.
There is good reason to explore flame retardant exposure. A 1975 California flammability standard resulted in the addition of flame retardant chemicals to hundreds of millions of foam products in the U.S. including couches and foam baby products. As furniture and other products get old and breakdown, flame retardants are released into surrounding air and settle in the dust in our homes. Evidence from the CDC’s National Biomonitoring Program demonstrates that 99% of people tested have polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardants in their body, and other studies indicate that children are more highly exposed to flame retardants than adults. Read More
Lindsay McCormick is a Research Analyst.
It’s no secret that trichloroethylene (TCE) is a nasty chemical. A 2013 review of thousands of scientific studies by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scientists concluded that TCE is carcinogenic to humans by all routes of exposure and poses additional hazards, including immunotoxicity, neurotoxicity, and adverse effects on the developing heart. TCE’s link to cancer has been confirmed by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), and the National Toxicology Program (NTP).
With such a track record, one would expect that the U.S. government has restricted its use, right? Wrong. The current annual U.S. production of TCE is 250 million pounds – so, not surprisingly, human and environmental exposure is widespread. While most TCE is used in industrial and commercial settings as a chemical intermediate in the production of other chemicals, it’s also commonly used as a metal degreasing agent and spot cleaner in commercial dry cleaning, and can be found in certain consumer products. Read More
Lindsay McCormick is a Research Analyst.
I find purchasing shampoo and other common personal care products to be a surprisingly stressful experience – I pace the aisles at the drugstore for a good 10-15 minutes, read every product ingredient list, contemplate the legitimacy of claims like “paraben-free” or “no artificial colors or fragrances,” and weigh the impact on my wallet. In the end, I usually choose a moderately priced product with some sort of ingredient safety claim brightly printed on the front label, and hope the extra $2 I spent will actually reduce my exposure to hazardous chemicals.
Many consumers are hungry for information and solutions that help reduce their exposure to toxic chemicals. As more research links exposures to common ingredients in personal care products and health impacts – like certain parabens to reduced fertility; certain phthalates to asthma, reproductive disorders, and neurological effects; and triclosan to obesity – many consumers want to feel empowered to take action. That’s why the results of a recent intervention study are so intriguing: researchers found that exposures to certain chemicals fell in a population of low-income Latina girls after using personal care products labeled as being free of such chemicals for three days.
The implications of this study raise several interesting questions that I’ll explore in this post. Specifically, are personal shopping choices an effective way to avoid chemical exposures? And, is this strategy equally available to everyone in our society? Read More