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Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.
On March 30, the Washington Post ran the following story:
[Clarification added 4/2/10: I have now learned that the text below is actually a summary of two Post articles, which ran in Environment magazine (April 1979, p. 21). Click these links for previews of the 3/29/79 and 3/30/79 Post articles, available for purchase from its archives. Apologies for the incorrect information.]
Reporters from WRC-TV, the NBC Station in Washington, D. C., spent nine months investigating asbestos-lined hair dryers after the Consumer Product Safety Commission declined to do so. The station, in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund, conducted an investigation which culminated in an uninterrupted 15-minute news segment detailing the results of their findings. (more…)
Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.
As the long-awaited introduction of TSCA reform legislation at last appears to be about to happen (how’s that for being definitively vague?), the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families (SCHF) coalition believes it is time to more sharply define some of the policy areas where we currently differ from the chemical industry, insofar as we have been able to discern their positions through the principles, testimony and other public statements they have provided. After all, you have first to identify differences before you can seek to narrow them.
SCHF took the opportunity to define those differences yesterday, choosing as our venues both the inside and the outside of the chemical industry’s big annual shindig, its GlobalChem conference held in Baltimore. (more…)
Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.
Remember all of my earlier posts about the industry front group, the Coalition for Chemical Safety? My major complaint was, not that the chemical industry was organizing itself or even seeking support from others, but rather that it was doing so through deception: Pretending to be something it was not. Never revealing who is behind the coalition, who’s paying the bills. Never revealing it was put together by one of the nation’s premier “astroturf” PR firms. And most importantly, not coming clean about its real identity to the businesses and organizations it approaches to sign up.
Well, the Ocean Futures Society, an ocean protection group founded and led by Jean-Michel Cousteau, has just identified itself as one of the duped groups taken in by the Coalition for Chemical Safety (CCS). (more…)
Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.
The Washington Post ran a front-page article Saturday, written by Spencer Hsu, which reported the auction sale by FEMA of most of the 120,000 notorious formaldehyde-tainted trailers it had purchased five years ago to house the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
The article cites FEMA as saying that “wholesale buyers from the auction must sign contracts attesting that trailers will not be used, sold or advertised as housing, and that trailers will carry a sticker saying, ‘Not to be used for housing’.”
Think that’s likely to be enough? (more…)
Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.
Sara Goodman of Greenwire/E&E News had a great piece picked up by the New York Times yesterday about state governments pressing for meaningful TSCA reform. I blogged earlier about the states’ reform principles, quoting Ted Sturdevant, Director of the Washington State Department of Ecology, urging that “[w]e need a federal law that prevents contamination from happening in the first place, and phases out the harmful chemicals that are already in widespread use.”
Goodman’s piece yesterday focused more on the need for fundamental reform of confidential business information (CBI) claim allowances under TSCA. Recall that, under TSCA, state governments as well as the public are denied access to any CBI EPA receives. Judging by their quotes in Goodman’s piece, they’re not happy about it: (more…)
Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.
In a post to this blog nearly a year ago, I noted that many voices in the chemical industry were claiming that EPA’s New Chemicals Program (NCP) was robust and served as an excellent model for TSCA reform. My post took considerable issue with that point of view, noting the many structural constraints TSCA imposes on EPA in its effort to review new chemicals:
Lately, I’ve been hearing chemical industry representatives trying to resuscitate the NCP-as-model-for-TSCA-reform mantra. So it is especially timely that a new report from EPA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) has just been released that again thoroughly dismantles that notion. The new report’s critique of the NCP closely mirrors the appraisal I provided earlier. And adding weight to its analysis is the fact that EPA’s senior management has fully concurred with the report’s conclusions and recommendations. (more…)
