Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist.
Several of us at EDF listened in last Friday to a webinar hosted by a committee of the American Bar Association that featured Dr. Nancy Beck, Deputy Assistant Administrator in the office of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that administers the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
Dr. Beck was asked during the Q&A whether EPA was actively working on drafting risk evaluations for the first 10 chemicals TSCA required EPA to identify, even though their long-awaited “problem formulations” have not yet been made available to the public for comment. Dr. Beck replied that, indeed, the agency was hard at work on the risk evaluations, noting that there are “thousands of studies” agency staff have identified relevant to those 10 chemicals that need to be reviewed.
What struck me about that comment, which in and of itself is not at all surprising, is that it was made just a week after news broke that Dr. Beck’s boss, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, plans to direct agency staff to reject large numbers of scientific studies from consideration in policy making at the agency. Read More