EDF Health

The Trump EPA’s first TSCA risk evaluation is an epic fail

By / Published: January 15, 2019

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist.

Yesterday Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) filed more than 100 pages of comments on a 40-page draft risk evaluation the Trump Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has prepared for Pigment Violet 29 (PV29). PV29 is the first of 10 chemicals undergoing risk evaluations under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Our comments were so much longer than the EPA document we were commenting on because there was far more to say about what information EPA failed to obtain, make available or consider than what EPA included in its draft.

The essence of our lengthy comments can be boiled down to a single sentence, however: EPA has utterly failed to demonstrate that PV29 does not present unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment.

For folks who want somewhat more detail than this, our comments start with a 4-page Executive Summary that capsulizes the many serious deficiencies we identified in EPA’s draft. I’ll provide some highlights in this post. Read More »

Also posted in Health policy, Health science, Industry influence, Regulation, TSCA reform / Tagged DRE, EPA, Lautenberg Act, Pigment Violet 29 (PV29) | Comments are closed

Correction: The Trump EPA’s first TSCA risk evaluation is a skyscraper of cards, not just a house

By / Published: January 8, 2019

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist. Jennifer McPartland, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.

We blogged before the holiday break about how EPA used a single, unverified and conflicted estimate of worker exposure to build a whole house of cards and then used it to conclude that Pigment Violet 29 (or PV29) poses no risk to human health.

But upon further consideration, we need to issue a correction: It’s not a house, it’s a veritable skyscraper of cards EPA has constructed. That’s because EPA took its highly suspect worker exposure level and combined it with a hazard value EPA erroneously asserts demonstrates minimal hazard, in violation of its own and other authoritative guidance. Read More »

Also posted in Health policy, Regulation, TSCA reform / Tagged EPA, Lautenberg Act, Pigment Violet 29 (PV29) | Read 1 Response

The Trump EPA’s latest TSCA gift to the chemical industry is illegal and the height of hypocrisy

By / Published: December 4, 2018

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist.

‘Tis the season for giving, but it’s not quite keeping in the spirit to have our Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) pile on giveaways to the chemical industry. The latest one I’ll discuss in this post is not only in direct violation of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA); it exposes this EPA’s two-facedness when it comes to making public the information EPA relies on in making regulatory decisions that affect our health and our environment.[pullquote]EPA’s failure to make health and safety studies available to the public is blatantly illegal and a slap in the face to the 2016 bipartisan reforms to TSCA that sought to increase public access to information on chemical risks.[/pullquote]

First some background. It has been a long time since EPA has proposed a rule to require testing to determine the hazards of a chemical; the last time was way back in 2011. (That proposed rule was never finalized. And despite Congress’ major expansion of EPA’s authority to require testing when reforming TSCA in 2016, EPA has steadfastly refused to even consider use of that new authority.)

The American Chemistry Council (ACC) filed comments opposing the 2011 proposed rule. As I blogged about at the time, ACC insisted that, instead of calling on its members to provide the health and safety data sought through the proposed rule, EPA should seek to get it from the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA). ACC asserted that ECHA likely had already received the requested data under the European Union’s (EU) REACH Regulation. I noted that’s not as easy as it sounds, because the chemical industry itself has thrown up major roadblocks to such inter-governmental data sharing. But here’s the rub: ACC further argued that, should EPA succeed in obtaining the health and safety data submitted to ECHA, EPA could and should deny public access to those data – despite the fact that TSCA clearly prohibits EPA from withholding health and safety studies. ACC added that the public should make do with mere summaries of the studies, summaries that were prepared by the companies making the subject chemicals.

At the time, EPA was having none of this. It indicated that if necessary it could use, and was considering using, its subpoena authority under section 11(c) of TSCA to get the studies from the companies that had submitted them to ECHA; see pages 16-17 of this 2013 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

That was then. Now, with a former ACC senior official essentially running the TSCA office at EPA, the agency is virtually following ACC’s script. Read More »

Also posted in Health policy, Industry influence, TSCA reform / Tagged American Chemistry Council (ACC), Confidential Business Information (CBI), EPA, Pigment Violet 29 (PV29) | Comments are closed

Lead from a new “lead-free” brass faucet? More common than you’d hope

By Tom Neltner, Senior Director, Safer Chemicals Initiative / Published: November 6, 2018

Tom Neltner, J.D. is the Chemicals Policy Director and Lindsay McCormick is a Project Manager.

[pullquote]Until NSF/ANSI 61 standard is updated to reduce or eliminate lead leaching, users must extensively clean and flush new brass fixtures before use and make a short flush standard practice for older fixtures.[/pullquote]

During this past year, we undertook a pilot project to tackle the problem of lead in drinking water at child care facilities. As part of the effort, we collected 250 mL samples (about 8 ounces of water) from every drinking water fixture, as recommended in the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) 3Ts guidance for schools and child care facilities. We replaced 26 faucets that exceeded our action level with new brass faucets that were labeled “lead-free” and complied with NSF/ANSI 61 standard for drinking water system components.[1] To our surprise, when we sampled the faucets a few days after replacement, the lead levels were higher– between 9 and 10 ppb – on three of the new faucets.

The increase left us scratching our heads. Federal law allows a drinking water fixture to be labeled “lead-free” if the amount of lead in wetted surfaces[2] averages less than 0.25% (down from the 8% limit between 1986 and 2014). However, it isn’t clear how much this amount might contribute to levels of lead in water. To explore this issue, we contacted the supplier who said its product was certified under NSF/ANSI 61 and, therefore, not likely the source. The supplier suggested the source could be from existing upstream valves or from disturbing the plumbing. We could not rule these other possibilities out.

A study by Virginia Tech’s Jeff Parks on three models of new NSF/ANSI 61 certified brass faucets found similar results and concluded that even newly manufactured “lead-free” faucets may not meet the 1 ppb limit that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends for schools.

Also posted in Drinking water, Lead / Tagged 3Ts, American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), Child care, EPA, Lead, Lead in drinking water, NSF, NSF/ANSI 61, Parks, Schools | Authors: tneltner / Comments are closed

EPA Updates its 3Ts Guidance for Reducing Lead in Drinking Water

By Lindsay McCormick / Published: October 16, 2018

Lindsay McCormick, is a Project Manager. Tom Neltner, J.D., is the Chemicals Policy Director.

Earlier this month, EPA released its updated 3Ts for Reducing Lead in Drinking Water Toolkit, which provides guidance for schools and child care facilities seeking to ensure children are safe from lead in water. The new 3Ts – an update to the agency’s 2006 guidance – is now a web-based toolkit that includes modules, customizable templates, and factsheets.

Overall, the new toolkit is an improvement. While the protocol itself is largely the same, the new toolkit is more user friendly and written for the non-technical audience, making it more likely that school and child care staff will use it. EPA has also reframed the toolkit from “Training, Testing, and Telling” to “Training, Testing, and Taking Action” – placing more emphasis on the critical step of addressing lead sources than the previous version. “Telling” is now integrated throughout the entire toolkit to highlight the importance of communication at every step. The agency has also developed a helpful flushing best practices factsheet, which is a topic that often causes considerable confusion.

In EDF’s June 2018 report on our pilot of 11 child care facilities, “Tackling lead in water at child care facilities,” we recommended EPA update its 2006 guidance to address four key gaps. The agency has made progress on the two most important of those but leaves the other two unresolved. The most important change to the guidance is that the agency has removed the 20 parts per billion (ppb) action level and instead recommends action whenever there are “elevated lead levels.” While EPA does not define an elevated lead level, a deep dive into the appendix suggests that levels over 5 ppb warrant follow-up. The updated guidance also puts a greater emphasis on the identification of lead service lines (LSLs) and includes LSL replacement as a permanent control measure, though not as an explicit recommendation. Further, the agency did not update the protocol to deal with challenges posed by aerator cleaning and hot water heaters. Below we explore each of these issues in further detail. Read More »

Also posted in Drinking water, Health policy, Lead, Public health, Regulation / Tagged 3Ts, Child care, Child care facilities, EPA, Lead in drinking water, Lead service lines | Comments are closed

Paint-lead hazard standard – A reconsideration

By Tom Neltner, Senior Director, Safer Chemicals Initiative / Published: August 5, 2018

Tom Neltner, J.D., is Chemicals Policy Director

After 20 years working on lead poisoning prevention, it has become almost second nature for me to object when someone suggests that children eating paint chips is a significant route of exposure. All too often, the claim implies that the blame rests with parents who are not conscientious enough to clean or maintain their home or to properly care for their children. The implication is demeaning to the parents and distracts from the often – invisible lead dust hazards on floors that pose the greatest risk to children. So when I hear that idea, I quickly respond that dust is the key route of exposure.

However, a discussion with Hannah Chang at Earthjustice over my blog on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) July 2, 2018 proposed rule helped me realize that I was misguided with regards to defining the hazards of lead-based paints. She is the main attorney for the organizations that convinced a panel of judges in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to order the EPA to update its lead-based paint hazard standard.

Hannah Chang told me I missed the most compelling point when I pointed out in my previous blog that “EPA did not appear to have considered HUD’s 2007 American Healthy Housing Survey, which should provide a solid basis for identifying the relationship between lead in paint and lead in dust.” She was right; my logic was too focused on dust as the primary source of exposure. Here is my reasoning; it may be helpful to those planning to submit comments to EPA by the August 16 deadline on the proposed rule.

Also posted in Health policy, Lead, Public health, Regulation / Tagged EPA, Lead paint, Lead-based paint hazard standard | Read 2 Responses