EDF Health

A tale of two public comment extension requests: How they fared under the Trump EPA

By / Published: December 10, 2020

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

In recent weeks EPA has issued for public comment significant modifications to its draft risk evaluations under the Toxic Substances Control Act for two chemicals:  Pigment Violet 29 (PV29) and 1,4-dioxane.  Because EPA initially provided relatively brief comment periods on the modifications, both were subject to requests for extensions of the comment period.

The table below tells the story of how these two requests fared under the Trump EPA.  Read More »

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EPA’s final risk evaluation of trichloroethylene is scientifically flawed and understates risks to workers, the general public and those most susceptible

By / Published: November 23, 2020

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

Today the Trump Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued its final risk evaluation for trichloroethylene (TCE).  It largely tracks the agency’s draft document, retaining numerous flaws that severely understate the highly toxic chemical’s risks to workers, the general public and those most susceptible to its health impacts.

Among the evaluation’s most serious deficiencies is the abandonment of a bedrock principle of chemical risk assessment: that risk estimates be based on the most sensitive health effect.  Sadly, the final document retains the unprotective approach the Trump White House forced EPA to adopt, as reported in detail by Elizabeth Shogren of Reveal News.

Exposure to TCE is ubiquitous, coming from ambient and indoor air, vapor intrusion from contaminated sites, groundwater and drinking water wells, and food – yet EPA’s evaluation ignores or downplays each of these exposure sources and pathways.

Below we summarize some of the major concerns in EPA’s evaluation that we addressed in detail in our comments.

One silver lining:  Despite its glaring deficiencies, the risk evaluation did find that the great majority of TCE’s conditions of use present unreasonable risks—even as it grossly understated the extent of those risks.  As a result, EPA must now proceed to regulate those activities, providing the new Administration an opportunity to rectify the serious problems created by the Trump EPA.  Read More »

Also posted in Health science, Industry influence, TSCA reform / Tagged , , | Comments are closed

Righting the ship: A new chance for stronger protections against toxic chemicals

By / Published: November 17, 2020

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

In June 2016, Congress passed historic, bipartisan legislation overhauling the Toxic Substances Control Act, the country’s main chemical safety law, to better protect the public from harmful exposure to toxic chemicals. The Trump administration has spent the last four years working to undermine TCSA by driving its implementation dangerously off the rails.

Now, with President-elect Biden set to take the helm in January, there’s a tremendous opportunity not only to repair the damage done by the Trump administration, but also to use the law proactively to ensure that everyone in the country is better protected from hazardous chemicals — with attention to those whose health is most at risk and to communities where exposures are greatest.

Here are five ways to restore sound and legal implementation of the law and strengthen health protections for families across the country.

Read More »

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Industry’s influence over EPA could get even worse: Chemical advisory board nominees rife with conflicts of interest

By / Published: October 29, 2020

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

Today Environmental Defense Fund, Earthjustice, Natural Resources Defense Council, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and Union of Concerned Scientists filed comments on EPA’s list of nominees for appointment to its Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals (SACC).  The SACC conducts peer reviews of chemical risk evaluations EPA conducts under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). EPA can rectify this sad state of affairs by excluding these and any other conflicted individuals under consideration from membership on the SACC when EPA adds new members.

Our comments identified 19 nominees that have serious actual or potential conflicts of interest that should disqualify them from being appointed to the SACC.  Unfortunately, their inclusion in EPA’s list of nominees suggests either that EPA has not conducted even the most cursory of conflict-of-interest screenings of these nominees, or that the agency intends to flout conflict-of-interest concerns and skew the balance of its science advisors even further in its drive to prioritize the interests of industry over public health and environmental protection.  The most recent example of this is EPA’s appointments or elevation of members on the agency’s Science Advisory Board earlier this month.

Over the past several months, EPA received a slew of nominations for SACC membership of individuals that are employed either by companies with direct financial interest in specific chemicals or related science policy issues that fall within the remit of the SACC, or by consulting firms hired by those companies or their trade associations to represent their interests before EPA.

As extensively documented in the comments we submitted today, these individuals should not be appointed to the SACC because they trigger one or both of the federal requirements for excluding individuals from membership on federal advisory groups:  having potential or actual conflicts of interest, or creating an appearance of a lack of impartiality.  Read More »

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Passing the buck: The Trump EPA’s mind-boggling efforts to ignore the risks of 1,4-dioxane in drinking water

By / Published: September 3, 2020

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

Readers of this blog will recall the major concerns EDF, EPA’s science advisors, and many others have raised about the Trump EPA’s systematic exclusion from its risk evaluations of all human exposures to chemicals released to air, water and land.  EPA has taken this illegal, unscientific and un-health protective approach across the board in the risk evaluations it has issued to date in draft or final form under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

EDF first flagged the emergence of this fatally flawed approach over two years ago, and again when it was applied to the likely human carcinogen 1,4-dioxane, one of the first 10 chemicals undergoing TSCA risk evaluations.  Since then the Trump EPA has doubled down, repeatedly defying its own science advisors who have called out this deficiency in virtually all of their peer reviews of EPA’s draft risk evaluations.  EPA is clearly refusing to budge, issuing two final risk evaluations for methylene chloride and 1-bromopropane that seek to codify the approach.[pullquote]EPA’s Office of Water is deferring any decision on whether to regulate 1,4-dioxane in drinking water, pending completion of a risk evaluation that expressly excludes that exposure.  That exclusion is in turn based on the TSCA office’s claim that the Office of Water already has it covered.[/pullquote]

The asserted basis for ignoring tens of millions of pounds of these chemicals released annually is EPA’s claim that the releases are adequately managed under other laws the agency administers.  To bolster that claim, EPA also asserts that it has closely consulted with the EPA offices that administer those other laws to ensure this is the case.  Let’s take a closer look at the nature – and apparent effects – of that consultation in one setting:  1,4-dioxane in drinking water, which falls under the authority of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) administered by EPA’s Office of Water.  Read More »

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What the heck is going on with EPA’s risk evaluation fees under TSCA?

By / Published: August 31, 2020

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

What a mess.  That’s the best that can be said from the outside about the process EPA has followed to decide which companies are to pay fees to help defray the agency’s costs of conducting risk evaluations for the next 20 chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).[pullquote]EPA’s steps to endanger its ability to collect the fees under TSCA that Congress mandated border on self-sabotage.[/pullquote]

These fees were set forth in EPA’s final TSCA fees rule issued in October 2018.  The total fee assigned to each of the next 20 chemicals for which risk evaluations are now underway was set at $1.35 million.  That fee is to be paid by manufacturers (including importers) of a chemical.  TSCA provided EPA with authority to charge processors of these chemicals a fee as well, but the agency opted to exclude processors from such fees in its final rule (see p. 52,696).  EPA also opted not to charge fees to cover any of the costs it incurred for the first 10 risk evaluations (see p. 52,708 of the fees rule), although it had authority to do so.

Last week EPA issued what it calls its “interim final list” of companies obligated to pay fees to cover the costs of the next 20 risk evaluations.  The list is dramatically scaled-back from the agency’s earlier list, and it is impossible for the public to understand the basis for the changes.  That is in no small part due to the convoluted, opaque, and legally suspect process EPA has followed.  Read More »

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