EDF Health

A PSA for the Trump EPA: The chemical industry isn’t your “client” for the new chemicals program

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

[UPDATES ADDED 8-6-20: See insertions of bracketed italicized text below.]

[pullquote]So much for the Trump EPA’s constantly ballyhooed commitment to transparency under TSCA.[/pullquote]I blogged a few short weeks ago about just how brazen EPA officials have become in aligning themselves with the chemical industry when it comes to the agency’s review of companies’ requests to commercialize new chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

Yet it just keeps getting worse.  Read More »

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5 ways we’re holding the Trump Administration accountable on the TSCA 4-year anniversary

It’s been four years since Congress passed legislation overhauling our chemical safety system to better protect American families. In the time since that bipartisan achievement, the Trump administration has worked to systematically undermine the law and weaken chemical safety.

But we’re not sitting idly by, and we have the law on our side. This year, on the anniversary of the legislation’s passage, we’re highlighting some of the victories we’ve had and ways we’re fighting back to demand EPA protect the American people from harmful chemicals.

1. Winning important legal cases to hold EPA to the letter of the law

Last year, in response to a challenge from EDF, a federal court delivered a strong rebuke to the Trump EPA’s efforts to undermine the public’s right to know about the chemicals in our homes, schools, and workplaces. The ruling on our lawsuit means that companies can’t hide, and EPA must make public, more information about chemicals in use today.

And a ruling last year in a different case – brought by health, labor and environmental groups, including EDF – has already increased pressure on EPA to stop ignoring known sources of exposure to chemicals when assessing their risks. Conducting the comprehensive risk reviews that the law requires is critical to protecting health, especially for vulnerable populations, like children, pregnant women, and fenceline communities.

Read More »

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“Illegal, unscientific, and un-health protective”: Summing up EPA’s final methylene chloride risk evaluation

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

Today, the Trump EPA released its first final risk evaluation and determination under the reformed Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), for the carcinogenic and acutely lethal chemical methylene chloride.

Sadly, despite EPA’s rush to issue this document as the 4th anniversary of TSCA reform on June 22 approaches, EPA doubled down on the illegal, unscientific, and un-health protective approach it has taken in all of its draft risk evaluations for the first 10 chemicals reviewed under TSCA.

EDF will be closely examining this final document, but it is already apparent that EPA has grossly and systematically underestimated the exposures to and risks of methylene chloride.  Read More »

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The Trump Administration’s got a problem with testing (TSCA edition)

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

A constant criticism of EPA’s draft risk evaluations for the first 10 chemicals has been the dearth of information on which EPA has relied to draw sweeping, unqualified risk conclusions.  EDF and other stakeholders, as well as EPA’s own Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals (SACC), have repeatedly pointed to the lack of sufficient, reliable information on:[pullquote]The Trump EPA appears intent on continuing to conduct risk evaluations that are ill-informed by actual data.[/pullquote]

  • the chemicals’ presence in and releases into various environmental media;
  • their presence in and releases from industrial, commercial, and consumer products and materials;
  • the extent and magnitude of workplace exposure levels;
  • key human hazard endpoints; and
  • ecological hazards to and exposures of sediment- and soil-dwelling and terrestrial, as well as aquatic, organisms.

Concerns have also been repeatedly raised about EPA’s over-reliance on models in the absence of measured data and on physical-chemical and environment fate data to rule out exposure pathways, especially in the absence of rigorous uncertainty analyses and incorporation of uncertainty into EPA’s risk conclusions.

It’s not as if there isn’t a solution to the dearth-of-data problem.  Yet the Trump EPA has steadfastly refused to use it.  Read More »

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EPA’s own words reveal what its new chemicals program has become – a captive of industry

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

[pullquote]“The agency’s goal is to allow the commercialization of products,” said EPA associate deputy assistant administrator for new chemicals Lynn Dekleva.[/pullquote]Readers of this blog know that EDF is no fan of how the Trump EPA has implemented – in our view, twisted – the 2016 reforms made to the review process for new chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).  Decision after decision over the last 3.5 years under this administration has undercut public health and benefitted industry interests, despite some noble efforts by career staff to chart a better course.  In recent weeks the Trump EPA’s intentions have been even more clearly revealed, thanks to the trade press’s reporting of EPA political appointees’ comments delivered to industry audiences.  That’s what this post is about.  Read More »

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NGOs call on EPA to revise the draft scopes for its upcoming risk evaluations to comply with TSCA and its own regulations

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

Environmental Defense Fund, Earthjustice, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Safer Chemicals Healthy Families yesterday told the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that the 20 draft scope documents the agency released for public comment on April 9 and April 23, 2020, fail to meet TSCA and EPA regulatory requirements.  The groups called on EPA to revise the drafts to include the information that both TSCA and EPA’s Risk Evaluation Rule require be included, and then make the revised draft scopes available for public comment.  Read More »

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