EDF Health

The Trump EPA reaches a shocking new low in failing to protect workers under TSCA

By / Published: January 30, 2020

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

Just when I thought EPA putting workers’ health at risk by shirking its responsibilities under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) couldn’t get any worse, it has.[pullquote]The notion that worker protection can or should be relegated to the equivalent of a shock avoidance experiment is deeply offensive if not outright immoral.[/pullquote]

In its risk evaluations of existing chemicals (see our comments here and here) and its reviews of  new chemicals (see our comments here) entering the market, EPA has found ways bordering on the diabolical to avoid identifying or to understate the extent and nature of risks to workers making or using those chemicals.  The agency:

  • Simply assumes without evidence that workers will wear fully effective personal protective equipment (respirators and gloves).
  • Distorts OSHA regulations and claims they apply where they don’t.
  • Treats voluntary instruments that impose no binding requirements as if they were mandatory.
  • Assumes that if the average worker’s exposure does not exceed its acceptable risk level, then it doesn’t matter if there are exceedances for those workers most highly exposed.
  • Has unquestioningly accepted and used manufacturers’ undocumented data on workplace exposure levels even when data from more authoritative sources show far higher exposures.
  • And has adopted a cancer risk benchmark that is as much as two orders of magnitude more permissive of risk than warranted under TSCA.

All this despite TSCA’s express identification of workers as a “potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulation” that warrants special protection.

As appalling as all of this is, it just got worse. Read More »

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

EPA still has a very long way to go on transparency under TSCA

By / Published: January 28, 2020

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

EPA recently held a public meeting where it unveiled its first set of confidential business information (CBI) claim “determinations.”  These came three and half years after updates to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) required EPA to review CBI claims and publicly state the basis for its decision to approve or deny each claim.  EPA also recently finally started assigning “unique identifiers” to chemicals where it approves a claim to hide the chemical’s identity from the public.  These identifiers also come very late, having been called for starting immediately under the 2016 reforms to TSCA.

EPA also recently began posting to its ChemView database premanufacturing notices (PMNs) it receives on new chemicals, as well as some of the documents it generates when reviewing new chemicals (though these are exceedingly hard to find).

These and a few other modest recent improvements are certainly better late than never.  Their slowness in arriving, however, is a stark illustration of the far greater priority the Trump EPA has given to favoring the chemical industry’s interests over the public interest.

Moreover, EDF’s examination of these recent measures reveals both how far behind EPA still is in meeting TSCA’s mandates to provide chemical information to the public, and that EPA is failing to comply with a number of those mandates.

Last Friday EDF filed comments with EPA detailing both the shortcomings in what EPA has done and what it has failed to do.  We also provided a host of recommendations for improvements to the EPA websites and databases that are critical if they are to meet the public’s right to know about chemicals and EPA’s review of them under TSCA.  This post will summarize some of the key findings detailed in our comments.  Here is a list of topics covered in our comments and, more briefly, in this post:

Read More »

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What connects cross country skiing and chemical safety?

By Sam Lovell / Published: January 27, 2020

Sam Lovell, Project Manager.

An idyllic afternoon gliding through fresh snow may seem as far removed as you can get from Washington, D.C. decision-making about toxic chemicals. However, as recently reported by Outside Magazine, there’s an intriguing connection here that ought to give skiers, and the rest of us, some pause.

Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved a new chemical for use in ski wax. Just a few months before, the agency had planned to deny the chemical market entry based on the concern, among others, that exposure could “waterproof the lungs” – causing severe, acute harm. Due to the abrupt reversal in EPA’s decision, EDF began looking further into this case and made public records and Freedom of Information Act requests.

The intervening steps that resulted in this chemical getting the green light to market reveal serious problems in EPA’s new chemicals program regarding transparency and industry influence.

Read More »

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Promising proposal for addressing lead in schools and licensed child care – but gaps remain

By Lindsay McCormick / Published: January 23, 2020

Lindsay McCormick, Program Manager, and Tom Neltner, J.D., Chemicals Policy Director 

See all blogs in our LCR series.

Update: On February 5, 2020, we submitted comments to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on its proposal. 

Through its proposed revisions to the Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), EPA made the unprecedented move of proposing to require community water systems (CWSs) to test for lead in water at all schools and licensed child care facilities constructed prior to 2014. The current rule only requires testing if the facility is itself a regulated water system (e.g., uses own private well). While EDF fully supports testing in these facilities, we are concerned that EPA has overlooked several major issues, especially in the child care context.

Based on our experience – including a pilot project to test and remediate lead in 11 child care facilities, a training program for child care providers in Illinois, and monitoring of state child care testing requirements across the country – we believe that addressing lead in child care facilities is an important opportunity to improve public health. Though schools are also critical, we’ve focused on child care facilities as they present a major gap due to a number of reasons. First, children under the age of six are more susceptible to the harmful effects of lead – and those at the highest risk are infants who are fed formula reconstituted with tap water. Second, child care, especially home-based facilities, are often smaller operations than schools, and therefore more likely to have a lead service line. Finally, child care facilities often lack robust facility support and public accountability that schools may have.

From our background on this issue, we have identified three key flaws with EPA’s proposal. Specifically, it:

  1. Ignores lead service lines,
  2. Relies on inadequate sampling, and
  3. Does not provide sufficient support for remediation.

We also are concerned that the result of this proposed rule may sound like “one hand clapping.” If state licensing agencies and local health departments are not requiring or promoting testing, child care facilities are unlikely to cooperate, making it more difficult for CWSs to comply with the requirement. For this requirement to have greatest effect, CWSs need the support and participation of all parties involved.

This blog will provide an overview of EPA’s proposed requirement and an analysis of each of the key issues. Read More »

Also posted in Lead, Regulation / Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments are closed

Finally something we can (mostly) commend EPA for doing under TSCA

By / Published: January 14, 2020

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

Readers of this blog will know how concerned EDF is with ensuring the public’s right to know about chemicals to which they may be exposed.  We have repeatedly sounded the alarm when EPA has taken steps to deny public access to chemical information, whether for chemicals entering the market or those already in commerce.  Even in recent months, EPA has sided with chemical companies in denying access to health and safety information on chemicals EPA is assessing under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

So we were pleasantly surprised by a letter to an industry group that EPA posted on Friday.  Read More »

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

Top takeaways from The Intercept’s investigation into Trump’s toxic rollbacks

By EDF Blogs / Published: January 13, 2020

Regulatory decisions by federal agencies in Washington often feel distant – bureaucrats moving paper in ways that don’t matter to regular people. But a devastating new story by reporter Sharon Lerner of The Intercept makes clear just how awful the Trump administration’s actions on chemical safety have been for average Americans.

Lerner shows that the Trump EPA has repeatedly bowed to industry lobbyists to allow dangerous chemicals to stay on or enter the market with little or no restrictions.

EPA’s actions are not abstract bureaucratic events to Angela Ramirez, who was diagnosed with breast cancer after years of living and working “near two facilities that were emitting a cancer-causing chemical called ethylene oxide.” EPA scientists knew “that exposure to ethylene oxide caused elevated rates of tumors in the brain, lungs, uterus, and lymph systems” – but under the Trump administration, following pressure from an industry trade group, EPA decided not to follow its own science deciding whether to limit the chemical.

Lerner reports that the Trump administration, stacked with political appointees who have worked, lobbied or advocated for the chemical, tobacco, and coal industries, has been systematically undermining EPA’s ability to use the best science and get the best expert advice to protect families. They’ve been attacking programs like the Integrated Risk Information System, or IRIS, which provides evidenced-based analysis to the government to make public health decisions.

From Texas to Delaware and across the country, Lerner shows the impact of an administration that seems entirely focused on doing the bidding of industry, rather than pursing its legal mission to protect public health. They are doing so both broadly – weakening a new chemical safety law –and in a series of individual chemical assessment decisions. “Each time we see one of these assessments, there are ways in which the science has been played with,” EDF’s Lead Senior Scientist Richard Denison told Lerner.

To read more about what Lerner calls “Trump’s cancer gang” and their attacks on science and public health, check out her full article.

Also posted in Industry influence, Public health, Regulation / Tagged , , , | Comments are closed