EDF Health

Our health protections at risk: TSCA reform undone by “regulatory reform”?

By Lindsay McCormick / Published: May 8, 2017

Lindsay McCormick is a Project Manager. Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist.

On February 24th, President Trump signed Executive Order 13777, calling on all government agencies to recommend regulations for “potential repeal, replacement, or modification.” As of this writing, EPA has received 46,050 comments on its regulatory reform process. Interestingly, the overwhelming majority of these comments come from individuals across the country voicing their support for strengthening EPA’s regulatory protections, demonstrating that Americans stand strong in their opposition to regulatory roadblocks and rollbacks.

In compliance with this executive order, EPA held a stakeholder meeting last week to identify “regulatory reform” opportunities under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

The irony – and absurdity – of this process is that not even a year ago, Congress passed, with overwhelming bipartisan support, sweeping reforms to TSCA, finally providing EPA with new tools and authority to review and manage chemicals more effectively. The need for a credible regulatory agency—one able to make timely, independent, science-based decisions about chemical safety—was seen by all parties as essential to increase public confidence in the safety of chemicals. Under-regulation, not over-regulation, has been the clear problem in this arena for decades.  Read More »

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

New but not improved: The new Regulatory Accountability Act would severely threaten TSCA implementation and many other vital health protections

By / Published: May 4, 2017

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

Last week, as anticipated, Senator Rob Portman introduced his updated Regulatory Accountability Act (RAA).  Sens. Hatch, Heitcamp and Manchin cosponsored the bill.

While it’s new, it can’t be said it’s improved.  Some problems raised with Sen. Portman’s earlier version of the bill were addressed but many were not and quite a few new very problematic provisions were added.

In March, I blogged about the irony that RAA would reinstate a number of requirements that Congress just last June removed from the old Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) through the Lautenberg Act amendments that were enacted with overwhelming bipartisan support.  Unfortunately, many of those problems remain with Sen. Portman’s new version of RAA.  And, those flawed requirements would be imposed across the entire federal government, effectively rewriting dozens of federal statutes simultaneously.

I have updated my earlier analysis of RAA vs. the new TSCA to reflect the new version of RAA.   Read More »

Also posted in Health policy, Regulation / Tagged , | Comments are closed

Of foxes, henhouses and TSCA implementation: The chemical industry burrows into EPA’s toxics office

By / Published: April 19, 2017

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

The lead article in this past Sunday’s New York Times is titled “With Trump Appointees, a Raft of Potential Conflicts and ‘No Transparency’.”  It features several prominent examples of recent political appointments of industry representatives and industry lobbyists to key policy positions where they are now charged with or involved in reviewing or crafting the very same agency regulations and policies that were the focus of their paid private sector work just prior to their appointments.

Add EPA’s implementation of the newly amended Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to the list.

Dr. Nancy Beck has just been appointed Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator in the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP) at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and reportedly started in that position on Monday, April 17, 2017.  Dr. Beck is moving into her new position at EPA directly from her job as Senior Director, Regulatory Science Policy, Division of Regulatory & Technical Affairs at the American Chemistry Council (ACC), a position she has held since January, 2012.  ACC is the main trade association for the chemicals industry, with a membership of more than 150 chemical companies, including such behemoths as BASF, Dow, DuPont and ExxonMobil.

In her new job, Dr. Beck is expected to play a key role in implementing the new reforms made to TSCA, including in critical decisions that EPA will be making literally any day now, many of them driven by firm statutory deadlines.  These decisions will directly affect the financial interests of the companies represented by ACC.  And they will involve deciding whether or not the agency should take positions for which Dr. Beck has advocated on behalf of her former employer, as recently as last month.  Any reasonable person would see a conflict here, one sufficient to seriously question whose interests Dr. Beck will be representing in playing such a role in TSCA implementation.  But as the Times article indicates, this Administration appears to have little concern about the fox guarding the henhouse.

Nor does this situation bode well for the prospect of creating a credible federal system capable of restoring public and market confidence in the safety of chemicals – which was the key reason that such strong bipartisan and stakeholder support gelled behind the major reforms made to TSCA just last June.  Placing a key chemical industry player in a position where she will now have direct and major influence over the direction that reform will take raises serious new doubts about the industry’s claims that it supports providing EPA with stronger, independent authority and resources to vigorously establish the safety of chemicals in and entering commerce.   Read More »

Also posted in Health policy / Tagged , , | Comments are closed

Where there’s smoke, there are mirrors: The Trump Administration’s claim to preserve TSCA implementation under its proposed EPA budget is pure illusion

By / Published: April 10, 2017

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

As more details emerge about the Trump Administration’s proposed budget cuts, it’s becoming clearer that the public’s health could well take one of the worst hits.  Trump has proposed a 31% cut to the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), paired with similarly deep reductions in staff.  The details are laid out in a March 21, 2017, internal memo from EPA’s Acting Chief Financial Officer.

Among the biggest cuts are to the Agency’s research, both research it conducts and that undertaken by labs and universities it helps fund.  EPA Office of Research and Development (ORD) would see its funding cut nearly in half, from $483 million to $250 million in 2018. The axe would fall across the full spectrum of EPA’s research:  air, climate, and energy; human health risk assessment; safe and sustainable water; sustainable communities; homeland security; and chemical safety.  EPA’s extramural STAR grant program would be entirely eliminated.

Scroll through Attachment A of the memo and you’ll see program after program proposed to be eliminated or slashed.  But there is a notable exception, on p. 9 of the Attachment:  an apparent increase for an item labeled “OCSPP / EPM / Toxic Substances: Chemical Risk Review and Reduction,” accompanied by this explanation:  “This program change increases $13,834K in non-pay resources in support of the new work required under the updated TSCA law.”

On one level, this seems like a bright spot in an otherwise dismal document, though it appears that the increase is in anticipation of the fees that the new TSCA authorizes EPA to collect from industry to help offset up to 25% of program costs.  Still, unlike most of the rest of the Agency, the program’s base budget is proposed to remain essentially intact.

No doubt this reflects the strong bipartisan support that led to last year’s passage of the Lautenberg Act and the continuing need for the chemical industry to be able to point to a viable federal chemical safety program in order to restore public and market confidence and seek to temper state and market action to restrict dangerous chemicals.  (I’ve recently blogged, however, about the mixed signals being sent by the industry; see here and here.)

While this may seem like good news, the notion that EPA could somehow neatly carve out one program area and keep it functioning well when the carving knives are rampantly slashing everything around it is, well, preposterous.   Read More »

Also posted in EPA, Health policy / Tagged | Comments are closed

A primer on the new Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and what led to it

By / Published: April 3, 2017

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

There is a swirl of activity underway around implementation of the Lautenberg Act, last year’s overhaul of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), and we’ve been
blogging quite a bit about those developments.

I’ve taken a step back here from implementation, however, and developed a new “primer” that discusses what led to the new law and describes in some detail the key reforms Lautenberg made to the original TSCA and how the law works.

The primer is intended to serve as an introduction and guide to the new law for those that haven’t been steeped in the details and provides our perspective on the key provisions.  It also discusses those aspects of the new law that may be of particular interest and relevance to the public health community.

For the latest on the state of play on implementation, please keep an eye on our blog.

Also posted in Health policy / Tagged | Comments are closed

EPA’s ban on high-risk uses of trichloroethylene needs to get over the finish line

By Jennifer McPartland / Published: March 31, 2017

Jennifer McPartland, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist with the Health Program.

Trichloroethylene, or TCE for short, is a very toxic chemical. No doubt about it. Among other health effects, TCE is known to cause cancer and interfere with development.  It is also toxic to the immune system and kidneys. While the vast majority of TCE in the U.S. is used to make other chemicals (i.e., is used as a chemical intermediate), approximately 15% of TCE has other commercial and consumer purposes, including as a metal degreaser and spot cleaning agent.

Over the past several years, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) took a hard look at exposures and potential health risks—including to workers, consumers, and bystanders—resulting from certain commercial and consumer uses of TCE. It found clearly excessive risks from these uses, which prompted the agency to take steps to reduce these exposures.

In December 2016, using its authority under section 6 of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), EPA proposed a rule to ban the use of TCE as an aerosol degreaser and as a spot cleaning agent in commercial dry cleaning facilities—marking the first time in nearly 3 decades it has tried to restrict a chemical under TSCA. A second proposed rule to ban the use of TCE as a vapor degreaser followed a month later in January 2017 and is undergoing public comment.

The public comment period on the first TCE proposed rule closed recently. EDF filed extensive comments urging the agency to finalize the rule as soon as possible.

Highlights of our comments are below:   Read More »

Also posted in Health policy, Health science, Regulation / Tagged , | Comments are closed