EDF Health

States act while Congress fiddles

By / Published: January 28, 2013

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

Lest anyone thought that efforts by state legislators to protect their citizens from toxic chemical exposures would slacken despite Congress’ inability to take such action, this week’s announcement that legislators in at least 26 states are introducing such bills should dispel that notion.

Safer States, a national coalition of state-based environmental health organizations, notes that “between 2003 and 2011, 19 states adopted 93 chemical safety policies. The majority of legislation passed with healthy bipartisan support – 99% of Democratic legislators and 75% of Republican legislators voted in favor of bills, and both Republican and Democratic governors signed them into law.”

That trend shows no signs of abating in 2013, based on a list of state legislative activities underway, compiled by Safer States (more detail here):  At least 26 states are each to consider multiple legislation and policy changes this year that will:

  • restrict or label the use of bisphenol A (BPA) in receipts, children’s products and food packaging;
  • require removal of certain toxic flame retardants from children’s products, home furniture or building materials;
  • change disclosure rules so that concerned consumers will have a way to identify toxic chemicals in products;
  • encourage manufacturers to remove identified toxic chemicals in favor of safer alternatives.
  • ban cadmium, a dangerous, persistent metal that is often found in inexpensive children’s jewelry;
  • ban formaldehyde from cosmetics and children’s products; and
  • promote green cleaning products in schools.

The chemical industry frequently argues it just can’t live with a “patchwork” of requirements that vary from state to state.  But that’s just what it’s creating by dragging its feet on reform of the federal Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which has never been amended since its adoption nearly four decades ago. 

State legislators, like nature, abhor a vacuum.

 

 

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Regrettable, if predictable: Bisphenol S mimics estrogen just like its better-studied cousin, bisphenol A

By / Published: January 17, 2013

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

A rule of thumb in chemistry is that chemicals that look alike will more often than not act alike.  (If it looks like a duck … .)  Indeed, when chemical companies are faced with testing requirements for one of their chemicals, they routinely argue that they should be allowed to submit test data on a structurally related chemical instead. 

So when it was revealed that companies making products (such as thermal receipt paper) that contain the estrogen-mimicking compound bisphenol A (BPA) were switching to another chemical called bisphenol S (BPS), many scientists’ eyebrows quickly arched.  Read More »

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Variety is the spice of … accurate chemical testing

By / Published: January 10, 2013

Rachel Shaffer is a research assistant.  Jennifer McPartland, Ph.D., is a Health Scientist.

There has been a lot of buzz in recent years about the federal government’s new chemical testing initiatives, ToxCast and Tox21 (see, for example, these articles in Scientific American and the New York Times).  These programs are developing high-throughput (HT) in-vitro testing to evaluate—and ultimately predict—the biological effects of chemicals.  In contrast to the relatively slow pace of traditional animal testing, ToxCast and Tox21 use sophisticated robots to rapidly test thousands of chemicals at a time. As a result, they hold the potential to more efficiently fill enormous gaps in available health data, predict adverse effects, and shed light on exactly how chemicals interact and interfere with our biology. (For more on these potential benefits, see Section 5 of EDF’s Chemical Testing Primer).

Yet, among the key challenges that these new methods must address is one that traditional, animal-based methods have faced for decades: how can laboratory testing adequately account for the high degree of variability in the human population? The latest research suggests the exciting possibility that genetic diversity, at least, may be able to be incorporated into emerging HT in vitro approaches.   Read More »

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TERA’s Kids+Chemical Safety website: On non-profits, objectivity and independence

By / Published: December 21, 2012

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

My recent post about the new American Chemistry Council (ACC)-sponsored website, Kids + Chemical Safety, engendered some comments that go directly to the issues of scientific objectivity and independence.

The website says “TERA [Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment, manager of the site] was founded on the belief that an independent non-profit organization can provide a unique function to protect human health by conducting scientific research and development on risk issues in a transparent and collaborative fashion and communicating the results widely.”  The “non-profit” descriptor – which TERA uses to describe itself no fewer than eight times on the site, including four times on this one page alone – seems intended to convey that TERA provides information that is purely objective and that it operates in a manner that is independent of who pays it to do its work.

It’s critical to recognize that being a non-profit does not conflate to, or somehow confer the right to claim, objectivity or independence.  The National Rifle Association is a non-profit that clearly has strongly held and expressed opinions.  EDF is also a non-profit, but I don’t pretend, as does TERA, that we don’t have a particular perspective and position.

So putting the issue of non-profit status entirely aside, we should judge TERA’s claim that its website provides information that is objective and independent based on its content, and that’s where it becomes quite clear that the information is neither.  Read More »

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Chemicals R Us: New ACC-sponsored website says chemicals are safe and fun for kids!

By / Published: December 19, 2012

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

[See also my more recent post on this topic here.]

I was alerted yesterday to a new website – kidschemicalsafety.org – funded by the American Chemistry Council (ACC) and run by its right-hand “non-profit,” TERA (Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment).  The website and an accompanying Facebook page are a wonder to behold, replete with photos of happy kids.  For the most part, I’ll leave it to you to explore.  But here are a few highlights.  Read More »

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Scientists push back against a bill that would pervert the whole concept of conflict of interest

By / Published: December 7, 2012

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

This week, two letters – one signed by 13 prominent public health scientists and the other signed by the heads of 8 major national environmental organizations – were sent to the House Science Committee voicing strong opposition to H.R. 6564, the EPA Science Advisory Board Reform Act of 2012.

The sponsors of this legislation claim that it is needed to “enhance transparency and limit conflicts of interest” on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Science Advisory Board (SAB) and its panels.  In fact, it would do the precise opposite.  Here’s how the scientists’ letter summarizes the impacts that would arise from passage of the bill:   

“This proposed legislation would only serve to reverse progress in bringing the best scientific advice and analysis to EPA.  The consequence would be to deprive EPA of needed scientific advice on the most complex and pressing environmental health problems of our day.” 

Among the most perverse provisions of this bill (and there are many) are two that would turn the very notion of conflict of interest on its head.  One would limit scientists that receive competitive grants through EPA’s extramural research program from serving on the SAB or its panels – claiming that such funding constitutes a conflict of interest.  The scientists’ letter goes directly at that provision:

“The underlying idea that scientists who obtain funding from EPA for any project have conflicts about all EPA matters is baseless and reflects a misunderstanding of who we are as scientists and our role in society.”

Another provision is even more perverse:  It would reverse longstanding conflict-of-interest policy and practice followed by virtually every authoritative scientific body in the world – including the National Academy of Sciences, the International Agency for Research on Cancer and the World Health Organization – by allowing unfettered access of industry representatives with direct conflicts of interest to serve on the SAB and its panels, as long as their conflicts are disclosed.

Who’s behind this radical legislation?  Here’s a hint:  The American Chemistry Council (ACC), which represents the chemical manufacturing industry, couldn’t wait to express its unequivocal support, stating it “cannot overstate the importance of this bill to Americans” in a press release titled “House Science Committee Proposes Common Sense Reform To EPA Scientific Advisory Process:  Proposed Legislation Would Improve Expert Panel Selection, Limit Conflicts of Interest and Enhance Systematic Reviews.”  And ACC’s been singing the bill’s praises all over town ever since (see, e.g., slide 6 of this ACC presentation).  Read More »

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