EDF Health

ECHA adds seven more Substances of Very High Concern to REACH Candidate List

By Allison Tracy / Published: June 2, 2011

Allison Tracy is a Chemicals Policy Fellow. Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.

The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) issued a press release on Tuesday announcing the addition of seven chemicals to the Candidate List of Substances of Very High Concern (SVHC) under the European Union’s REACH Regulation.  [Update 6/20/11:  The formal addition of these substances to the candidate list, the initial announcement of which this post addressed, happened today.  See ECHA’s press release, which also contains some additional information about the uses of these chemicals.  The full candidate list including these seven substances is available here.]

All of the chemicals are officially classified as Carcinogenic, Mutagenic or Reproductive toxicants (CMRs).  Their addition brings the total number of chemicals on the Candidate List to 53.  Adding a chemical to REACH’s Candidate List is the first step toward subjecting it to REACH’s Authorization process, whereby the chemical can be used only if specifically authorized by EU authorities.

In this brief post we present a bit more information on these latest seven SVHCs, including the extent of their presence in U.S. commerce and their main uses.  Read More »

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They paved paradise, all right, and with a potent human carcinogen to boot

By / Published: May 17, 2011

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

Imagine if someone spread a human carcinogen across millions of acres of land.  Then imagine that the carcinogen was found to be entering surface waters due to runoff from the treated acreage.  And then that the carcinogen was found to be accumulating in the dust in homes located near the treated acres.

Far-fetched?  Hardly.  Welcome to the good ol’ US of A.   Read More »

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Chemical safety evaluation: Potential benefits of emerging test methods

By Jennifer McPartland / Published: May 12, 2011

Jennifer McPartland, Ph.D., is a Health Scientist.

Parts in this series:      Part 1     Part 2     Part 3     Part 4

This is the third in a series of blog posts on new approaches that federal agencies are exploring to improve how chemicals are evaluated for safety.  Previous posts primarily focused on the scientific principles underlying these efforts.  This post will take a pause from scientific fundamentals to discuss some of the opportunities presented by these more novel methods, while subsequent posts will address some of their limitations and remaining challenges.  (Not to worry, though, I’ll soon get back to computer-simulated organs as promised.)  Read More »

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A most-pressing Health Affair: Acting as if our children’s health matters

By / Published: May 5, 2011

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

Health policy history of sorts was made this week:  The prestigious journal Health Affairs, the nation’s leading journal of health policy, unveiled its first-ever issue devoted entirely to environmental health.  It did so via a briefing held in Washington, DC on Wednesday that featured several pre-eminent environmental health experts, including David Fukuzawa, Program Director for Health at The Kresge Foundation; Linda Birnbaum, Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS); and Kenneth Olden, Professor and Founding Dean at the new City University of New York’s School of Public Health and former long-time NIEHS Director.

A sneak peak has been provided via advanced publication of some of the journal issue’s articles.  Prominent among the themes of these articles:  The high and increasing health and economic costs of unregulated exposures to unsafe and inadequately tested chemicals.

I’ll call attention here to two papers in particular:

Read More »

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Pediatricians: Reform TSCA to protect kids. ACC responds (a la W.C. Fields): We love kids, too

By / Published: April 26, 2011

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

A long-awaited and full-throated endorsement of comprehensive reform of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) from the venerable American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP) was published online yesterday in the journal Pediatrics.

Right down the line, the AAP’s 8-page policy statement calling for a wholesale overhaul of TSCA mirrors the recommendations of health and environmental advocates, academic researchers and just about anyone else who has paid attention to the mounting body of evidence documenting the linkages between rising chemical exposures and adverse effects on the health of our population, especially the most vulnerable among us:  the developing fetus, infants and young children.

The AAP’s recommendations also closely track key provisions in TSCA reform bills introduced last year in both Houses of Congress as well as the Safe Chemicals Act of 2011 just re-introduced in the U.S. Senate this month.

This latest statement from the Academy adds it to the list of other major medical and health associations that have previously called on Congress to  revamp TSCA, including the American Medical Association, the American Public Health Association and the American Nurses Association.

Given this growing chorus, it is perhaps not surprising that the American Chemistry Council (ACC) would seek to worm its way in to claim that it, too, loves kids and supports TSCA reform.

But dig a bit deeper, and what is most striking is that ACC stridently opposes essentially every element of TSCA reform called for by the American Academy of Pediatrics.  Read More »

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Could these chemicals make my grandchild look fat?

By / Published: April 20, 2011

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

In an earlier post by my colleague Dr. Jennifer McPartland, she described new research that is linking certain chemical exposures to the rising epidemic of diabetes and obesity.  Some of that research, mainly conducted in laboratory animals, is revealing that when a mother is exposed to such chemicals before or during pregnancy, her offspring are more likely to suffer from diabetes and obesity as they mature.

How might such a proclivity toward development of diabetes and obesity later in life be transferred from one generation to the next, from mother to child?

In a word, epigenetics.   Read More »

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