EDF Health

Adding a hammer to TSCA’s tool belt: Clear deadlines and, yes, hammers to ensure they’re met, are essential to TSCA reform

By / Published: November 15, 2010

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

For decades, the American chemical industry has produced and used chemicals virtually without condition, due to the laissez-faire approach embodied in TSCA.  The consequence?  Tens of thousands of chemicals are in everyday use with little health and environmental data, let alone evidence of their safety.  This has led to a crisis in confidence among commercial buyers, users and sellers of chemicals and products made using chemicals – not to mention consumers, state and local government and the general public.

Meaningful TSCA reform must address these problems, by not only systematically subjecting chemicals on the market to data requirements and safety determinations – but also ensuring all this is done in an efficient and timely manner.

That’s where hammers come in.  Read More »

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Reporting deferred is right-to-know denied: ACC seeks major delays in EPA chemical reporting program

By / Published: November 2, 2010

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

Well, in its comments on EPA’s proposed rule to enhance chemical information reporting under the TSCA Inventory Update Rule (IUR), it took the American Chemistry Council (ACC) all of 5 paragraphs to get through the lip service it no doubt felt it had to pay to supporting EPA’s proposals “in principle,” and then proceed to devote 31 pages to arguments opposing virtually every element of EPA’s proposals.

Cunningly on its part, ACC’s arguments often do not oppose outright the EPA proposals.  Rather, it seeks to put off their implementation for as long as possible.  EPA’s proposed rule calls for reporting in 2011 that would provide information for years 2006 and forward.  In contrast, ACC would have EPA put off implementation of all of its proposed IUR enhancements, with the result that both EPA and the public would not get any of the additional information until at least 2015.

Like we said in the title of this post:  Reporting deferred is right-to-know denied.

We’ll be posting more about ACC’s comments in the coming weeks, but in this post, we’ll consider the core argument ACC makes for deferral:  that “the business of chemistry is product-focused, not substance focused.”  ACC would have us believe their member companies don’t know what chemicals are in any of the products (i.e., mixtures of chemicals) they make and sell.

This argument warrants – ahem – additional scrutiny.  Read More »

Posted in Health policy, Regulation / Tagged , , , , | Comments are closed

Hitting ’em where it hurts: BPA reduces sperm quantity and quality in male workers

By / Published: October 28, 2010

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

As reported by Rob Stein in the Washington Post this morning, a NIOSH-funded study of male Chinese workers conducted by researchers at Kaiser-Permanente in Oakland, California has found that exposure to the endocrine-disrupting chemical bisphenol A (BPA) significantly increases the incidence of low sperm counts and concentrations, as well as lowered sperm motility and higher mortality.

The 5-year study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Fertility and Sterility (that’s a title only slightly more cheery than the CDC’s publication Morbidity and Mortality!), shows that the same kinds of adverse effects of BPA on sperm already observed in animal studies also occur in humans with detectable levels of BPA in their urine.

And while the most pronounced effects were observed in highly exposed workers, the authors of the study note:

Similar dose-response associations were observed among participants with only environmental BPA exposure at levels comparable to men in the general United States population.

Despite a markedly reduced sample size in this group of men exposed only to low environmental BPA sources, the inverse correlation between increased urine BPA level and decreased sperm concentration and total sperm count remain statistically significant.

Read More »

Posted in Emerging science, Health science / Tagged , , , , , , | Read 2 Responses

Public health advocates to the chemical industry: Stop hobbling EPA

By / Published: October 12, 2010

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

Today, EDF joined with 32 other environmental justice, health and environmental organizations to file comments [PDF] with EPA that strongly support its effort to improve its ability to obtain – and share with the public – robust information about the production, processing and use of chemicals in the U.S.

While the details of EPA’s proposed rule and many of our comments are heavily wonky, the motivation and goals are far from it:  To make sure that EPA, the marketplace and the public have the information they need to guard against harm from dangerous chemicals.  That requires knowing a whole lot more than we do today about what chemicals are in commerce, in what quantities, how they’re used – essential to understanding how we may be exposed.

Robust information is the lifeblood of a sound chemicals management system.  Government needs access to comprehensive, reliable information to inform policy, programmatic and regulatory decisions it must make to carry out its mission.  The market needs access to such information to inform the myriad decisions made every day by producers, sellers and users of chemicals and products and materials made using chemicals.  And researchers, the public and groups that work in the public interest need access if they are to have confidence in, and be able meaningfully to contribute to, decisions and actions taken by government and the private sector.

In an earlier post, we made the point that the chemical industry’s reactions to these modest proposals will be a litmus test for how serious it is in acting on its rhetoric about the need for EPA and the public to have more and better information on chemicals.  With the comment period closing today for EPA’s proposed rule, look here in the coming weeks for our assessment on industry’s comments.

What follows is a summary of our comments, indicating both what we support and what more is needed.  Read More »

Posted in Health policy, Industry influence, Regulation / Tagged , , , | Comments are closed

Sludging through the nano lifecycle: Caution ahead

By / Published: September 23, 2010

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

Researchers at Virginia Tech have identified and characterized silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) in the sewage sludge produced by an operating municipal wastewater treatment plant.  The study is notable in several respects:  It is the first time AgNPs have been detected in a field-scale study, one of a real-world operation representative of a real-world exposure scenario to boot.  It shows that silver can exist in wastewater treatment products as nanoparticles.  It indicates such particles may be most likely to partition to sludge under common treatment technologies.  And it suggests that silver may be chemically transformed in the course of wastewater treatment.

The study did not demonstrate that the AgNPs detected in the sludge originated from products containing such nanoparticles, as some news stories have suggested, although the authors indicate such a source “is likely.”  But the findings have important implications for nano safety nonetheless.  Read More »

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Voters say “I am Not a Guinea Pig”: New poll shows strong, deep, bipartisan support for comprehensive chemical safety overhaul

By / Published: September 14, 2010

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

Today, the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families coalition released the results of a poll conducted by the well-respected Mellman Group in key swing districts around the country.  It shows that Americans of all stripes and political persuasions overwhelmingly support a major overhaul of our nation’s chemical safety law.

A whopping 84% of likely voters say that “tightening controls” on chemicals is important, with 50% calling it “very important.”  That response includes 75% of Republicans and 82% of Independents.  When provided with a brief description of the reform proposals recently introduced into Congress, seven in 10 likely voters indicated they favor the legislation.

But here are the real kickers:  When given more detail about its specific provisions, support for the legislation went up significantly, from 71% to 82%.  And the largest increases in support were seen among Republicans (a 25% increase) and those in a household dependent on the chemical industry (22% increase).  Read More »

Posted in Health policy, TSCA reform / Tagged , | Comments are closed