EDF Health

GAO affirms the Trump EPA’s political manipulation of the IRIS formaldehyde assessment

By / Published: March 7, 2019

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

I blogged last month about the Trump EPA’s corrupt actions to bury the long-awaited assessment of the carcinogen formaldehyde conducted by the agency’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) program.  That post cited an article in the Wall Street Journal that noted a forthcoming report by Congress’ Government Accountability Office (GAO) that was expected to expose the suspect process used by conflicted political appointees at EPA to prevent public release and completion of that scientific assessment over the past 15 months.  We also noted disturbing indications that EPA intends to redo the assessment of formaldehyde under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), under the control of political appointees who came to EPA directly from the chemical industry’s main trade association and while there led its efforts to undermine IRIS. [pullquote]GAO confirms in spades the concerted efforts by the agency’s political leadership to fabricate a rationale for abandoning the formaldehyde assessment, which has been ready for public and peer review since the fall of 2017.[/pullquote]

GAO’s report is out, and yesterday it featured prominently at a Senate hearing at which top GAO officials testified.  That testimony confirms in spades the recounting in our earlier blog post of the concerted efforts by the agency’s political leadership to fabricate a rationale for abandoning the formaldehyde assessment, which has been ready for public and peer review since the fall of 2017.

In the wake of the GAO report, Senator Carper and other members of Congress from both houses have sent a letter to EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler calling on him to complete the formaldehyde assessment and release documents pertaining to potential ethical and scientific integrity policy violations by EPA political appointees.

I won’t further rehash our earlier post, but will simply post a key excerpt from the hearing, an exchange between Senator Tom Carper (DE) and Mark Gaffigan, Managing Director for Natural Resources and Environment at GAO.  I’ll highlight some key passages in which GAO describes what its investigation found.

EXCERPT FROM YESTERDAY’S GAO TESTIMONY   Read More »

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

$10 in benefits for every $1 invested – Minnesota estimates benefits of lead service line replacement

By Tom Neltner, Senior Director, Safer Chemicals Initiative / Published: March 5, 2019

Tom Neltner, J.D., Chemicals Policy Director

Last week, the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) released a report estimating that investing $4 billion in virtually eliminating lead in drinking water over 20 years would provide societal benefits of more than $8 billion. The state agency only counted the societal benefits from avoiding the loss of IQ points due to children’s exposure to lead.

Replacing lead service lines (LSLs) – the lead pipes that connect a building’s plumbing to the water main under the street – yielded the greatest benefit with an investment of $0.228 to $0.365 billion yielding $2.118 to $4.235 billion in benefits. Replacing lead fixtures and solder had a lower, but still significant, return on the investment.

Based on this analysis, MDH recommended as high priority that the state conduct an inventory of LSLs and that LSLs be removed “at a measured pace” of 20 years. It also recommended undertaking as a medium priority an awareness campaign focused on the danger of lead in drinking water to formula-fed infants younger than nine months old and as a low priority a general public information campaign to prompt homeowners and renters to take action if they have an LSL.

The agency, which includes both the state’s drinking water protection program and its lead poisoning prevention program, prepared the report in response to a provision in a state appropriations law passed in 2017. The report is important because it is the first state assessment we know of, and it reports an impressive return on the investment of more than $10 for every $1 invested in LSL replacement. For these reasons, we took a close look at the analysis and the underlying assumptions.

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Posted in Drinking water, Health policy, Health science, Lead / Tagged , , , , | Authors: / Comments are closed

A gap remains in the circular economy conversation: Toxic chemicals in packaging

By Tom Neltner, Senior Director, Safer Chemicals Initiative / Published: February 27, 2019

Boma Brown-West, Senior Manager, Tom Neltner, Chemicals Policy Director, and Michelle Harvey, Consultant.

This is the first blog in a series evaluating the challenges associated with single-use food packaging waste.

This week Walmart joined a growing number of companies that are trying to advance the circular economy for packaging. Like previous commitments from Nestle, Coca-Cola and McDonald’s, Walmart is stepping up its efforts to use more recyclable packaging, incorporate more recycled content, and accelerate development of collection and recycling infrastructures. EDF has a long history fighting for greater and smarter plastics recycling, so we are pleased to see more companies working to eliminate plastic packaging waste from our environment. However, something is often missing from their statements: commitments for safer packaging free of toxic chemicals.

What defines safer packaging?

There are many facets to sustainable packaging: recyclability, reusability, lower material and energy inputs, and the avoidance of toxic chemicals.  A significant amount of virgin plastic used in packaging currently contains toxic chemical additives such as ortho-phthalates or contaminants such as heavy metals. These chemicals have been linked to diseases and health disorders, such as reproductive problems and impaired brain development. When tainted plastic packaging is reused or recycled, these toxic chemicals persist and may accumulate to worrisome levels until the packaging is retired, posing long-term threats to our health.

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Posted in FDA, Food, Regulation / Tagged , , , , , | Comments are closed

FDA seeks expert panel review of neurodevelopmental risk of inorganic arsenic in food

By Tom Neltner, Senior Director, Safer Chemicals Initiative / Published: February 25, 2019

Tom Neltner, J.D., is Chemicals Policy Director and Maricel Maffini, Ph.D., Consultant

Updated March 27, 2019 to include a link to EDF’s comments and to Project TENDR’s comments.

The United States has asked the Codex Alimentarius (Codex), the international standard setting body for food, to prioritize inorganic arsenic for evaluation of non-cancer effects such as neurodevelopmental, immunological, and cardiovascular effects. The evaluation would be conducted by an expert panel convened by the Joint Food and Agriculture Organization / World Health Organization Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA), on which Codex relies for scientific advice.[1]

EDF will submit comments in support of the proposal and encourages others to do the same.[2] However, FDA should not wait for the review to be finished before incorporating this evidence into its long-awaited standards for inorganic arsenic in rice.

Evidence of harm from inorganic arsenic on children’s neurodevelopment has grown more compelling

Inorganic arsenic is a known water and food contaminant. FDA has measured it in many foods included in its Total Diet Study, but it’s mostly known for its presence in baby and infant foods such as rice and fruit juices. The presence of inorganic arsenic in staples of children’s diets is concerning due to its risk of potential lasting health effects. The risks posed by inorganic arsenic on fetal and child brain development has become increasingly clear since the early 2000s as epidemiological studies began to scrutinize more subtle effects such as learning disorders and epigenetic effects. Earlier studies mostly focused on gross measures such as low body weight or increased stillbirths.

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Posted in FDA, Food, Health policy, Public health, Regulation / Tagged , , , | Authors: / Read 1 Response

The Trump EPA is throwing workers facing risks from new TSCA chemicals under the bus

By / Published: February 21, 2019

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

[For more on this topic, see our recent 3-part myth-busting series:
Part 1          Part 2         Part 3]

We have blogged before (see here and here) about the steps initiated in mid-2018 by the Trump EPA to weaken new chemical reviews under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) – rendering them even less health-protective than under TSCA prior to the 2016 reforms enacted in the Lautenberg Act.

As these debilitating policy changes – still never publicly described or released, and apparently still not written down even for use within EPA – have taken hold, we have seen dozens of flawed new chemical decisions emerge.  We blogged extensively about the first such decision made under the new regimen in late July 2018.  Since then, about 60 more final determinations reflecting the new policies have been posted on EPA’s website.  These decisions pertain mostly to premanufacture notifications (PMNs), along with a few for significant new use notices (SNUNs).  At least 80% of these chemicals were cleared to enter commerce without being subject to any conditions whatsoever.  EPA accomplished this by issuing a final determination that each cleared chemical, or significant new use of a chemical, is “not likely to present an unreasonable risk.”  For these determinations, EPA is required under TSCA to post a statement of its finding, which it does in another table on its website.

We have been closely examining these “not likely” determination documents.  Some deeply disturbing patterns are emerging.  This post will describe one of them.[pullquote]A new addition to the long and growing list of illegal actions EPA has taken to render the new chemicals program weaker than under the old TSCA.[/pullquote]

Most striking is that for a significant majority of these chemicals, EPA either identified significant risks to workers or indicated it had insufficient information to determine the level of risk to workers.  Under the 2016 reforms to TSCA, either finding – that there are or may be risks or that there is insufficient information to determine the level of risk – requires EPA to issue an order specifying conditions sufficient to eliminate the risk.  Yet EPA did no such thing; instead, it cleared the chemicals for unfettered market access.   Read More »

Posted in Health policy, Industry influence, Regulation, TSCA reform, Worker safety / Tagged , , | Read 2 Responses

The elephant in the room: potential biopersistence of short-chain PFAS

By Tom Neltner, Senior Director, Safer Chemicals Initiative / Published: February 20, 2019

Maricel Maffini, Ph.D., Consultant and Tom Neltner, J.D., Chemicals Policy Director

In January 2018, US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) scientists published a peer-reviewed journal article stating a commonly used raw material to make greaseproof paper is likely to persist in the human body. FDA scientists’ sophisticated analysis and remarkable conclusion raises questions about the broad assumption that short-chain perfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS), as a class, did not accumulate.

Strangely, two recent reviews funded by the FluoroCouncil, ignored FDA scientists’ study even though it was published ten months before the industry group submitted their analysis for peer-review. The peer reviewers appear to have missed the omission as well. As a result, the industry evaluations continue to perpetuate the flawed assumptions, concluding that perfluorohexanoic acid (PFHxA) and related short-chain PFAS “present negligible human health risk” and that this substance alone is a suitable marker for the “safety of fluorotelomer replacement chemistry.”

In this blog, we discuss the differences between the studies and the implications of the discordance between FDA’s and industry’s conclusions for the safety assessment of short-chain PFAS.

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Posted in Drinking water, FDA, Health policy, Health science, Public health, Regulation / Tagged , , , | Comments are closed