EDF Health

Lead Cables: 66,000 miles overhead or underwater

By Tom Neltner, Senior Director, Safer Chemicals Initiative / Published: July 26, 2023
Abandoned telecom cable leaching lead into Idaho fishing waters.

Abandoned telecom cable leaching lead into Idaho fishing waters Photo: Monique Rydel-Fortner

What’s New?

A blockbuster Wall Street Journal (WSJ) investigation showed that lead-sheathed telecom cables are releasing toxic lead into water or surface soil. We are aware of more than 2,000 of these cables across the nation—and more than 300 of those pose a threat to community drinking water sources.

Recognizing the potential risks to public health, EDF, Clean Water Action, and Below the Blue asked EPA on July 17 to investigate potential harms and replace abandoned lead cables strung between telephone poles, as well as any that are accessible to children.

In response, AT&T reported that it has more than 66,000 miles of lead cables, most of which are the overhead type, with the balance running underwater. This is a stunning amount – enough to circle the earth 2.5 times!

Legislators are already demanding that telecom firms act, and EPA and the Department of Justice say they are reviewing the issue. In addition, New York Governor Kathy Hochul directed three key state agencies to investigate the risks. In response, the agencies sent letters to 246 telecom providers requesting their inventory of lead cables. I also appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box to explain the situation, EDF’s role in the investigation, and the cables’ potential risks. Read More »

Posted in Contamination, Drinking water, Health hazards, Health policy, Regulation, Risk assessment, Risk evaluation / Tagged , , , , | Authors: / Comments are closed

Broken GRAS: FDA’s lack of post-market oversight continues to create health risks

By Maricel Maffini, PhD, Consultant and Tom Neltner, Senior Director, Safer Chemicals Initiative / Published: July 11, 2023

Brown glass vial surrounded by pepper corns

What Happened?

In April, a company called Prime Research Reports issued a press release in which it claimed FDA had approved THP (tetrahydropiperine) as a Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS) substance “for use in food products.” There is no record that FDA has either reviewed or approved THP for use in food.

The report describes Sabinsa as a manufacturer of THP and as “a major player” in that market.[1] The substance, commercially known as Cosmoperine, is derived from a highly purified extract from black pepper; the extract, which is more than 95% piperine, is also made by Sabinsa and is marketed as BioPerine. The company describes piperine as an alkaloid present in black and long pepper.

Read More »

Posted in Adverse health effects, Broken GRAS, FDA, Food, GRAS, Health hazards, Industry influence, Risk assessment, Risk evaluation / Tagged , , , , , , | Authors: , / Read 1 Response

Is it time to rethink “lead-safe” and “lead-free”?

By Tom Neltner, Senior Director, Safer Chemicals Initiative / Published: June 30, 2023

By Tom Neltner, Senior Director, Safer Chemicals Initiative, Environmental Defense Fund and Charlotte Brody, National Director, Healthy Babies Bright Futures

Key Message

The scientific consensus is that there is no known safe level of lead exposure, and that no environment or home is truly free of lead.

With a few exceptions, we think it is time to retire the terms “lead-safe” and “lead-free” from our vocabulary. It sends conflicting messages to the public, consumers, and decision-makers. And it may undermine our efforts to reduce children’s exposure to lead from any source.

Rationale

Collectively, we have dedicated over a half-century to protecting children from lead. During that time, we and other advocates have used different terms to communicate our goals. Often, we drew our terms from the federal government. For example:

  • “Lead-free” has been used by Congress since 1986 to define drinking water pipes with no more than 80,000 parts per million (ppm) of lead. It kept the term in 2014 when it changed the level from 80,000 to 2,500 ppm. Similarly, FDA issued guidance in 2010 allowing a “lead-free” label on pottery if it meets the agency’s limits on lead.
  • “Lead-safe” is in the title for HUD’s 1999 rule to reduce lead-based paint exposure in federally assisted EPA also refers to “lead-safe work practices” in its 2008 renovation, repair and painting (RRP) rule for residential property. In addition, EPA created a “lead-safe” logo in 2010 for certified RRP firms. And HUD, EPA, and CPSC use the term in their pamphlet given to millions of families renting or buying homes built before 1978.

As a result, terms like “lead-safe” and “lead-free” have been commonly used to describe community-wide initiatives, label houses on maps, describe the state of a house after remediation, and much more.

What does lead-free mean? It depends on who you’re asking and what you’re asking about. A contractor may understand the term to mean that a house meets the EPA definition of not having a lead hazard, but does the average resident understand the term the same way? Is it accurate to describe a house as lead-free if there is still lead in the drinking water? Or in the spices in the cabinets?

Read More »

Posted in Contamination, FDA, Lead, Public health, Unleaded Juice / Tagged , , , , | Authors: / Read 2 Responses

EPA Should Use U.S. Chemical Safety Law to Turn Off PFAS Tap

By Maria Doa, PhD, Senior Director, Chemicals Policy / Published: June 30, 2023

The word

PFAS is a group of synthetic chemicals used in industrial processes and consumer products, including water-repellent clothing, such as outdoor wear, and food packaging. Once these “forever chemicals” are produced and used, they often make their way into the environment and our bodies. Many pose serious threats due to their toxic effects (often at trace levels) and their ability to build up in people, animals and the environment. Studies show that they are in almost all of us.

To make matters worse, people are exposed to multiple PFAS, not individual PFAS in isolation. Yet under the nation’s primary chemical safety law, EPA evaluates the safety of PFAS chemicals one at a time and does not consider the combined risks from exposures to multiple PFAS. Combined exposures increase the risk of harmful effects, thus magnifying the risks and the need for action.

Current Situation: All Costs, No Benefits

PFAS move easily throughout the environment and are difficult to destroy. They have contaminated drinking water, food, farms, wildlife, and the environment more broadly. At the local, state and federal levels, the U.S. is spending millions of dollars to clean up PFAS contamination. Some states, such as Michigan and Maine, are trying to recoup the costs their residents have had to bear to clean-up PFAS contamination of their water and land. The federal government is also taking action to address the widespread PFAS contamination. The costs for cleaning up PFAS contamination are imposed on society by the domestic producers, importers and users of PFAS who profit from their production and use.

Yet, despite the well-documented risks and costs to society of these chemicals, companies still continue to produce, import, and use PFAS. It is time to ban all PFAS or—if there are truly essential uses for these chemicals—limit how they are produced, imported and used so that their impact on us and the environment is minimal.

Urgent Need: Revisit, Reassess, and Regulate All PFAS

While EPA has recently tightened up approvals for new PFAS entering the market, it has yet to take significant action on those that are already on the market, which includes the hundreds of PFAS the agency approved over the past few decades. It is clear these PFAS have not been produced responsibly as demonstrated by the environmental contamination associated with many of the PFAS manufacturing facilities. And yet, many of these PFAS are still on the market. They are being produced and released into the environment, are in products we use every day, and continue to contaminate us and our environment.

Many of EPA’s approvals were made 10 to 20 years ago, before we had a full picture of the pervasiveness and degree of PFAS contamination. The data on the extent of the environmental contamination of these persistent PFAS, their ability to move through the environment, and the significant difficulty in destroying them was not as robust as it is today. Furthermore, mounting evidence shows that even trace levels of PFAS can cause developmental issues in children, reduced fertility, hormonal disruptions, and certain types of cancer.

In addition, these approvals did not consider risks to vulnerable groups, such as pregnant women and children as currently required by the law. Many communities are exposed to multiple PFAS, particularly those who live, work and play near where PFAS are made and used.

Addressing the production, import and use of PFAS would limit further pollution of our water supplies, safeguard the health of our communities, and be consistent with other strong EPA actions to address PFAS, including its recent robust proposed drinking water standards.

Effective regulation of these harmful chemicals at their source would also accelerate efforts to seek out and adopt safer alternatives. Leaving chemicals with such well-documented harms on the market makes it more difficult for innovative, safer substitutes to enter it. Failing to address these risks in effect puts a thumb on the scale in support of older harmful technologies.

Our Take

EPA should re-evaluate each of the PFAS it has approved. During that re-evaluation, EPA should use the best available science and consider the full picture of PFAS exposure. Considering each PFAS in isolation rather than the multiple PFAS people, particularly those in vulnerable groups, are exposed to will underestimate their risk.

EPA should use the Toxic Substances Control Act to take action to ban these legacy PFAS, or restrict them if the uses are truly essential, rather than continuing to allow the production, import and use of these demonstrably harmful “forever chemicals.”

Go Deeper

Learn more about EDF’s concerns about PFAS and read our follow-up blog  on how EPA can use TSCA to turn off the PFAS tap.

EPA’s information on PFAS

Posted in Chemical exposure, Chemical regulation, Contamination, Cumulative impact, Cumulative risk assessment, Emerging testing methods, Food, Food packaging, Health hazards, Health science, PFAS, Public health, Risk assessment, Risk evaluation, TSCA, Vulnerable populations / Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Authors: / Comments are closed

Flaws found in EPA’s lead pipe survey of states and water utilities

By Roya Alkafaji and Tom Neltner, Senior Director, Safer Chemicals Initiative / Published: June 29, 2023

Deep Dive: Read our Deep Dives blog for an in-depth analysis on the data that drove the 2023 allocation of federal funding for lead service line replacements.

What’s New: EPA recently estimated there are 9.2 million lead service lines (LSLs) in the nation’s drinking water infrastructure based on information reported by states and water utilities. This was collected as part of a survey conducted every four years to understand drinking water infrastructure needs.

The agency estimated the number of LSLs for each state. Two had surprisingly high numbers: Florida with 1.2 million LSLs and Texas with 650,000.

After reviewing data EPA used to estimate each state’s totals[1], we believe that these two may have less than 100,000 LSLs each. If true, this means the country may actually have about 1.6 million fewer LSLs than originally thought – good news overall.

Read More »

Posted in Deep Dives, Drinking water, Lead / Tagged , , , , | Authors: , / Comments are closed

FDA’s squishy definition of adverse health effects of substances in food

By Maricel Maffini, PhD, Consultant and Tom Neltner, Senior Director, Safer Chemicals Initiative / Published: June 15, 2023

Maricel Maffini, consultant, and Tom Neltner, Senior Director, Safer Chemicals

3 human figures showing stages of becoming ill. First figure is all white and standing up straight. Second figure is bent over and stomach area is red. Third figure is is all red, bent over, and appears to be vomiting.

What Happened

A recent peer-reviewed publication criticized FDA’s criteria for identifying adverse health effects associated with exposure to pathogens, chemicals, or allergens in foods. The authors gave two recent examples of the agency dismissing health concerns: a toxin created in spoiled fish that caused temporary, medically adverse health effects because they were short-term and reversible, and an additive where evidence from animal testing showed harm in only one sex. The authors concluded that the agency’s criteria are “inadequate because they are not science-based.”

Why It Matters

FDA is responsible for protecting food safety and the public’s health. In order to do that, it makes decisions whether a pathogen, chemical, or allergen causes an adverse health effect that must be avoided—so the agency’s definition of an adverse health effect is critically important. Unfortunately, FDA lacks a clear definition of the term, usually approaching it on a case-by-case basis in a manner that lacks transparency and scientific grounding.

Adverse Effects Dismissed by FDA

In 2020, the director of The Pew Charitable Trusts’ food safety project argued that FDA failed to “protect Americans from preventable illnesses” because it considered that the effects caused by the fish toxin were temporary or reversible. FDA described the toxin’s effects, which ranged from facial flushing and sweating, dizziness, nausea and headache to more severe cases of blurred vision, respiratory stress, and swelling of the tongue. The Pew director reasonably added that people may require hospitalization, medical treatment due to cardiac complications, and altered blood pressure–all of which are adverse health effects.

In a 2019 final rule approving the listing of leghemoglobin as a color additive, the Center for Food Safety objected that FDA dismissed statistically significant “changes in blood chemistry, blood clotting ability, and blood globulin values” as potential health effects. In its response to the objection, the agency argued that “statistical differences seen between control animals and treatment animals due to small changes in the value of the parameter are not likely to be of biological or toxicological significance.” FDA further stated that for the color additive to cause the blood changes to be “potentially adverse” it should:

  • Show a “clear dose-response,” described as a direct relationship between the dose given and the effect observed, in other words, the higher the dose, the higher the effect; and
  • Be observed in both sexes of the species in which the substance is tested.

This argument put forth by FDA’s food safety scientists would be summarily dismissed by their colleagues on the drug side because it ignores current scientific principles: dose responses can have different shapes and there are known sex differences in response to exposures from multiple chemicals.

Our Take

This is an ongoing issue. Other organizations have defined “adverse health effects.” For example, EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) defines adverse effect as “[a] biochemical change, functional impairment, or pathologic lesion that affects the performance of the whole organism, or reduces an organism’s ability to respond to an additional environmental challenge.”

FDA’s lack of a practical definition for adverse health effect and how the agency applies it in food safety assessments has likely contributed to inconsistencies in its decision making.

Next Steps

We will continue to press the agency for transparency about what health effects it considers important to prevent and protect the health of American families. FDA should publish clear, rational, science-based criteria for determining adverse effects and periodically review them as our knowledge base advances to better inform regulatory decisions.

Posted in Adverse health effects, FDA, Health hazards, Health policy, Health science, Public health, Regulation / Tagged , , , | Authors: , / Comments are closed