EDF Health

Selected tag(s): American Chemistry Council (ACC)

Irresponsible Care: ACC seeks an exception to swallow the IUR Rule

By / Published: November 29, 2010

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

I noted in an earlier post that the American Chemistry Council (ACC) is seeking major delays in the implementation of enhanced chemical information reporting requirements that EPA has proposed under its TSCA Inventory Update Rule (IUR).  But ACC isn’t content with just delaying the enhanced reporting.  It’s also seeking an exemption so large that it literally threatens to swallow much of the rule.

The proposed exemption is called for in a footnote on page 2 of the comments ACC filed on the proposed rule:  “Exemptions should be provided for any company engaged in an acquisition or divestiture during the years since the last reporting cycle.”

Just how large an exemption would that be?  Read More »

Posted in Health policy, Regulation / Also tagged , | Comments are closed

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 »

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

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 / Also 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 / Also tagged , , , , , | Read 2 Responses

EPA seeks to improve TSCA data reporting; a real litmus test looms for the chemical industry

By / Published: August 20, 2010

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

While I was on vacation last week, EPA’s proposed rule to improve chemical information reporting under its so-called Inventory Update Rule (IUR) was finally published in the Federal Register.  (I say “finally” because the proposal languished for almost 6 months over at OMB, nearly double the 90 days such mandatory reviews are supposed to take.  That unfortunate delay is curious given the relatively modest changes that appear to have been made by OMB – mostly limited to compelling EPA to shift a few elements from proposals to options open to comment, and requiring EPA to expand the range of issues on which it now seeks comment.)

I won’t summarize the EPA proposals here; EPA’s factsheet does a good job of that, and Daniel Rosenberg at NRDC has also nicely recapped the proposal on his blog.  Suffice it to say that the proposed changes would go far to address the many failings of the current IUR, which amply manifested themselves in the last reporting cycle and severely hampered EPA’s ability to assess high production volume (HPV) chemicals under its ill-fated ChAMP Initiative.

So how will the chemical industry react?  Here’s why I’ll be watching intently.  Read More »

Posted in Health policy, Regulation / Also tagged , , , , , , , , , | Read 1 Response

Not playing nice: The American Chemistry Council solidifies its claim to being the “industry of no”

By / Published: July 30, 2010

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

If you had any doubt when reading my post earlier this week that the chemical industry isn’t serious about real TSCA reform, watch American Chemistry Council (ACC) President and CEO Cal Dooley’s hard-line performance at yesterday’s hearing before a subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee (video link at the bottom of this page).  The legislative hearing focused on H.R. 5820, the Rush-Waxman Toxic Chemicals Safety Act of 2010 that was introduced last week.

All the themes I struck in my earlier blog post Mr. Dooley played out in spades:  more loud and long complaints aimed at every aspect of the bill; placing the worst possible interpretation on any provision subject to interpretation; playing the China and job-loss cards over and over; and last but not least, offering not a single constructive proposal of his own for reform.

A very different industry voice was also at the witness table, however – Howard Williams, V.P. & General Manager of the Pennsylvania division of Construction Specialties.  Mr. Williams deftly countered all of ACC’s theatrics, embracing all of the bill’s key provisions and making a strong business case for them.  Read More »

Posted in Health policy, TSCA reform / Also tagged , , , , , , | Read 1 Response