EDF Health

Selected tag(s): Lautenberg Act

More questions than answers: EDF submits extensive questions to EPA in advance of public meeting on new chemical reviews

By / Published: November 21, 2017

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

Environmental Defense Fund yesterday submitted questions to EPA that we hope are answered by the agency at the public meeting it is convening on December 6th on changes to its new chemicals reviews.

Despite providing some new documents in advance of the public meeting, details about EPA’s new policies and practices for reviewing new chemicals under the reforms made to TSCA by the Lautenberg Act remain scant.  We identified a number of serious concerns when these changes were first announced by Administrator Pruitt in a news release issued on August 7 – concerns that the meeting background materials EPA has provided only serve to heighten.

The questions we submitted today relate to our concerns in the following topics:

  • The statutory and scientific basis for EPA’s new policies, the timing of their application, and omissions from the new framework
  • EPA’s plan to use so-called “non-5(e) SNURs” in lieu of consent orders
  • Recent policy changes not included in EPA’s agenda for the public meeting
  • Public access to information
  • Confidential business information claims
  • Use of section 5(e) SNURs

EDF has been raising concerns for some time now over the recent redirection of the new chemicals program starkly away from the approach taken following last year’s enactment of the Lautenberg Act.

Many of the questions we’ve just submitted were formally submitted by letter to EPA’s Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT) more than 3 months ago, on August 16, 2017.  Unfortunately, we have yet to receive responses to them.  We hope they will be addressed at the December 6th meeting.

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

Shifting the burden for toxics with a sneaky website: one more reason Dourson shouldn’t lead EPA toxics office

By Jack Pratt / Published: September 14, 2017

Jack Pratt is Chemicals Campaign Director

[Use this link to see all of our posts on Dourson.]

With Congress back from recess, it is slated to take up the nomination of Michael Dourson to run the toxics office at EPA. Here are links to our recent blog posts documenting why we are deeply concerned about his nomination:

Starting with work he did for the tobacco industry, Dourson has made a career downplaying concerns about chemicals, from harmful pesticides to cancer-causing solvents, paid for that work by the same companies that make or use those chemicals.

In addition to his work as a toxicologist-for-hire, Dourson and his firm, TERA, have provided more public-facing services.  One of these, done with funding from the American Chemistry Council, was the “Kids+Chemicalsafety” website, now defunct, but still available online at the Internet Archive.

Read More »

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

This speaks volumes: Industry rushes in to defend EPA’s new TSCA regulations

By / Published: September 12, 2017

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

Environmental Defense Fund has made no secret of our view that many elements of the final framework rules issued by the Trump EPA in July to implement recent reforms to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) are contrary to law and fail to reflect the best available science.  The rules EPA had proposed in January were heavily rewritten by a Trump political appointee, Dr. Nancy Beck, who until her arrival at the agency at the end of April was a senior official at the chemical industry’s main trade association, the American Chemistry Council (ACC).

In our view, the final rules largely destroyed the careful balance that characterized the efforts to reform TSCA and the final product of that effort, the Lautenberg Act.  In many respects, the final rules governing how EPA will identify and prioritize chemicals and evaluate their risks now mirror the demands of the chemical industry, reflected in comments they had submitted earlier – some of which Beck herself had co-authored.

These are among the reasons EDF as well as other NGOs and health and labor groups have had no choice but to file legal challenges to these rules.

Lest you have any doubt that the final rules are heavily skewed in industry’s direction, a development in these legal cases just yesterday should dispel it.  Read More »

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

One year and counting: On its first anniversary, near-term threats abound to implementation of our strong new chemical safety law

By / Published: June 19, 2017

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

This week marks the first birthday of the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemicals Safety for the 21st Century Act, which was signed into law by President Obama on June 22, 2016, after passing the Senate and House with overwhelming bipartisan support.[pullquote]If balance is lost to short-term priorities of the new Administration and the chemical industry, the common ground so many of us fought for and found to support last year’s historic passage of the Lautenberg Act will quickly dissipate.[/pullquote]

The Lautenberg Act significantly overhauled and substantially improved the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the core provisions of which had never been amended since their adoption in 1976.  Among the enhancements are new provisions that:

  • mandate safety reviews for chemicals in active commerce;
  • require safety findings for new chemicals before they are allowed on the market;
  • replace TSCA’s burdensome safety standard — which prevented the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) even from banning asbestos — with a pure, health-based safety standard;
  • explicitly require protection of vulnerable populations like children, pregnant women and workers;
  • give EPA enhanced authority to require testing of both new and existing chemicals;
  • make more information about chemicals available, by limiting companies’ ability to claim information as confidential, and by giving states and health and environmental professionals access to confidential information they need to do their jobs; and
  • retain a significant role for states in assuring chemical safety, while strengthening the federal role.

Passage of the Lautenberg Act was made possible by the coming-together of members of both parties and a broad spectrum of stakeholders around two facts:  the old law wasn’t working for anyone, and a stronger federal chemicals management system was needed to restore lost confidence among the public and in the marketplace over the safety of chemicals.

At the one-year mark, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) remains confident that the law is strong and can and will ultimately deliver on its promises.  At the same time, its effective implementation in the near term is threatened on numerous fronts, unfolding as it is in one of the most anti-environmental and anti-regulatory climates this nation has faced in a long time.   Read More »

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

Pace and outcomes of EPA new chemical reviews appear to be on track

By / Published: June 6, 2017

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

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) yesterday updated its website to provide a current snapshot of the status of new chemical reviews it has been conducting under last year’s amendments to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).  The statistics show that, despite being faced immediately with a substantial increase in responsibilities and workload as a result of the major changes made to TSCA, EPA has made enormous progress in implementing the new requirements.

Because the changes made by the Lautenberg Act to TSCA’s new chemicals program were both extensive and immediately effective upon enactment, a temporary backlog developed while EPA implemented the new requirements in reviewing both chemicals that were under review at the time of the law’s passage and those that came in subsequently.

Yesterday’s announcement and the related statistics indicate that the backlog has markedly declined since January, falling from 300 to below 150 cases.  In a press release EPA says it is committed to eliminating the backlog entirely by July.

Equally important in the statistics is the fact that many more chemicals are being subject to orders imposing conditions on their commercialization, relative to the old law:  For about half of the reviews completed to date, EPA has issued a consent order.  This is to be expected:  The new law requires EPA to issue such orders whenever it either lacks sufficient information to evaluate a new chemical, or makes a risk- or exposure-based finding that indicates potential concern.  In such cases, the orders must impose conditions sufficient to mitigate the concern.

Yesterday’s announcement is welcome.  EPA needs to stay the course.  And the chemical industry needs to recognize that restoring public and market confidence in our chemical safety system requires a robust new chemicals program.

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

Red tape and over-reach: That is the Regulatory Accountability Act, in a word – and a graphic

By / Published: May 11, 2017

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

I blogged last week about the new-but-not-improved Senate Regulatory Accountability Act (RAA), focusing on how it would reinstate some of the worst flaws of the old Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) that were fixed in the bipartisan TSCA reform legislation, the Lautenberg Act, signed into law last June.

Here are a few additional things to note.  This bill is scheduled to be marked up next Wednesday in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC).

I noted in my last post that RAA is sweeping in scope, and would affect dozens of federal laws and protections in one fell swoop.  My colleague Martha Roberts has just put up a blog post that illustrates this incredibly broad reach by providing a few tangible examples of protections that would be at risk if RAA were to be enacted.

And talk about red tape:  I’m including below her updated graphic depicting the vast bureaucracy RAA would create that all federal agencies would be forced to navigate (click on the thumbnail to enlarge it).

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