EDF Health

Selected tag(s): Lautenberg Act

ACC to retailers, consumers, and the rest of us: You just don’t get that TSCA implementation is coming along swimmingly

By / Published: January 23, 2019

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

Regular readers of this blog know it is our view that, under the Trump EPA, implementation of the 2016 reforms to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) has pretty much gone off the rails, deviating from what the law requires, failing to reflect the best available science, and not protecting public health.  It’s a view shared by, among others, former top EPA officials, members of Congress, state and local governments, labor groups, firefighters, water utilities, public health groups, and a broad range of environmental groups.

But in this era of alternative facts, the chemical industry says that’s because we’re all simply misinformed.  And it’s taking steps to correct those alleged misperceptions.   Read More »

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

The Trump EPA’s first TSCA risk evaluation is an epic fail

By / Published: January 15, 2019

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

Yesterday Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) filed more than 100 pages of comments on a 40-page draft risk evaluation the Trump Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has prepared for Pigment Violet 29 (PV29).  PV29 is the first of 10 chemicals undergoing risk evaluations under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).  Our comments were so much longer than the EPA document we were commenting on because there was far more to say about what information EPA failed to obtain, make available or consider than what EPA included in its draft.

The essence of our lengthy comments can be boiled down to a single sentence, however:  EPA has utterly failed to demonstrate that PV29 does not present unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment.

For folks who want somewhat more detail than this, our comments start with a 4-page Executive Summary that capsulizes the many serious deficiencies we identified in EPA’s draft.  I’ll provide some highlights in this post.   Read More »

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

Correction: The Trump EPA’s first TSCA risk evaluation is a skyscraper of cards, not just a house

By / Published: January 8, 2019

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

We blogged before the holiday break about how EPA used a single, unverified and conflicted estimate of worker exposure to build a whole house of cards and then used it to conclude that Pigment Violet 29 (or PV29) poses no risk to human health.

But upon further consideration, we need to issue a correction:  It’s not a house, it’s a veritable skyscraper of cards EPA has constructed.  That’s because EPA took its highly suspect worker exposure level and combined it with a hazard value EPA erroneously asserts demonstrates minimal hazard, in violation of its own and other authoritative guidance.   Read More »

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

The Trump EPA’s first risk evaluation under the new TSCA is a house of cards

By / Published: December 19, 2018

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

I’ve been blogging about the deep problems surrounding the first draft risk evaluation the Trump Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released under the recently amended Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).  This risk evaluation, which is now out for public comment, is on a chemical commonly called Pigment Violet 29, or PV29.  Among the many problems that immediately jumped out as we began our review of this draft evaluation are EPA’s reliance on clearly inadequate health and environmental hazard data to conclude the chemical is safe, as well as EPA’s illegal withholding from the public of the little hazard information it does have.[pullquote]I suppose if you start with almost no reliable data on a chemical, are dead set against using your enhanced authorities to get any more data, and are hell-bent on finding the chemical is safe, this is how you might choose to conduct a risk evaluation.[/pullquote]

This post will look at the other half of the risk equation, exposure.  EPA has even less information on exposures to PV29 than it does on hazard.  EPA has no actual data on the levels of PV29 released to or present in air, soil, sediment, surface water, people, other organisms, workplaces or products containing or made from the chemical.  It lacks any data from, and hasn’t used its authorities to require, monitoring in workplaces or any environmental media.

So what does EPA have?   Read More »

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

Exhibit PV29: Why this EPA can’t be trusted to forthrightly assess chemical risks under TSCA

By / Published: December 13, 2018

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

I blogged last week about the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) illegal and hypocritical decision to deny the public access to health and safety studies conducted on the first chemical to undergo a risk evaluation under the reformed Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).  In its draft risk evaluation, now out for public comment, EPA relied on these secret studies to assert that the chemical, commonly known as Pigment Violet 29, or PV29, is safe, so EPA’s denial of public access matters a great deal.

EPA asserts that these studies are entitled to protection as confidential business information (CBI) under TSCA, when in fact TSCA explicitly does not extend CBI protection to such studies.  The only health and environmental information on this chemical that is public are brief summaries of those studies that were prepared by the companies that make the chemical, and were submitted to the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) when the chemical was registered under the European Union’s REACH Regulation.  (EPA erroneously states that the studies were “summarized by ECHA.”  This is simply not the case:  Registrants, not ECHA, develop the summaries that are then made available in the registration “dossiers” for REACH chemicals.)

As we review EPA’s draft risk evaluation for PV29, we are finding that EPA’s assertions cannot be trusted even about what these summaries state are the findings of the underlying studies.  I’ll discuss one such case in this post.   Read More »

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

The Trump EPA is poised to grant the chemical industry yet another of its wishes under TSCA

By / Published: November 16, 2018

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

The chemical industry has long sought to have the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rubber-stamp as “safe” as many of its chemicals as possible without imposing any burden on the industry to develop the information needed to actually demonstrate safety.  It has repeatedly pushed for EPA to set aside large numbers of chemicals in commerce and ensure they don’t have to undergo evaluations of their potential or actual risk.

During the debate over reform of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), various industry associations advocated for an approach that would have required EPA to quickly review all chemicals in commerce using whatever information was available (which is virtually none for the great majority of such chemicals), and set aside as “low-priority” any that EPA could not demonstrate were harmful.[pullquote]It appears EPA is trying to install a new parallel process, outside of TSCA’s statutory boundaries, that EPA will use to set aside thousands of chemicals from any further review indefinitely and with no recourse for the public.[/pullquote]When that didn’t fly (more on this below), industry commenters demanded that, in promulgating its Prioritization Rule, EPA designate long lists of chemicals as low-priority without any review.  One of the few positives of that final rule was that it rejected those calls as well.

But lest you think the issue is settled, think again.  Leave it to the Trump EPA to find an even more devious way of granting the industry’s wish.   Read More »

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