EDF Health

Selected tag(s): Risk assessment

Only a 2-month wait, down from 28 years: New EPA risk assessments find paint stripper chemicals pose significant health risks

By / Published: August 28, 2014

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

In June, I blogged about the first final risk assessment EPA had issued in 28 years using its authority under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), for the solvent trichloroethylene (TCE).  Happily, we only had to wait two months for EPA’s TSCA office to issue final risk assessments for three more chemicals.

One of the three is dichloromethane (DCM), also known as methylene chloride.  DCM is a common ingredient of paint strippers, the use on which EPA’s risk assessment focused.  As with TCE, EPA found DCM-laden paint strippers pose significant health risks to workers, consumers and the general public.  Here’s what EPA said in its press release:

The risk assessment for Dichloromethane (DCM), which is widely used in paint stripping products, indicates health risks to both workers and consumers who use these products, and to bystanders in workplaces and residences where DCM is used.  EPA estimates that more than 230,000 workers nationwide are directly exposed to DCM from DCM-containing paint strippers.

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

EPA releases final risk assessment for TCE: One down, 84,999 to go*

By / Published: June 25, 2014

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

EPA achieved a rather significant milestone today in releasing a final risk assessment for the solvent trichloroethylene (TCE).  This document is for the first of a group of 83 “work plan chemicals” EPA identified in 2012 as needing risk assessments and, where warranted, risk management.

Why do we call it a milestone?  It is the first final risk assessment issued by EPA using its authority under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) in – wait for it – 28 years.

The last time EPA issued a final risk assessment for a chemical under TSCA was in 1986, for asbestos.  (EPA has developed a few draft assessments under TSCA over the years, but today marks the first time since 1986 that one of them has been finalized.)

So, kudos to EPA for finally getting this risk assessment to the finish line.  Now what’s next?  Read More »

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

Imbalanced act: An EPA IRIS agenda that speaks 1000 words

By / Published: June 17, 2014

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist.  Rachel Shaffer is a research assistant.

[UPDATE 6/24/14:  Perhaps in response to this post of last week, an updated agenda for this week’s IRIS meeting was posted by EPA today that reflects a somewhat more balanced set of speakers.  Industry interests appear to have consolidated their number of slots, down from a high of 8 to a high of 6 per issue, and down from a high of 6 to a high of 4 individuals per issue from the same consulting firm.  In addition, several additional slots are assigned to non-industry speakers.  If you wish to see the changes, here is the agenda we linked to that was current as of last week, and here’s the updated agenda posted today.]

In comments EDF made at a November 2012 stakeholder meeting held by EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) program, we warned that the tendency of the IRIS program to respond to criticism by expanding opportunities for “public” input would serve to increase rather than decrease the imbalance in stakeholder input.

We noted that providing more opportunities for participation not only lengthens the timeline for completing assessments; it also virtually ensures the input received by EPA is imbalanced and badly skewed toward the regulated community. That’s because companies that produce and use each chemical to be assessed – and the trade associations and myriad hired consultants that represent them – have a clear vested financial interest in the outcome of the assessment.  They can and will take advantage of each and every opportunity for input, and they will be better represented than other stakeholders each and every time.

IRIS recently began holding bimonthly meetings focused on “key science issues” relating to upcoming assessments.  And guess what?  An army of industry representatives, including staff for trade associations and paid consultants, are overwhelming the agendas.

Exhibit A:  Have a quick look at the list of speakers in the agenda for this month’s bimonthly meeting.  A striking imbalance, no?  As many as 8 industry representatives are set to speak on a given issue, including 6 from the same consulting firm!  [UPDATE 6/24/14:  See the top of this post for a description of the updated, slightly more balanced agenda; here is the agenda we had linked to that was current as of last week, and here’s the updated agenda posted today.] Read More »

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New Draft of House Chemical Safety Bill Falls Short; EDF Calls on All Sides to Redouble Effort

By / Published: April 29, 2014

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

Release in response to today’s House Environment and Economy Subcommittee hearing on a revised discussion draft of the Chemicals in Commerce Act (CICA)

Today’s hearing makes clear that the discussion draft has made progress but still falls far short of legislation that will fix the fundamental flaws of the current law, according to Dr. Richard Denison, Lead Senior Scientist at Environmental Defense Fund. He urged all sides to keep the bipartisan process moving forward in both houses of Congress.

“While bipartisan discussions have yielded a number of substantial improvements to address serious concerns with the original draft, the most problematic provisions remain virtually untouched,” Denison said. “The goal now should be to keep the conversations going.”

Examples of progress include giving the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) authority to require testing where data are insufficient for prioritization purposes; incorporation of deadlines for agency action to assess and address risks of high-priority chemicals; and less prescriptive and onerous information quality and evaluation requirements.

Sections of the draft pose major concerns and fail to strike a fair and reasonable balance. Examples include the sweeping preemption of state authority for chemicals never subject to a thorough EPA safety review; overly broad allowances for companies to mask the identity of chemicals even long after market entry; and a failure to ensure that conditions placed on new chemicals apply to all companies making or using them.

“We’re optimistic that solutions are at hand that address the needs of all stakeholders, but it is going to take a redoubling of effort by all sides to get there,” he said.

 

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Conflicted West Virginia chemical spill panel is repeating many of CDC’s mistakes

By / Published: April 2, 2014

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

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

Yesterday, the chair of a “Health Effects Expert Panel” convened by the West Virginia Testing Assessment Project (WV TAP) held a press conference to present the panel’s preliminary findings from its review of the “safe” level set by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for MCHM and other chemicals that spilled into the Elk River in early January and contaminated the drinking water of 300,000 West Virginia residents.

A final report from the panel apparently won’t be released until May, but a press release issued yesterday sounds far from preliminary in saying the panel supports CDC’s methods, assumptions, toxicity data and “safety factors.”  While providing no details, the release indicates the panel is using the same flawed and incomplete summary of a toxicity study used by CDC in its rush to set a safe level for MCHM.  And it parrots CDC’s erroneous use of the term “safety factors,” which is at odds with the National Academy of Sciences’ strong recommendation that such term should be avoided as it is highly misleading.

In addition to choosing to rely on the same summary CDC used of a 1990 study conducted by MCHM’s manufacturer, Eastman Chemical, the panel accepted at face value Eastman’s interpretation that the study identified a no-effect level.  That conclusion has been questioned and cannot be independently assessed because Eastman has not provided the actual quantitative data from the study.  Moreover, the study used a protocol dating from 1981 that has been extensively revised at least twice since then.  These are among the many problems identified with this study.

It appears the panel’s main departure from CDC was to assume the most highly exposed population would have been formula-fed infants instead of older children.  The panel’s “safe” level is 120 parts per billion (ppb), a value about 8-fold lower than CDC’s level of 1 part per million (ppm).  That seems an improvement over the CDC’s methodology.

The panel’s conflict of interest

However, the process by which the panel itself was formed and the clear conflict of interest (COI) involved – a conflict that only came to light in response to a reporter’s questions at yesterday’s press conference – are deeply concerning.   Read More »

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House TSCA reform discussion draft: Major problem #2 – Preemption of State authority

By / Published: March 6, 2014

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

The House’s discussion draft of the Chemicals in Commerce Act (CICA) issued last week was accompanied by statements from both its sponsor and the American Chemistry Council (ACC) claiming that it represents a “balanced” approached to reform of the Toxic Substances Control ACT (TSCA).

Despite the rhetoric, however, the draft is anything but balanced, and instead pegs the needle far to one side of the dial.  My earlier post describes the massive requirements EPA must meet in order to regulate a dangerous chemical and how far out of kilter those requirements are compared both to current TSCA and to the Chemical Safety Improvement Act (CSIA), especially as the latter is being revised via ongoing negotiations.

This post focuses on another area in which the CICA draft takes an extreme position:  its preemption of state authority, which is far more sweeping than under current TSCA or even CSIA as introduced.  But first let me start by arguing that any preemption needs to follow – not precede – final EPA actions that are based on robust information.  Read More »

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