EDF Health

Selected tag(s): Worker safety

The Trump EPA reaches a shocking new low in failing to protect workers under TSCA

By Richard Denison / Published: January 30, 2020

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

Just when I thought EPA putting workers’ health at risk by shirking its responsibilities under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) couldn’t get any worse, it has.[pullquote]The notion that worker protection can or should be relegated to the equivalent of a shock avoidance experiment is deeply offensive if not outright immoral.[/pullquote]

In its risk evaluations of existing chemicals (see our comments here and here) and its reviews of  new chemicals (see our comments here) entering the market, EPA has found ways bordering on the diabolical to avoid identifying or to understate the extent and nature of risks to workers making or using those chemicals.  The agency:

  • Simply assumes without evidence that workers will wear fully effective personal protective equipment (respirators and gloves).
  • Distorts OSHA regulations and claims they apply where they don’t.
  • Treats voluntary instruments that impose no binding requirements as if they were mandatory.
  • Assumes that if the average worker’s exposure does not exceed its acceptable risk level, then it doesn’t matter if there are exceedances for those workers most highly exposed.
  • Has unquestioningly accepted and used manufacturers’ undocumented data on workplace exposure levels even when data from more authoritative sources show far higher exposures.
  • And has adopted a cancer risk benchmark that is as much as two orders of magnitude more permissive of risk than warranted under TSCA.

All this despite TSCA’s express identification of workers as a “potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulation” that warrants special protection.

As appalling as all of this is, it just got worse. Read More »

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

Another EPA risk evaluation grossly understates risks, this time of 1-bromopropane

By Richard Denison / Published: October 13, 2019

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

On Friday EDF filed detailed comments with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) critical of its draft risk evaluation for the carcinogenic solvent, 1-bromopropane (or 1-BP).  As was the case with 1,4-dioxane, EPA has grossly understated the risks from exposure to this chemical, for both cancer and non-cancer health effects.  EPA has also inappropriately dismissed human studies that show neurological effects at 1-BP exposures lower than EPA assumed to be safe.

While the draft risk evaluation did find that some uses of 1-BP present unreasonable risks, even in those cases it understated the extent of the risk – which, if not ameliorated, means that any regulation it subsequently promulgates will be under-protective.

EPA has also abdicated its responsibility under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to identify and evaluate the risks the chemical presents to consumers and the general population by excluding from its risk evaluation conditions of use and exposures that are known or reasonably foreseen.  EPA has not met its mandatory duty under TSCA to thoroughly identify and evaluate the risks to vulnerable subpopulations.  EPA has utterly failed to utilize the enhanced authorities Congress granted it in 2016 to ensure that it has or obtains robust information on 1-BP’s uses, hazards and exposures, resulting in serious information and analytic gaps and deficiencies that severely undermine the scientific quality of its risk evaluation.

Below we list major concerns that EDF addressed in our comments (with references to the corresponding section of the comments).  Read More »

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

An unwarranted assumption run amok: How the Trump EPA grossly understates the risks of 1-Bromopropane to workers

By Richard Denison / Published: October 2, 2019

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

We have blogged repeatedly about the ways in which the Trump EPA is compromising workers’ health, either by failing to identify the significant risks they face, or wishing away the risks EPA does identify by erroneously assuming that existing industry practices and OSHA regulations are taking care of any possible problem.[pullquote]If EPA uses PPE assumptions to erase unreasonable risks, then it won’t regulate the chemical and will forgo its only opportunity to ensure that PPE is actually used.  If EPA does find unreasonable risk even with its PPE assumptions, by understating the magnitude of that risk, any subsequent regulation EPA promulgates will be underprotective.[/pullquote]

All of this is contrary to the mandate Congress gave EPA when it reformed the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) in 2016.  The new TSCA strengthens EPA’s authority and mandate to protect workers, explicitly identifying them as a “potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulation.”  But under this administration, EPA has instituted many policies and practices that undercut the protections afforded workers under TSCA.

A key policy driver is EPA’s assertion – absent any empirical evidence to support it – that workers throughout chemical supply chains will always wear effective personal protective equipment (PPE).  There are many legal, scientific and policy problems with this assumption, and it is only one of many questionable aspects of the Trump EPA’s handling of risks to workers.

But just how big a difference does this assumption make?  Let’s look at the agency’s draft risk evaluation for the carcinogenic solvent 1-Bromopropane (1-BP), which is currently undergoing public comment and peer review.  Read More »

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

EDF statement in advance of House hearing on failure by the Trump EPA to protect workers from toxic chemicals

By Richard Denison / Published: March 12, 2019

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

Tomorrow, the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on the Environment and Climate Change will hold an oversight hearing on “Mismanaging Chemical Risks: EPA’s Failure to Protect Workers.” In advance of the hearing, Environmental Defense Fund lead senior scientist, Dr. Richard Denison, made the following statement:

“Under the Trump Administration, every aspect of EPA’s implementation of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) — our recently reformed chemical safety law — has gone off the rails. The Trump EPA has abdicated its authority and responsibility under the law to address risks to workers. Among the ways EPA has shirked these duties are the following:

  • Clearing new chemicals despite risks to workers. EPA has approved new chemicals for unfettered market access even where the agency has identified significant risks to workers or has indicated it has insufficient information to determine risks to workers. EPA has done so for many dozens of chemicals.
  • Abandoning worker protections from methylene chloride. EPA is poised to finalize a ban of methylene chloride-based paint strippers far narrower than the one it proposed over two years ago. While consumer uses will be banned, EPA will not limit commercial uses, leaving workers, who are most at risk from these products, unprotected.
  • Ignoring worker safety in chemical risk evaluations under TSCA. In the only draft risk evaluation of a chemical issued to date, EPA relied exclusively on a single undocumented workplace air concentration value, provided through a private personal communication by a conflicted industry source, as the basis to conclude that workers across the supply chain for this chemical face no significant exposure to the chemical.

“Oversight of this EPA’s reckless approach to worker protection under existing law is long overdue.  We applaud the subcommittee for holding this hearing. This EPA is putting the public’s health – especially worker’s health — at risk by systematically weakening and undermining chemical safety: the agency must be held accountable.”

 

 

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

CBS News covers a chemical’s tragic impact; points to urgent need to ban high-risk uses of methylene chloride

By Lindsay McCormick / Published: December 7, 2017

Lindsay McCormick is a Project Manager.  

This morning, CBS News focused on the tragic story of Kevin Hartley—a young man who died at the age of 21 while working with a product that contains methylene chloride. Kevin’s story, powerfully relayed by his mother Wendy, illustrates the need to ban high-risk uses of this chemical.

As we have previously noted, in January, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed to ban methylene chloride in paint and coating removal products. The agency based its proposal on an extensive assessment of the scientific literature, which demonstrated not only lethal risks from acute exposures to methylene chloride but also a host of other acute and chronic health impacts, like harm to the central nervous system, liver toxicity, and cancer.

Products containing this chemical can be readily found in most hardware stores in America and more tragedies are all but certain, if EPA does not promptly finalize its proposed ban.

The ongoing debates in Washington over the implementation of a new chemical safety law passed just last year are often dense and dry. In sharing her son Kevin’s story, Wendy Hartley reminds us that how these policies are applied has a very real human impact. That is why EDF continues to demand EPA better protect American families from toxic chemicals like the one highlighted by CBS News today.

Please watch the story: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dangers-of-common-paint-stripper-chemical-methylene-chloride/

Posted in Public health, TSCA reform / Also tagged , , | Read 1 Response

Nothing is forever – and chemical industry trade secret claims shouldn’t be an exception

By Richard Denison / Published: August 21, 2014

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

A coalition of health, labor, environmental and environmental justice groups (including EDF), represented by Earthjustice, filed a petition today with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that requests EPA establish a limit on how long information on chemicals submitted and claimed confidential by the chemical industry under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) can be protected from disclosure.

The petition asks EPA to close a loophole in its current regulations that by default grants indefinite protection for nearly all chemical information claimed confidential.  Because EPA’s only option under its current regulations is to challenge these claims on a case-by-case basis, industry bears no responsibility to ensure that its claims remain valid over time.  The lack of any expiration date for such claims has contributed to a large backlog of excessive and often unwarranted claims – the protection of which imposes large costs on EPA and the American taxpayer and denies public and market access to information that could lead to better-informed decisions about chemicals.

The petition filed today offers a simple solution, one called for in virtually every internal and external review of EPA trade secret policy conducted over the last several decades (see list at the end of this post):  EPA should alter its regulations to create a “sunset” for confidential business information (CBI) claims, which would expire after a set period of time (5 years is proposed) unless the claimant shows that continued protection is warranted.  This approach would allow true trade secrets to continue to be protected while providing public access to information that no longer warrants trade secret protection.  Read More »

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