{"id":6675,"date":"2017-07-24T13:57:50","date_gmt":"2017-07-24T18:57:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/?p=6675"},"modified":"2024-02-12T11:01:58","modified_gmt":"2024-02-12T16:01:58","slug":"epa-toxics-nominee-has-been-paid-by-dozens-of-companies-to-work-on-dozens-of-chemicals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/2017\/07\/24\/epa-toxics-nominee-has-been-paid-by-dozens-of-companies-to-work-on-dozens-of-chemicals\/","title":{"rendered":"EPA toxics nominee has been paid by dozens of companies to work on dozens of chemicals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Richard Denison, Ph.D.,\u00a0<\/em>is a Lead Senior Scientist.<\/p>\n

[My colleagues Dr. Jennifer McPartland, Lindsay McCormick, Jon Choi and Ryan O\u2019Connell assisted in the research described in this post.]<\/em><\/p>\n

[Use this link <\/a>to see all of our posts on Dourson.]<\/em><\/p>\n

I blogged earlier <\/a>about EDF\u2019s strong concerns with Michael Dourson\u2019s nomination to head the EPA office charged with implementing the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).\u00a0 Among these concerns are his extensive, longstanding financial ties to the chemical industry \u2013 an industry that, if he is confirmed, he will be in charge of regulating.\u00a0 And not only does Dourson have these financial ties to the industry, he has made a career of helping industry play down concerns about chemicals.<\/p>\n

A case in point is described in an article published just last week in The Intercept <\/a><\/em>about his work in the early 2000s in West Virginia on behalf of DuPont and its still ongoing woes over water contamination involving the \u201cTeflon\u201d chemical PFOA.<\/p>\n

Dourson\u2019s paid work for industry goes back over two decades, starting just after he left EPA in 1994, and it includes work he did for the tobacco industry <\/a>in the late 1990s and early 2000s.\u00a0 As I noted in my last post, his work for the chemical industry included developing a website, \u201ckidschemicalsafety.org<\/a>\u201d (now defunct, but archived here<\/a>), that consistently downplayed concerns about chemicals.<\/p>\n

To illustrate the extent of his more recent conflicts, we examined the funding sources, where disclosed, for the several dozen papers he authored or co-authored that are listed in PubMed<\/a> as published between 2005 and 2017.\u00a0 Some of what we found is reported in this post; there will be more to come on the substance of these papers. \u00a0<\/p>\n

For about a quarter of the papers, funding sources were not disclosed.\u00a0 Half of the remaining papers were funded exclusively by industry sources, while most of the other papers were partially funded by industry or represented workshop reports and reviews involving mainly industry-affiliated participants.<\/p>\n

Across the papers, Dourson or his company Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment (TERA) were paid for their work by more than three dozen companies or trade associations<\/em>.\u00a0 That work involved about three dozen different chemicals<\/em>.\u00a0 At least two of these chemicals \u2013 TCE <\/a>and 1,4-dioxane <\/a>\u2013 are right now under active review by the very EPA office Dourson has been nominated to head.\u00a0 Another \u2013 the pesticide chlorpyrifos \u2013 was the subject of a recent highly controversial decision by EPA Administrator Pruitt<\/a>, who overruled his science advisory panel; Dourson testified before that panel in April 2016 <\/a>on behalf of CropLife America, the trade association for the pesticide industry.\u00a0 Dourson\u2019s job at EPA would also entail running the pesticides office.<\/p>\n

Notable among these are papers on:<\/p>\n