{"id":7052,"date":"2017-10-23T15:18:42","date_gmt":"2017-10-23T20:18:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/?p=7052"},"modified":"2024-02-12T11:02:01","modified_gmt":"2024-02-12T16:02:01","slug":"top-5-takeaways-from-this-weekends-ny-times-investigation-into-industry-influence-in-epas-toxics-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/2017\/10\/23\/top-5-takeaways-from-this-weekends-ny-times-investigation-into-industry-influence-in-epas-toxics-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Top 5 takeaways from this weekend\u2019s NY Times investigation into industry influence in EPA\u2019s toxics program"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The lead article in Sunday\u2019s print edition of the New York Times<\/em>, titled \u201cWhy Has the E.P.A. Shifted on Toxic Chemicals? An Industry Insider Helps Call the Shots<\/a>,\u201d presents an 8000-word expos\u00e9 of the Trump Administration\u2019s takeover of the Environmental Protection Agency\u2019s chemical safety program.\u00a0 It focuses on the outsized role played by Dr. Nancy Beck, who arrived at the Agency on May 1 fresh from her job as a senior official at the chemical industry\u2019s main trade association, the American Chemistry Council (ACC).<\/p>\n

For those who have not had the chance to read the article, I provide here my take on some of its most compelling and disturbing findings:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Immediately upon her arrival at EPA as a political appointee, Dr. Beck made extensive changes to the near-final \u201cframework rules\u201d implementing the Toxic Substances Control Act.<\/strong><\/li>\n
  2. Dr. Beck\u2019s changes were objected to by career staff in multiple offices across the Agency.<\/strong><\/li>\n
  3. Dr. Beck is actively working to jettison proposed rules that would ban high-risk uses of trichloroethylene and methylene chloride.<\/strong><\/li>\n
  4. Dr. Beck has been cleared to work on issues directly relating to her prior employer\u2019s interests.<\/strong><\/li>\n
  5. While at ACC, Dr. Beck frequently worked with <\/strong>Michael Dourson<\/strong><\/a>, the industry toxicologist-for-hire that President Trump nominated to head the EPA chemical safety office and who is facing stiff opposition from many Senators. <\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    For a bit more detail on each of these, keep reading.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

    1. Immediately upon her arrival at EPA as a political appointee, Dr. Beck made extensive changes to the near-final chemical safety \u201cframework rules\u201d implementing the Toxic Substances Control Act.<\/strong> These rules specify how core provisions of the reformed TSCA are to be implemented for many years to come. \u00a0The changes Beck made closely mirror those called for by ACC, some of which Beck herself had authored while with the industry\u2019s lobbying arm.\u00a0 (Full disclosure:\u00a0 EDF and other groups have filed lawsuits <\/a>challenging these rules as contrary to the law.)<\/p>\n

    2.\u00a0 Dr. Beck\u2019s changes were objected to by career staff in multiple offices across the Agency.<\/strong> The offices objected, among other things to\u00a0 the exclusion from risk evaluations of so-called \u201clegacy uses,\u201d where a chemical is no longer manufactured for a specific use in the U.S. but has continued use and disposal; the inclusion of precise definitions of certain terms like \u201cbest available science;\u201d allowance for EPA only to examine a subset of uses of a chemical in its risk evaluation; and a lack of opportunity for public comment on the extensive changes made relative to the proposed rules.<\/p>\n

    Notably, the Times<\/em> reported that staff were told by EPA\u2019s political leadership that they could not file \u201cnonconcurrences,\u201d which would have triggered further review of the changes being made.<\/p>\n

    3.\u00a0 Dr. Beck is actively working to jettison proposed rules that would ban high-risk uses of trichloroethylene and methylene chloride.<\/strong> These rules, proposed in December and January, represented the first effort by EPA to use its TSCA authority to restrict use of a chemical in 28 years.\u00a0 EPA\u2019s work on these rules began prior to TSCA reform and was specifically grandfathered in under the reforms, but the chemical industry\u2019s opposition to the rules is holding sway.\u00a0 ACC members make and use both of these chemicals, and Beck herself co-authored ACC\u2019s comments <\/a>on EPA\u2019s risk assessments of these chemicals.<\/p>\n

    While paint strippers containing methylene chloride are responsible for dozens of deaths <\/a>in recent years, the Times<\/em> reported that Beck specifically questioned whether the number of deaths was sufficient to warrant a ban.<\/p>\n

    4.\u00a0 Dr. Beck has been cleared to work on issues directly relating to her prior employer\u2019s interests.<\/strong> Beck was appointed using a relatively rare authority usually reserved for technical experts who are not in decision-making positions.\u00a0 As such she was exempted from the Trump ethics pledge.\u00a0 Indeed, her ethics agreement <\/a>is jaw-dropping, and gives her wide latitude to work on issues in which ACC has financial interests in order to ensure those interests are taken into account.<\/p>\n

    Also of note is the date of Beck\u2019s ethics agreement:\u00a0 June 8, 2017.\u00a0 Final drafts of the two TSCA framework rules she had worked feverishly to change went over to the White House for final sign-off on May 23 and June 1.\u00a0 In other words, it appears that her work on these rules occurred prior to even this limited ethics agreement being in place.<\/p>\n

    5.\u00a0 While at ACC, Dr. Beck frequently worked with <\/strong>Michael Dourson<\/strong><\/a>, the industry toxicologist-for-hire that President Trump nominated to head the EPA chemical safety office and who is facing stiff opposition from many Senators. <\/strong>The Times<\/em> article notes that the two co-authored a paper funded by ACC; that is one of at least two such papers.\u00a0 Last week it was reported that Dourson is already working at EPA<\/a> as a special advisor to Administrator Pruitt even though his nomination has yet to be confirmed.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Richard Denison, Ph.D.,\u00a0is a Lead Senior Scientist. The lead article in Sunday\u2019s print edition of the New York Times, titled \u201cWhy Has the E.P.A. Shifted on Toxic Chemicals? An Industry Insider Helps Call the Shots,\u201d presents an 8000-word expos\u00e9 of the Trump Administration\u2019s takeover of the Environmental Protection Agency\u2019s chemical safety program.\u00a0 It focuses on …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,56093,114108],"tags":[91812],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-7052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-policy","category-industry-influence","category-tsca","tag-dourson"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/100"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7052"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12811,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7052\/revisions\/12811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7052"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}