{"id":7648,"date":"2018-04-03T08:58:08","date_gmt":"2018-04-03T13:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/?p=7648"},"modified":"2024-02-12T11:02:07","modified_gmt":"2024-02-12T16:02:07","slug":"pruitts-epa-plans-to-systematically-deconstruct-the-expanded-authority-a-bipartisan-congress-gave-it-less-than-two-years-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/2018\/04\/03\/pruitts-epa-plans-to-systematically-deconstruct-the-expanded-authority-a-bipartisan-congress-gave-it-less-than-two-years-ago\/","title":{"rendered":"Pruitt\u2019s EPA plans to systematically deconstruct the expanded authority a bipartisan Congress gave it less than two years ago"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Richard Denison, Ph.D.,\u00a0<\/em>is a Lead Senior Scientist.<\/p>\n<p>EDF has learned from sources across the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that its political appointees are taking steps to systematically dismantle the agency\u2019s ability to conduct broad risk reviews of chemicals and effectively address identified risks under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).<\/p>\n<p>The assault is taking the form of methodically excising from the scopes of the agency\u2019s chemical reviews any uses of, or exposures to, chemicals that fall under TSCA\u2019s jurisdiction, if those uses or exposures also touch on the jurisdiction of another office at EPA or another Federal agency.[pullquote]<strong><em>The Pruitt EPA\u2019s attempt to atomize the evaluation of chemical risks has one purpose:\u00a0 to make it far less likely that risks needing to be controlled will be identified.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><strong><em>If each activity that leads to a chemical exposure is looked at in isolation, it will be far more likely that such activity will be deemed safe.<\/em><\/strong>[\/pullquote]<\/p>\n<p>Under the Lautenberg Act\u2019s 2016 amendments to TSCA, Congress directed EPA to identify the first 10 chemicals to undergo risk evaluations; EPA did so in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.epa.gov\/assessing-and-managing-chemicals-under-tsca\/risk-evaluations-existing-chemicals-under-tsca#ten\">December 2016<\/a>.\u00a0 After the transition to the new Administration, EPA scrambled to produce documents that set forth the \u201cscopes\u201d of those evaluations in order to meet the law\u2019s deadline of June 2017; EPA acknowledged, however, that its scope documents were <a href=\"https:\/\/www.regulations.gov\/document?D=EPA-HQ-OPPT-2017-0327-0001\">rushed and incomplete<\/a>, and promised to update them in the form of so-called \u201cproblem formulations\u201d that would be issued within six months.\u00a0 Those documents are now months late.<\/p>\n<p>We now are learning why:\u00a0 Political appointees at EPA are engaged in an intra-agency process intended to dramatically narrow the scopes of those first 10 reviews.\u00a0 They are seeking to shed from those reviews any use of or exposure to a chemical that touches on another office\u2019s jurisdiction, apparently regardless of whether or what action has been or can or will be taken by that office to identify, assess or address the relevant potential risks of that chemical.\u00a0 Reports indicate that leadership in some offices are welcoming this move, while others are resisting it.\u00a0\u00a0<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>This new assault on TSCA implementation:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>is illegal and would make TSCA even weaker than it was before the 2016 reforms;<\/li>\n<li>flies in the face of the science that informs what we know about how chemicals can affect our health and that of our environment;<\/li>\n<li>exposes the charade that Pruitt was serious about strong TSCA implementation; and<\/li>\n<li>is counter to the bipartisan efforts that led to Congress overwhelmingly supporting an updated TSCA that broadened and deepened the TSCA office\u2019s authorities.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What the law requires<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Congress intentionally gave TSCA a very broad reach, evident even in the original law passed in 1976.\u00a0 EPA was authorized then, and is required now, to address under TSCA the full lifecycles \u2013 from manufacture to processing to distribution to use to disposal \u2013 of chemicals and chemical mixtures and products containing them.\u00a0 The new law expressly mandates that EPA identify and evaluate risks resulting from all intended and reasonably foreseen, as well as known, circumstances under which each of those activities takes place.\u00a0 Under this mandate, EPA is to make a determination on the chemical substance as a whole as to whether or not it presents an unreasonable risk, which may be due to a single or any combination of those activities.\u00a0 If such risk is found, TSCA provides EPA with a broad set of authorities and a mandate to deploy actions that fully eliminate the unreasonable risk.[pullquote]<strong><em>The approach EPA now plans to take would put the cart miles ahead of the horse, moving to the very front of the risk evaluation process a step that Congress intended not be undertaken until the very end.<\/em><\/strong>[\/pullquote]<\/p>\n<p>In finalizing its \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.regulations.gov\/document?D=EPA-HQ-OPPT-2016-0654-0108\">framework rule<\/a>\u201d that laid out the details of how EPA will conduct chemical risk evaluations under TSCA, Pruitt\u2019s EPA asserted that it could simply ignore chemical uses and exposures on numerous grounds.\u00a0 This assertion, which was a wholesale reversal of EPA\u2019s stance in the pending rule proposed by the prior EPA, closely mirrored the demands of the chemical industry.\u00a0 EPA\u2019s assertion of authority to ignore known uses and exposures violates the law and is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.edf.org\/health\/tsca-case-resources\">currently being challenged in the courts<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Among the ways EPA asserted this authority was to state in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.regulations.gov\/document?D=EPA-HQ-OPPT-2016-0654-0108\">preamble to the final rule <\/a>that it can simply choose not to consider uses or exposure that also fall under other statutory authorities.\u00a0 We now are hearing that is exactly what EPA plans to do \u2013 on steroids \u2013 for the first 10 chemicals undergoing risk evaluations.<\/p>\n<p>To be sure, TSCA anticipates the possibility that another part of EPA or another agency might be able to effectively address an identified risk, and it requires EPA to consider that possibility.\u00a0 But that step is triggered only <em>after<\/em> EPA has undertaken its risk evaluation of the chemical and made its risk determination, not before the agency even understands the nature, extent and magnitude of the risk.<\/p>\n<p>The approach EPA now plans to take <em>would put the cart miles ahead of the horse<\/em>, moving to the very front of the risk evaluation process a step that Congress intended not be undertaken until the very end.\u00a0 Instead, EPA will from the outset lop off from its risk evaluations potential sources of risk it has yet to evaluate at all; and this based on at best a hypothetical argument that another office or agency can and will adequately address a risk it too has yet to evaluate even in isolation, let alone through the broad, integrated risk evaluation TSCA demands of EPA.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why this matters<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Pruitt EPA\u2019s attempt to atomize the evaluation of chemical risks has one purpose:\u00a0 to make it far less likely that risks needing to be controlled will be identified.<\/p>\n<p>This has long been the aim of much of the chemical industry:\u00a0 if each activity that leads to a chemical exposure is looked at in isolation, it will be far more likely that such activity will be deemed safe.<\/p>\n<p>This is why the industry lobbied so hard that companies be able to request EPA to conduct risk evaluations only on narrow uses of a chemical the company chooses (and Pruitt\u2019s EPA now allows this). This is why the industry has fought so hard to have EPA focus its risk reviews of a new chemical only on a company\u2019s intended use (and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.epa.gov\/sites\/production\/files\/2017-11\/documents\/new_chemicals_decision_framework_7_november_2017.pdf\">Pruitt\u2019s EPA will now do so<\/a>), when the law requires new chemical risk reviews also to consider reasonably foreseen uses of a new chemical.\u00a0 This is why <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/2017\/12\/12\/is-there-no-limit-to-industrys-overreach-and-hubris-when-it-comes-to-new-chemicals-under-tsca\/\">industry lawyers <\/a>have pushed EPA to ignore risks to workers posed by new chemicals, and instead just toss them over to OSHA to deal with \u2013 despite the latter\u2019s decimated authorities, weakened by decades of sustained industry assault. \u00a0(It\u2019s not yet clear how EPA will respond to this industry demand.)<\/p>\n<p>Yet the science that informs our modern understanding of chemical exposures points us precisely in the <em>opposite<\/em> direction.\u00a0 This science tells us that the combined, long-term, even low-level exposures resulting from multiple uses and sources of a chemical are what matter.\u00a0 This science tells us that the timing, frequency, context, location and duration of exposures, as well as their magnitude at a given point in time and space, are what matter.\u00a0 This science is reflected in the steady push in risk assessment science toward the need to consider combined exposures from all sources, and to consider differential vulnerabilities of particular subpopulations such as infants, pregnant women, workers, the elderly and disproportionately exposed communities.<\/p>\n<p>Congress embedded these concepts into the new TSCA, which is why it called for comprehensive risk evaluations of chemicals under the law.\u00a0 The approach being pursued by Pruitt\u2019s EPA appears hell-bent on turning back the clock on this science.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The new approach mirrors the Pruitt EPA\u2019s broader effort to weaken the agency<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Pruitt has repeatedly claimed he is serious about strong implementation of the new TSCA.\u00a0 The TSCA office\u2019s budget was excluded from the drastic budget cuts Pruitt and the Administration sought across the rest of the agency.\u00a0 And Pruitt has touted as \u201cmajor milestones\u201d meeting deadlines under the law for various rules and other required actions, even as he has sought to delay and roll back such actions in other EPA offices.\u00a0 We have blogged earlier about the <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/2017\/04\/10\/where-theres-smoke-there-are-mirrors-the-trump-administrations-claim-to-preserve-tsca-implementation-under-its-proposed-epa-budget-is-pure-illusion\/\">illusory nature of such claims<\/a>.\u00a0 An EDF colleague summed it up in a single sentence:\u00a0 \u201cYou can\u2019t burn down my house, and then expect me to cook you dinner because the kitchen is still standing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Now it appears the kitchen, too, is to be set on fire.<\/p>\n<p>The Pruitt EPA now intends to weaken the implementation of a new law Congress made stronger, by breaking it up into pieces and distributing the pieces to other parts of the agency the authorities of which Pruitt is relentlessly working to dismantle.\u00a0 And to other agencies that are under comparable assault by this administration. \u00a0And this, even when there is no statutory obligation for other EPA offices or federal agencies to do anything about the discarded pieces they\u2019ve been given.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Congress should be livid<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Nothing less than the remarkable achievement of the 114<sup>th<\/sup> Congress in passing the first major environmental legislation in more than two decades is now in peril under Pruitt\u2019s EPA.\u00a0 The strengthening of a failed law was seen as essential to restore public confidence and business certainty.<\/p>\n<p>But now that an EPA leadership that routinely defies the law and ignores science is in the driver\u2019s seat on TSCA implementation, the guard rails are being disassembled and the car itself is teetering on two wheels.\u00a0 And the cliff it\u2019s heading toward is implementation of the law in a manner that will make it even weaker than the one Congress finally fixed less than two years ago.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Richard Denison, Ph.D.,\u00a0is a Lead Senior Scientist. EDF has learned from sources across the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that its political appointees are taking steps to systematically dismantle the agency\u2019s ability to conduct broad risk reviews of chemicals and effectively address identified risks under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). The assault is taking the &#8230;<\/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":[44,5009,56093,114108],"tags":[68,56107],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-7648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-policy","category-health-science","category-industry-influence","category-tsca","tag-epa","tag-lautenberg-act"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7648","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=7648"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12834,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7648\/revisions\/12834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7648"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}