{"id":7890,"date":"2018-06-01T11:36:30","date_gmt":"2018-06-01T16:36:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/?p=7890"},"modified":"2018-06-01T14:27:27","modified_gmt":"2018-06-01T19:27:27","slug":"pruitt-epa-illegally-and-dramatically-undermines-authority-to-limit-dangerous-chemicals-under-reformed-chemical-safety-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/2018\/06\/01\/pruitt-epa-illegally-and-dramatically-undermines-authority-to-limit-dangerous-chemicals-under-reformed-chemical-safety-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Pruitt EPA Illegally and Dramatically Undermines Authority to Limit Dangerous Chemicals under Reformed Chemical Safety Law"},"content":{"rendered":"

EPA today revealed its severely flawed approach<\/a> to reviewing the risks to health and the environment posed by the first 10 chemicals being evaluated under the newly reformed chemical safety law, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).\u00a0 These chemicals were selected in 2016 because of their potential dangers to the health of American families, but the Pruitt EPA has chosen to ignore many sources of exposure to the chemicals and, in doing so, will severely underestimate their actual risks.<\/p>\n

\u201cEPA is both ignoring the law and endangering public health. \u00a0The approach it is taking \u2013 designed by an appointee who came straight from the chemical industry\u2019s lobbying arm \u2013 ignores millions of pounds of toxic pollution,\u201d said Dr. Richard Denison, EDF lead senior scientist.\u00a0 \u201cPruitt\u2019s EPA won\u2019t examine the real extent of exposures to these chemicals \u2013 and that will put at risk the lives and health of Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n

An analysis<\/a> by Environmental Defense Fund reveals that EPA will ignore more than 68 million pounds of seven of these 10 chemicals released to the nation\u2019s air, water, and land every year.\u00a0 Among the chemicals are known killers such as asbestos and other toxic chemicals such as trichloroethylene (TCE) that cause cancer and are linked to developmental and neurological disorders.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Download or view the above table at this link<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

This new assault on TSCA implementation is illegal and could make TSCA even weaker than it was before the 2016 reforms.\u00a0 It also flies in the face of the science that informs what we know about how chemicals can affect our health and that of our environment \u2013 frustrating Congress\u2019 mandate that EPA conduct broad risk reviews of chemicals and use the \u201cbest available science\u201d when assessing chemical risks under TSCA. \u00a0The move provides yet more evidence of this Administration\u2019s unrelenting war on science.<\/p>\n

The documents released today demonstrate EPA\u2019s illegal approach to chemical reviews, going even beyond that set forth in its 2017 rule that laid out the details of how EPA will conduct chemical risk evaluations under TSCA.\u00a0 The approach adopted in that rule, which closely mirrored the demands of the chemical industry, is\u00a0currently being challenged in the courts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

EPA asserts that the potential exercise of authority under another law EPA administers \u2013 such as the Clean Air Act or the Clean Water Act \u2013 allows EPA to ignore known releases of and exposures to a toxic chemical when assessing its risks under TSCA.\u00a0 In doing so, EPA will effectively assume that such exposures to known toxic chemicals pose no risk whatsoever<\/em> to people or the environment. \u00a0EPA will also entirely exclude known exposures arising from \u201clegacy\u201d uses and associated disposals of asbestos and HBCD from their risk evaluations.<\/p>\n

Yet the science tells us that the combined, long-term, and even low-level exposures resulting from multiple uses and sources of exposure to a chemical are what matter.\u00a0 Assessing all of these exposures is essential to considering differential vulnerabilities of particular subpopulations such as infants, pregnant women, workers, the elderly and disproportionately exposed communities.<\/p>\n

Pruitt\u2019s EPA now intends to weaken the implementation of a new law Congress made stronger by breaking it up into pieces and distributing those pieces to other parts of the agency \u2013 the authorities of which Pruitt is working relentlessly to dismantle \u2013 with no obligation for those other EPA offices to act.\u00a0 Not only will EPA ignore known sources of exposure to toxic chemicals, it is also abdicating its obligation under TSCA to protect the public, including vulnerable subpopulations, from those chemicals where their combined exposures present unreasonable risk.<\/p>\n

Click here <\/a>for more background on the serious flaws in EPA\u2019s approach.<\/p>\n

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\nEnvironmental Defense Fund (<\/em>www.edf.org<\/em><\/a>), a leading international nonprofit organization, creates transformational solutions to the most serious environmental problems. EDF links science, economics, law and innovative private-sector partnerships. Connect with us on\u00a0<\/em>EDF Voices<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>Twitter<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>Facebook<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EPA today revealed its severely flawed approach to reviewing the risks to health and the environment posed by the first 10 chemicals being evaluated under the newly reformed chemical safety law, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).\u00a0 These chemicals were selected in 2016 because of their potential dangers to the health of American families, but …<\/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":[44,114108],"tags":[56107,91722],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-7890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-policy","category-tsca","tag-lautenberg-act","tag-risk-evaluation"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7890","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=7890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7890\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7890"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}