{"id":8978,"date":"2019-07-30T12:12:06","date_gmt":"2019-07-30T17:12:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/?p=8978"},"modified":"2024-02-12T11:02:20","modified_gmt":"2024-02-12T16:02:20","slug":"acc-and-14-dioxane-its-late-hit-tactics-are-just-more-of-the-same","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/2019\/07\/30\/acc-and-14-dioxane-its-late-hit-tactics-are-just-more-of-the-same\/","title":{"rendered":"ACC and 1,4-dioxane: Its \u201clate hit\u201d tactics are just more of the same"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The American Chemistry Council (ACC) was up to all of its old tricks yesterday at the first day of the Environmental Protection Agency\u2019s (EPA) panel that is conducting a peer review<\/a> of EPA\u2019s draft risk evaluation of the likely human carcinogen, 1,4-dioxane<\/a>.\u00a0 We blogged last week<\/a> about the extensive comments EDF submitted<\/a> to the peer review panel on this flawed assessment.<\/p>\n

Yesterday ACC rolled out the same game plan the industry has used for years to slow down, derail, or obfuscate chemical assessments conducted by EPA\u2019s Information Risk Information System (IRIS), and more recently, the last Administration\u2019s effort, now aborted by the Trump EPA, to restrict high-risk uses of the highly toxic chemical trichloroethylene (TCE).<\/p>\n

In the public comment period yesterday afternoon, ACC Senior Director Steve Risotto revealed to the peer review panel that ACC has sponsored a new \u201cstudy\u201d that he says \u2013 lo and behold \u2013 supports all of the positions downplaying 1,4-dioxane\u2019s carcinogenicity that ACC has espoused for years.<\/p>\n

The aim of this is to get EPA to set the level of exposure to 1,4-dioxane that would be deemed acceptable well above the level EPA would set if 1,4-dioxane is assumed to pose a risk at any level of exposure. \u00a0(Briefly, if EPA determines that 1,4-dioxane does not have a safe threshold, it must extrapolate exposures to zero to set acceptable risk levels in its risk evaluation. If, as ACC wants, EPA finds that there is a threshold below which exposure poses no risk, then the Agency\u2019s risk calculations will be much less conservative.)<\/p>\n

So, where is ACC\u2019s new study?\u00a0 Well, it\u2019s not public.\u00a0 It hasn\u2019t been provided to the peer review panel.\u00a0 It hasn\u2019t been published by ACC.\u00a0 There\u2019s no indication it\u2019s been peer-reviewed.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Almost as an aside, Risotto mentioned yesterday that ACC had done a webinar for EPA staff on the study, walking them through a Powerpoint presentation.\u00a0 Yet neither the webpages nor the dockets for the 1,4-dioxane draft risk evaluation or this peer review panel makes any mention of this meeting between ACC and EPA or provides the Powerpoint or any other materials provided at that meeting.\u00a0 EPA makes no mention of this study in its draft risk evaluation.<\/p>\n

In comments posted last week to the docket, ACC has stated \u201cthe results of this recently completed study will be provided to EPA as part of ACC\u2019s supplemental comments.\u201d<\/p>\n

This tactic of \u201clate hits\u201d is classic ACC:\u00a0 Step 1: Claim industry has a new study that answers all questions and that it will be available shortly.\u00a0 Step 2: Describe the conclusions in settings that provide no ability for the public or peer reviewers to independently assess what is being said.\u00a0 Step 3: Then (maybe) provide the study at a time too late for others to comment on or thoroughly evaluate.<\/p>\n

ACC\u2019s \u201cnew study\u201d seeks to find support for its claim that 1,4-dioxane has a \u201csafe threshold\u201d below which there is no risk of cancer.\u00a0 ACC has been on this tack for a long time.\u00a0 It and other industry commenters yesterday repeatedly cited industry-funded work done by Dr. Michael Dourson<\/a> that has pushed this notion.<\/p>\n

The arguments in Dourson\u2019s 2014 and 2017 papers, both published in the chemical industry\u2019s go-to journal, Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology<\/em><\/a>, have been roundly rejected by a number of state agencies and thoroughly rebutted by scientists at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, who argue that EPA and other regulators should continue to rely on a no-safe-threshold approach to 1,4-dioxane\u2019s carcinogenicity.\u00a0 See NJDEP\u2019s rebuttals on pp. 11-17 here<\/a> (2014) and pp. 79-88 here<\/a> (2018).<\/p>\n

One other note of irony must be added here.\u00a0 As we blogged about back in 2017<\/a>, it is this very same Steve Risotto of ACC who worked hand-in-hand, if clandestinely, with Dourson in his earlier efforts to convince certain states to press EPA to weaken health standards for chemicals such as TCE and \u2013 you guessed it \u2013 1,4-dioxane.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Richard Denison, Ph.D.,\u00a0is a Lead Senior Scientist. The American Chemistry Council (ACC) was up to all of its old tricks yesterday at the first day of the Environmental Protection Agency\u2019s (EPA) panel that is conducting a peer review of EPA\u2019s draft risk evaluation of the likely human carcinogen, 1,4-dioxane.\u00a0 We blogged last week about the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":8982,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,5009,56093,77],"tags":[39150,107195,68,91722],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-8978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-policy","category-health-science","category-industry-influence","category-worker-safety","tag-american-chemistry-council","tag-dioxane","tag-epa","tag-risk-evaluation"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8978","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=8978"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12881,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8978\/revisions\/12881"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8978"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}