{"id":9781,"date":"2020-08-27T08:21:31","date_gmt":"2020-08-27T13:21:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/?p=9781"},"modified":"2024-02-12T11:02:29","modified_gmt":"2024-02-12T16:02:29","slug":"under-the-trump-epa-no-risk-to-workers-is-too-high-to-impede-a-new-chemicals-unfettered-entry-into-the-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/2020\/08\/27\/under-the-trump-epa-no-risk-to-workers-is-too-high-to-impede-a-new-chemicals-unfettered-entry-into-the-market\/","title":{"rendered":"Under the Trump EPA, no risk to workers is too high to impede a new chemical\u2019s unfettered entry into the market"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The Trump EPA\u2019s understating of the risks to workers posed by both existing and new chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) has been a frequent topic for this blog<\/a>.\u00a0 This disturbing, illegal policy continues unabated and, if anything, has accelerated and expanded to outright dismissal of worker health concerns.[pullquote]The Trump EPA\u2019s blatant shirking of its clear responsibilities under TSCA to identify and mitigate the serious risks that chemicals present to workers \u2013 who are on the front lines of chemical exposures \u2013 surely constitutes one of its most egregious failings.<\/em><\/strong>[\/pullquote]<\/p>\n

In its reviews of new chemicals, EPA now frequently identifies serious risks to workers that exceed its own risk benchmarks, often many times over<\/em>.\u00a0 How great are the exceedances EPA finds and ignores?\u00a0 Our examination of recent cases, described below, reveals exceedances as high as 25,000-fold.\u00a0 In other words, EPA has found and then dismissed worker exposures to new chemicals at levels as much as 25,000 times higher than it deems acceptable. That is not a typo:\u00a0 In a very recent case EPA found a dermal risk of reproductive effects to workers that exceeded its own benchmark by a factor of 25,000.<\/p>\n

Any reasonable new chemical review that identified excess risk would then impose conditions blocking or conditioning the market entry of these chemicals in a manner sufficient to mitigate the identified risks.\u00a0 Indeed, that is exactly what TSCA requires EPA to do.<\/p>\n

Instead, the Trump EPA over and over again clears these chemicals entirely, ignoring its own risk findings to assert that the chemicals are \u201cnot likely to present unreasonable risk.\u201d\u00a0 This has now been done for hundreds of new chemicals EPA has reviewed in the past two years.<\/p>\n

To illustrate what EPA is doing, we examined the 29 new chemicals EPA found \u201cnot likely to present unreasonable risk\u201d (\u201cnot likely\u201d determinations) since the beginning of June of this year.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

These chemicals and their \u201cnot likely\u201d determinations are listed here<\/a>.\u00a0 We have examined each determination document to construct a table \u2013 click here<\/a><\/em><\/strong> \u2013 that summarizes the risks EPA identified in these 29 cases and indicates whether or not the magnitude of the risks exceed EPA\u2019s own benchmarks used to identify unreasonable risk.\u00a0 The yellow-highlighted cells in the table show those exceedances, and display what EPA terms its \u201cfold factor\u201d \u2013 the number of times by which the identified risk level exceeds EPA\u2019s benchmark.\u00a0 In each case, EPA\u2019s determination document states specifically:\u00a0 \u201cRisks were identified for workers for [X] effects via [Y] exposures \u2026 .\u201d\u00a0 [X] is what is listed in our table under the \u201cEndpoint\u201d column, while [Y] is dermal or inhalation.<\/p>\n

Here are the overall findings:<\/p>\n