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Cancer-Causing Chemicals Have More Friends in Congress than You Do (part 2)

2011-12-31T21:57:55Z

Daniel Rosenberg, Senior Attorney, Washington DC

In which a group of Senators pen fact-challenged letters on behalf of formaldehyde and styrene, currying favor with the chemical industry and undercutting government health agencies.

In my last post, I discussed how EPA was compelled by the collaboration of the chemical industry and Congressional Republicans to have its health assessment of formaldehyde reviewed by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) – costing taxpayer money and delaying health protective actions -- and how the chemical industry then distorted the findings of the NAS to leverage a “rider” in the recently passed Omnibus spending bill requiring additional NAS review of EPA assessments – further delaying their completion. Industry is pushing for NAS reviews not only to needlessly delay assessments, but so it can use the very notion of an NAS review to raise doubts about EPA’s credibility – regardless of what the NAS actually concludes.

The other target of chemical industry’s efforts is the National Toxicology Program (NTP), which is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Since 1978, the NTP has been mandated by Congress to produce a biennial Report on Carcinogens (RoC), an authoritative list of substances that are either “known human carcinogens” or “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen.” The listing of a substance in the Report on Carcinogens can signal to officials in the U.S. and around the world who are responsible for worker, environmental and public health that some action to restrict exposure to that substance may merit further investigation. Besides opposing adding particular substances to the Report on Carcinogens, the chemical industry’s broader agenda is to undermine the NTP’s status as an “authoritative body,” just as it is seeking to do with EPA.

In its fight for formaldehyde, the chemical industry’s first gambit was to try to delay NTP reporting on the chemical. Cal Dooley, the public spokesman for the chemical manufacturer’s largest trade association, the American Chemistry Council (formerly the Chemical Manufacturers’ Association), actually asked HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in December 2010 to suspend publication of the Report on Carcinogens until after the NAS review of EPA’s formaldehyde assessment was released. Then, four days after the NAS report’s release, he wrote to Secretary Sebelius, calling for the NTP to “substantially revise” its listing of formaldehyde based upon the NAS report.

But the NTP work went on as planned. The NTP issued its 12th Report on Carcinogens in June and listed formaldehyde as a known human carcinogen, based on extensive evidence that it causes nasopharyngeal cancer and evidence from studies of exposed workers supporting its link to myeloid leukemia. (2-page fact sheet here) The NTP also issued a six-page addendum to the formaldehyde listing, noting that it was consistent with both the EPA IRIS findings and the NAS review. The Report also listed styrene as “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen” based mainly on experimental evidence in animals. (1-page fact sheet here)

When the Report on Carcinogens was released, the chemical industry widened its campaign to discredit the IRIS program, to also include the National Toxicology Program. In August, Cal Dooley met with Cass Sunstein, the Obama Administration’s “regulatory czar” and David Lane, Counsel to White House Chief of Staff William Daley. Dooley called for greater White House control over both the IRIS program and the NTP -- in other words, greater political control over scientific assessments of chemical industry products. Talk about politics trumping science! It seems to have worked. Immediately after that meeting, the White House began interfering with the EPA’s IRIS program, including holding up EPA’s planned release of its health assessment for TCE, and pressing the NTP to refer its Report to the NAS for review.

The chemical industry also went to Congress to build support for legislation to require the NTP and the IRIS program to force the Report on Carcinogens listing of formaldehyde and styrene, and future IRIS assessments to the NAS for costly and time-consuming reviews. This was never intended to be free-standing legislation, however, because that would have attracted too much public attention and required members of Congress to take a public vote. Instead, industry sought a rider to the spending bill. Although no rider was included in the Senate version of the bill funding HHS, and the House Appropriations Committee never finalized its own bill funding HHS, when the final Omnibus package was released this month, the NTP rider was included. What happened? Most significantly, two letters signed by a bipartisan collection of Senators – including several Democrats running for re-election in 2012 -- were sent to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, urging her to refer the Report on Carcinogens to the NAS for review.

The Congressional letters are primarily based on two assertions – both false. First, the letters posit that that the NTP relied on EPA’s draft assessment of formaldehyde. In fact, the NTP assessment was conducted independently of EPA’s – a point the NTP made clear in its addendum to the Report’s formaldehyde listing. Second, the letters suggest that the NAS criticisms of EPA’s formaldehyde assessment by implication also “raise questions” about the NTP’s assessment. This is also false, since the two assessments are independent of each other and since the NAS only reviewed the EPA’s Because both of these premises are false, the whole basis for the Senators’ “request” that HHS Secretary Sibelius refer the Report on Carcinogens to the NAS – itself the basis for the rider that followed – has no merit. The Senators could easily have learned that their premises were wrong – they could have just called someone at the NTP – but instead they followed the chemical industry’s line. But due diligence was clearly not a priority for any of the letters’ authors or signers. And both letters contained additional errors and distortions.

The first letter was co-written by Ohio’s Senators, Sherrod Brown (D) and Rob Portman (R). The letter also suggests that “new scientific findings” have emerged since the Report on Carcinogens was released in June that warrant modifying the report’s classifications of formaldehyde. In fact, no such scientific findings have emerged and the letter doesn’t identify any. The other signers of the Sherrod Brown/Rob Portman letter include: Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Johnny Isakson (R-GA), John Tester (D-MT), Max Baucus (D-MT), John Boozman (R-AR), Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Bob Corker (R-TN), and Dan Coats (R-IN).

The second letter was written by Republican Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama -- the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that has jurisdiction over the Department of Health and Human Services -- and Mark Warner (D-VA). Of the two, the Shelby/Warner letter is more blatantly inaccurate in its assertions. The Shelby/Warner letter says that the NTP finding regarding styrene is “contrary” to two recent assessments: a report “conducted by the European Union” and a study by a “’blue ribbon’ panel of epidemiologists.” Although the Shelby/Warner letter does not identify the EU report, we believe that it is a draft Risk Assessment Report prepared by Great Britain. However, the EU’s Scientific Committee on Environmental Risk provided independent external peer review of the draft British report and disagreed with its conclusion that styrene did not pose any concern for causing cancer in humans. The British report was never finalized. And the “blue ribbon” panel report is nothing more than a review article of the existing scientific literature, not the type of original work used by the NTP. The NTP looked at the relevant underlying studies and made its own evaluation of the science, rather than relying on somebody else’s interpretation of what those studies showed. It is worth noting – although the Shelby/Warner letter doesn’t -- that the review by the “blue ribbon panel” was paid for by the styrene industry.

Finally, both letters imply that the NTP’s process for its listing determinations was inadequate, and that the NAS process would be better. I’m willing to bet that not a single Senator who signed either letter knows the NTP’s process for considering chemicals for listing in the Report on Carcinogens. A listing is subject to four levels of review – by a panel of non-government experts, an internal panel of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), an interagency review panel, and a review by the NTP’s own Board of Scientific Counselors. Anyone, even a U.S. Senator, can read about the NTP’s review process on pages 8 and 9 of the Report (page 10 is a chart illustrating the process). It is hard to read those two pages and not feel angry, a little sick, and even embarrassed for the Senators who were willing to pander to the chemical industry and attack the NTP in these baseless letters. Of the Senators who signed these two letters, I am most surprised by Sherrod Brown. When he was in the House, then-Representative Brown was a champion for protecting the public from toxic chemicals and expanding the public’s right to know about exposure to such chemicals and their potential health risks.

According to the Almanac of American Politics, “For many years, Brown has worn a self-designed lapel pin of a canary in a cage, to commemorate underground miners who were at risk back in the days before labor unions and government safety inspections.” Anyone familiar with the history of toxic chemicals and health in this country knows that for many chemicals -- including vinyl chloride, n-Hexane, hex chrome and asbestos -- industrial workers have been the “canary in the coal mine,” and that their illnesses, neurological problems, tumors and deaths have sent the early signals about the dangers of those chemicals. Maybe Senator Brown lost that pin somewhere between the House and the Senate. He should look for it again, amidst the clutter on his desk to remind himself of his past concern for the health of workers in dangerous industrial occupations, and American families who bring the products made from those materials into their homes.

The chemical industry is attacking information about the health risks of exposure to chemicals because that information can enable consumers to avoid dangerous chemicals and can lead the government to limit their use (remember, deeds, not words). If the industry had its way, nobody would ever say anything bad about a chemical. This simple imperative explains the decades-long history of the chemical industry’s Deceit and Denial of the harm caused by its products – from denying the harm caused by lead in paint and gasoline, to hiding evidence of brain cancers found in workers exposed to vinyl chloride, to fighting years-long battles to deny or downplay the harm caused by hex chrome, TCE, dioxin, asbestos, and many others.

That is the broader context with which to view the chemical industry’s efforts to discredit the NTP and EPA’s IRIS program, and it is critical to understanding the genesis of both the letters to Secretary Sebelius and the subsequent rider compelling a review of the Report on Carcinogens by the NAS.

Let me point out the obvious – disparaging and delaying health assessments of chemicals doesn’t make them any safer. People still get cancers, birth defects, learning disabilities, and other diseases from harmful exposures to toxic chemicals. Industry’s see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil approach may be profitable, but its success comes at the expense of public health, and it costs lives.

Cancer-Causing Chemicals Have More Friends in Congress than You Do (part one)

2011-12-28T19:30:35Z

Daniel Rosenberg, Senior Attorney, Washington DC

The chemical industry’s war on science continues -- as far out of the public eye as possible.

Shortly before Congress left for its Christmas recess, it passed an “Omnibus” budget bill, to appropriate funds for numerous federal agencies for the rest of the fiscal year. But the bill did not just allocate funds, it also included a number of directives and strictures on how those funds should be spent. These are commonly referred to as “legislative riders” -- matters of policy, not spending, that under a regular process should be considered in various committees, and then voted on by the House and Senate. Riders are particularly targeted at the environmental and public health parts of the budget, and are intended to constrain departments and agencies -- such as preventing EPA from taking steps to curb toxic air or water pollution. Because those kinds of constraints are enormously unpopular, and would be difficult or impossible to enact in full daylight without a public backlash, polluting industries and their Congressional allies rely on the more shadowy process of enacting riders.

For industry, there are several “benefits” to using riders to legislate policy:

By attaching them to “must pass” spending bills needed to keep the government in operation, there is an urgency to the process that ensures they will be less thoroughly vetted, and at least some riders will come to be accepted as part of the “price” of keeping government running;
Lumping dozens of riders together in a mass makes it virtually impossible to openly debate or vote on them individually;
The appropriations process in general, and the inclusion of riders in particular, is obscure and to a great extent conducted behind closed doors, which prevents the public from getting a clear view of what is really going on in Washington.

This is another reason Congress’s approval rating was last measured at 9%. But that’s not the concern of the chemical industry and other polluters and special interests.

This year, the chemical industry worked to get two key riders included in the Omnibus bill. Both riders are intended to further its ongoing campaign to undermine the integrity and credibility of government science programs charged with assessing the potential health effects of toxic chemicals. Today’s post discusses the rider requiring EPA to have three of the chemical assessments conducted by the agency’s IRIS program reviewed by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). My next post will discuss a rider requiring the National Toxicology Program (NTP), which is part of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to have its listing of formaldehyde and styrene in its biennial Report on Carcinogens reviewed by the NAS. These riders represent an insidious trend of Congress taking its direction on science and environmental health policy from the chemical industry, rather than independent scientists who lack a financial interest in the question of whether some chemicals can cause cancer and other health problems.

EPA’s IRIS program conducts health assessments of chemicals, and determines “acceptable” levels of exposure via air, water, food or soil. IRIS assessments are not regulations themselves, but they are frequently used by regulators – at the EPA, in the 50 states, and around the world – to set health-based standards for chemicals. Because an IRIS assessment can lead to new or strengthened protections from exposure to a toxic substance, the chemical industry has spent years fighting EPA efforts to complete those assessments, a process my colleague Dr. Jennifer Sass chronicled to great effect in our report, The Delay Game. Two of the chemicals featured in that report are formaldehyde and styrene.

The campaign by the chemical industry to “protect” formaldehyde and styrene from a growing body of scientific evidence that they cause cancer in humans is now more than a decade old. The condensed recent history on formaldehyde is this: EPA began an effort to update its initial health assessment of formaldehyde in 1998. In 2003, studies from the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health reported evidence of an association between workplace exposure to formaldehyde and leukemia. In 2004, U.S. Senator James Inhofe demanded that EPA postpone its revision to the formaldehyde assessment until the agency could take into account industry data developed in response to the workplace studies. The Bush administration agreed. In 2009 EPA again prepared to issue its revised assessment of formaldehyde. In response, the industry trade group “The Formaldehyde Council” enlisted U.S. Senator David Vitter of Louisiana – where people were sickened by formaldehyde in portable trailers after Hurricane Katrina – to place a hold on the Obama Administration’s nominee to be the head of EPA’s Office of Research and Development (which is where the IRIS program that did the formaldehyde assessment is located) until EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson agreed to send EPA’s draft assessment to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for review. The Administrator ultimately paid the ransom and agreed to make the referral, which further delayed the agency from moving forward on the assessment – already underway for a decade -- for an additional two years.

In April, the NAS released its report on EPA’s IRIS assessment of formaldehyde. Although the report was critical of some aspects of EPA’s draft assessment, including its length, organization, and clarity, it did not dispute the central findings of EPA that there is strong evidence to support formaldehyde being a cause of nasopharyngeal cancer and some evidence, including from studies of people exposed in workplace settings, for formaldehyde being a cause of myeloid leukemia. The NAS made specific recommendations for how EPA could improve the IRIS assessment, as well as recommendations for other revisions to its assessment approach. The report noted that the draft assessment for formaldehyde “has been under development for more than a decade and its completion is awaited by diverse stakeholders” and stated it was “not recommending that the assessment for formaldehyde await the possible development of a revised approach.” Nor did the NAS call for a system whereby it would oversee or review additional IRIS assessments. In response to the NAS review of formaldehyde, Assistant Administrator Paul Anastas (whose nomination was held up by Senator Vitter) announced EPA’s intent to follow the recommendations made by the NAS, both for the formaldehyde assessment itself, as well as future chemical assessments. He proposed additional changes including the formation of a new standing peer-review panel of its Science Advisory Board, to review IRIS assessments.

Nevertheless, the chemical industry seized upon the NAS report and has used it ever since to support its claim that the IRIS program lacks credibility and cannot be trusted to competently assess the health effects of chemicals. Congressional allies have been eager to help. Two House committees held hearings on the IRIS program – both framed around the industry talking points. Cal Dooley, spokesman for the world’s largest chemical manufacturers called for Congress to impose NAS review of all draft IRIS assessments – something the NAS itself did not call for. Industry-funded scientist Gail Charnley went further testifying that the solution for the IRIS program was “to get rid of it entirely and start over.” And stalwart formaldehyde champions Senators Vitter and Inhofe pitched-in with letters to EPA in May and September calling for the agency to cease issuance of additional IRIS assessments “of serious concern” (presumably meaning of serious concern to the chemical industry) pending further NAS review. The political pressure on EPA was enormous, as the chemical industry intended. EPA received no support from the White House, which itself followed industry’s script and pressed EPA to suspend issuing “controversial” IRIS assessments.

Thus, when the House Appropriations Committee finalized its appropriations bill for EPA in July a rider was included requiring EPA to send three of its assessments to the NAS for review. However, although the bill was briefly debated on the floor of the House, it was pulled by House leaders before the IRIS rider could be debated or an amendment could be put to a vote. The Senate never considered or debated an IRIS provision. A slightly modified version of the House rider was included in the Omnibus, requiring EPA to send three IRIS assessments to the NAS for review. The ink was barely dry on the final rider before industry spokesman Dooley was waving it around and demanding that EPA withdraw its near-final IRIS assessment of dioxin -- which has been underway since 1985.

NAS reviews of chemical assessments are costly – about a million dollars on average – and they impose additional and unnecessary delay on updating of health protections for air, drinking water, and contaminated soil. In addition, they are a misuse of the NAS itself, which should be allowed to focus on larger scientific issues of the day -- as it has done in landmark studies including Science and Decisions: Advancing Risk Assessment, Phthalates and Cumulative Risk Assessment: The Tasks Ahead, Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century: A Vision and a Strategy, and Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children -- not repeatedly diverted by Congress on behalf of the chemical industry and put in the position of micromanaging every EPA assessment of chemicals that industry doesn’t like.

In 2009, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) – the investigative arm of Congress-- issued its biennial report on federal programs that are at “high risk” of failure. Three new programs were added to its list that year, and the IRIS program for assessing health effects of chemicals -- combined with the EPA’s failure to adequately evaluate the risks of new chemicals under TSCA -- was one of those added. (The other two were the federal programs for regulating financial markets and medical devices). The GAO highlighted repeated political and industry interference with EPA’s assessments – including formaldehyde, dioxin, and TCE -- leading to such extensive delay, and a growing backlog of hundreds of chemicals needing either updated or initial assessments. Yet three years later, contrary to the recommendations of the GAO, and the NAS, that interference has increased, and serves to further undermine a vital program, with the chemical industry as the chief beneficiary.

In my next post, I’ll discuss how the chemical industry leveraged the National Academy of Sciences’ review of EPA’s formaldehyde assessment into a collateral attack on an entirely separate and independent assessment of the health risks of formaldehyde and styrene by the National Toxicology Program (NTP), and how a bi-partisan group of courageous Senators stood up to the government scientists at the NTP in defense of formaldehyde and styrene.

The (In)Artful Dodger: Chemical Industry Witness Evades Requests for Engagement on Toxics Reform

2011-12-01T20:20:48Z

Daniel Rosenberg, Senior Attorney, Washington DC

Shortly before Thanksgiving, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held a hearing on legislation – the Safe Chemicals Act – which would repair the 35-year-old law, the Toxic Substances Control Act, which has utterly failed to protect the public from exposure to thousands of chemicals whose effects are unknown, and hundreds of chemicals known to be unsafe for human health. Congressional hearings are often predictable and boring. This one was anything but boring, and it certainly wasn’t predictable! Instead it turned into a public showdown where a large swath of the chemical industry finally, fully revealed itself to be thoroughly unwilling to engage constructively on TSCA reform legislation.

The hearing on the Safe Chemicals Act had an interesting line-up of witnesses. The Democrat witnesses included Ted Sturdevant Director of the Department of Ecology for Washington state, Charlotte Brody of the Blue Green Alliance (a coalition of labor unions and environmental groups of which NRDC is a member), and Richard Denison of Environmental Defense Fund, also testifying on behalf of Safer Chemicals Healthy Families (a coalition of public interest groups supporting TSCA reform, of which NRDC is a member). Witnesses for the Republicans were Robert Matthews, counsel to the trade association Consumer Specialty Products Association, and Cal Dooley, President of the American Chemistry Council (formerly known as the Chemical Manufacturers Association). The written testimony provided by the witnesses is worth reading (I’ve linked to it above; webcast of the hearing here).

After the usual opening remarks by the Senators in attendance (including a strong and clear statement in support of reform, well-delivered by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand – it starts at minute 33:08 of the webcast), and the presentation of testimony by each of the witnesses (allotted the standard five minutes each), the “Q&A” portion of the hearing commenced, and that’s when things veered off into uncharted territory. Senator Lautenberg – the Chair of the Hearing and the Sponsor of the Safe Chemicals Act – engaged in an exchange with Cal Dooley that, although it transpired in a low-key way, actually made many observes in the room sit up and take notice (webcast at minutes 72:52 to 74:40). Senator Lautenberg asked Mr. Dooley whether the industry would be willing to provide specific suggestions on how the Safe Chemicals Act could be improved, from the perspective of the chemical industry, and if it would do so by the end of the calendar year. Mr. Dooley sought to avoid directly answering the question and instead responded with a general statement that the issue is “very complex” and that it is going to take a “significant period of time” to resolve all of the complex issues. When Senator Lautenberg restated the question Dooley responded: “we will provide the information and our ideas in the appropriate fashion.” The answer had qualities of both evasiveness and disrespect that were instantly palpable. Amongst those in the audience, both from health and environmental groups and the chemical industry – as well as the Senators and their staff who were present – jaws dropped and ears perked up. I could almost hear Dooley’s industry colleagues groaning from the audience. It was guaranteed -- and perhaps even calculated -- to elicit a heated response and more pointed follow-up questioning. And in fact that is exactly what happened.

Although Senator Lautenberg’s time for questions ran out (the members typically each have five minutes), other Senators picked up the thread, particularly Senators Ben Cardin of Maryland (80:15 to 86:51), Tom Udall of New Mexico (93:49 to 99:40) and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island (106:45 to 112:33). Each of these Senators pressed Dooley hard on why the members of his trade association -- which has purported for three years to be in support of TSCA reform – would reject an overture from the bill’s sponsor to provide substantive suggestions and engage in an effort to reach a mutually agreeable compromise on the legislation. Mr. Dooley bobbed and weaved, strenuously avoiding the truth: that the chemical companies that Mr. Dooley was speaking for have no interest in moving forward on TSCA reform legislation – certainly not before 2013, and more likely never.

Each of the three Senators took a different tack with Mr. Dooley, but he was steadfast in his refusal to agree to take any concrete steps to try and reach a compromise prior to a mark-up, which it appears will take place early in 2012. A particularly comedic, if not farcical exchange occurred when Senator Whitehouse asked Mr. Dooley if the ACC would provide the committee a “red-line” version of the Safe Chemicals Act with industry’s proposed changes. Mr. Dooley primly demurred on the grounds that it would be improper for the chemical industry to usurp the function of legislators to draft legislation. Senator Whitehouse was not fooled or amused, responding, “This is nobody’s first rodeo here.” Translation: Give me a break, lobbyists for the chemical industry (not to mention the oil industry, the coal industry, the auto industry, and every other industry) have probably written more legislation than all the members of Congress combined.

A more straightforward and honest response from Mr. Dooley probably would have been something like: we hate the Lautenberg bill, and we don’t really want to work with Senator Lautenberg, and although we have been putting out statements for 3 years saying we support TSCA reform, we actually are just trying to run the clock to the end of next year – as we have been doing since 2009 -- when we hope that the Republicans will take over the majority in the Senate, effectively putting any notion of TSCA reform to bed, hopefully forever.

The evasion -- and perhaps the attitude -- did not sit well with the Senators. Immediately after the hearing, industry reps went into damage control mode claiming Mr. Dooley had been “ambushed” and alleged a conspiracy by Senators, their staff, and Safer Chemicals Healthy Families to “make Cal look bad.” There was no ambush; there was only a small measure of public accountability. And public accountability – for itself and for members of Congress -- is anathema to the chemical industry. That’s why the industry will use (or manufacture) any lame excuse – “they asked mean questions!”-- as a pretext to shift blame, deter bi-partisanship, prevent progress, and undermine efforts to move the legislation forward.

The Safe Chemicals Act would finally make the industry accountable for the safety of its products. The fundamental failure of the current law is that no such accountability exists. For good reason, the chemical industry fears a recorded vote in the U.S. Senate on the Safe Chemicals Act. They know that the overwhelming public desire for increased protection from toxic chemicals will make it impossible for many Senators, probably more than 60, to oppose the Safe Chemicals Act.

The chemical industry cannot dodge its responsibility forever. But, based on the recent hearing and its immediate aftermath, it looks like it’s going to try.

Get Your Stroller On! - Kids Walk and Roll for Safer Chemicals

2011-11-10T18:32:50Z

Daniel Rosenberg, Senior Attorney, Washington DC

This is the season for the public to express its views – and register its discontent with the status quo in American politics and policy:

The Occupy Wall Street protest in dozens of cities throughout the U.S.;
The estimated 12,000 people who rallied and circled the White House in opposition to the Keystone XL Pipeline – a successor to the 1,200 people who protested and were arrested in opposition to the pipeline this summer;
The overwhelming rejection by the citizens of Ohio to the attempt to curtail the bargaining rights of public workers;
Citizens in New Hampshire and other states disclosing to pollsters their desire for Congress to fix our nation’s broken system for regulating toxic chemicals – and more generally disapproving of the performance of Congress – to the tune of 91% public dissatisfaction.

The public is using all the tools available in an effort to send a message to our political “leaders” of both parties: fix the things that are broken; get us back on the right track; protect the public, and our rights, and stop catering and selling out to polluters and other corporate interests.

The youngest among us can’t necessarily camp out for weeks or months, and they’re not old enough to vote. They rarely get called by pollsters, and in any event they rarely get to answer the phone, even when they are at home (although they are often funny and cute when they do). But they are still making their views known, just like the bigger kids and grownups.

Today is “round two” of the Stroller Brigades – kids and parents in cities across the country walking and strolling to the offices of their U.S. Senators, urging their elected representatives to “be a hero” and co-sponsor the Safe Chemicals Act (S.847), the bill that will protect the public from toxic chemicals, increase the public’s right to know, and restore some sanity to our national chemicals policy.

Today’s events are taking place coast to coast, including Arkansas, Delaware, North Carolina, Tennessee and Nebraska. You can watch a short video that captures the ideas and spirit of the first Stroller Brigade which took place in early August (subscription required).

The chemical industry is paying attention to the rising public wave in support of national chemical reform, and responding, largely by paying it lip service -- “we support reform too!” -- while vigorously pursuing its agenda to undermine government efforts to inform and protect the public. For just a few examples, see previous blog posts here, here, here and here.

The politicians in Washington may be easily fooled, but kids, parents, and many legislators at the state level are not. That’s why states continue to take action to protect the public from chemicals, and parents and kids will continue to walk and stroll until the politicians get the message and pass the Safe Chemicals Act.

Strong Support for Congress to Act on Chemical Reform, Little Support for Congress: Coincidence?

2011-11-02T13:00:00Z

Daniel Rosenberg, Senior Attorney, Washington DC

Last week, the latest New York Times/CBS poll was released, showing that the public’s approval of Congress had fallen to 9 percent, the lowest since the question was first asked in 1977.

Today, NRDC is releasing the results of a poll of New Hampshire voters which shows widespread, bi-partisan support for stronger protections from toxic chemicals. You can find a memo summarizing the results of the poll – conducted by Public Opinion Strategies – here. But here’s the basic finding: New Hampshire residents -- like people just about everywhere – support stronger federal regulation of toxic chemicals.

Specifically:

77 percent of New Hampshirites support stricter regulation of chemicals produced and used in the United States.

76 percent expressed support for the key elements of the Safe Chemicals Act, the legislation introduced by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., to reform and improve TSCA. Those elements include:

All chemical manufacturers would be required to provide information showing their chemicals are safe in order for those chemicals to be sold on the market;
The EPA would be able to limit chemicals that are not shown to be safe and that may harm the public health and the environment; and
The EPA would also be able to ban some or all uses of a chemical, or require that people's exposure to that chemical be reduced. However, when use of a specific chemical is critical and there are no good alternatives, it would be allowed to stay on the market for a limited period of time.

74 percent wanted Congress to take immediate action to strengthen regulation of chemicals.

91 percent of Democrats, 75 percent of Independents and 64 percent of Republicans, including 54 percent of Tea Party Republican supporters, favor federal reform.

The failure of the government to ensure that chemicals routinely used in products found in peoples’ homes, schools, workplaces and the marketplace is a serious concern to Americans across the political spectrum. Apparently, one thing that unites us is that none of us wants our family members, or ourselves, to have cancer, learning or developmental disabilities, infertility issues, asthma, or birth defects. So, this seems like an easy one for Congress to act on, knowing that it will have broad support, and might even help bump its approval rating up out of the single digits.

New Hampshire is a state with a small but interesting Congressional delegation. Both Senators are freshman women, one Democrat – Jeanne Shaheen, and one Republican – Kelly Ayotte. One of the state’s two Congressmen is freshman Frank Guinta, who won his seat with support from the Tea party, unseating incumbent Carol Shea-Porter. The other is Charlie Bass, who won back his seat after losing it in the Democratic wave of 2006. Rep. Bass sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee which is the House Committee that would be responsible for moving chemical reform legislation. So far the Committee hasn’t even had a hearing on the subject of chemical reform this year. The delegation has experienced a lot of recent turnover, suggesting a need for all members to pay close attention to the views of their constituents, than perhaps more entrenched incumbents. New Hampshire is also important as a bell weather state on issues of concern to the American public more generally.

The breadth and depth of support for chemical reform found in the New Hampshire poll is consistent with other recent polling this year, as well as last year, on the issue conducted for Safer Chemicals Healthy Families, the coalition of health, justice, and environmental groups that came together to advocate for stronger federal regulation of toxic chemicals and reform of TSCA.

But polling isn’t the only evidence that the public wants action to protect the public from unsafe chemicals. In recent years, in the absence of federal action, states across the country have adopted dozens of laws restricting the use of chemicals, typically by overwhelming bi-partisan majorities. Ten states have taken such action just this year. And public concern has led to action by large-scale retailers like Wal-Mart, Toys R Us, Staples and others to remove chemicals of concern from their shelves.

To be fair, the problem is not simply a “do-nothing” Congress. With the notable exception of EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and her staff, the Obama Administration also seems to be strikingly clueless and unresponsive to the public desire for chemical reform, and it has been a consistent impediment to taking steps to regulate toxic chemicals under TSCA – or even publish information concerning the potential risks of chemicals.

Two weeks ago, NRDC released a report, “The Delay Game: How the Chemical Industry Ducks Regulation of the Most Toxic Substances.” The report documents the chemical industry’s long-standing strategy of delaying EPA efforts to finalize health assessments of widespread toxic chemicals such as formaldehyde, TCE, and styrene. The chemical industry has successfully avoided assessment and regulation of toxic chemicals for decades because the law intended to protect the public from those chemicals – the Toxic Substances Control Act – is toothless.

I think one thing that bothers many Americans – and contributes to that 9% percent approval rating -- is that many politicians think announcing something – “I have a bill!” “I have a plan!” -- is the same as actually doing something. It isn’t.

Leadership on the issue of chemical reform – whether it comes from the New Hampshire delegation or elsewhere in Congress, or even the White House -- would require real action. It would require challenging a powerful industry that spends millions of dollars each year to delay or prevent action to inform the public and reduce exposure to toxic chemicals. Because so few politicians seem willing or able to do that, is it any wonder that their approval ratings are at an all-time low?

Decades of Delay: TSCA Turns 35 -- Chemical Industry Still Stifles Protection from Toxic Chemicals

2011-10-18T12:35:00Z

Daniel Rosenberg, Senior Attorney, Washington DC

If you accepted much of the hysterical rhetoric you hear in Washington and from many politicians around the country, a key part of the solution to the nation’s economic ills would be – in essence – to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency and prevent it from issuing anymore “job-killing” and/or “innovation stifling” regulations. In many if not most instances, what the posturing politicians and industry-funded lobbyists dismiss as “job killing regulations” are actually life-saving health standards that protect us from air pollution and water pollution -- the same standards that industry has opposed and dismissed for decades, in good economic times and bad. While the more extreme (or honest) of the EPA-haters flat out call for abolishing the agency, the more “moderate” members of the club use polite terms like “regulatory reform” which amounts to the same thing.

The industries that have always fought the laws that give EPA the power to regulate business and control pollution -- chemical, oil, coal, mining, etc. -- are sensing one of the periodic waves in which they hope to achieve their perennial dream of neutering the agency forever, irregardless of the public’s unwavering support for EPA and its mission. The perception that such an opportunity exists is due in no small part to the White House, which repeatedly has been solicitous, toward the polluting industries.

It remains to be seen whether the industry will actually accomplish much of its permanent agenda during the next year or three. But industry is playing at so many levels that it doesn’t need to rely solely upon these kinds of “golden opportunities.” These industries have years of experience preventing EPA and other agencies from carrying out their mission, or, even if they cannot ultimately be stopped, delaying agency action for as long as possible, which can sometimes be decades.

An excellent example of this phenomenon is the way the chemical industry has prevented EPA from completing or updating health assessments of some of the most widely used toxic chemicals in the country – well-known poisons like arsenic, formaldehyde and hex chrome, and some of their less well-known cousins such as TCE, styrene and tetrachloroethylene. Today NRDC is releasing a report: “The Delay Game: How the Chemical Industry Ducks Regulation of the Most Toxic Substances” a case-study of how the chemical industry has stymied government action to protect the public from exposure to toxic chemicals. My colleague Jennifer Sass has written more in her blog today about the Delay Game, and how the chemical industry has played it to perfection to thwart EPA from issuing health assessments under the IRIS program. Health assessments conducted by the IRIS program are not regulations, but they are used by other EPA programs to set safety standards for air emissions, drinking water, and for clean-up of contaminated soil, for example at Superfund sites.

It has been relatively easy for the chemical industry to repeatedly delay and derail these health assessments, because there is no mandatory enforceable deadline for EPA to complete them and no consequences to industry if the assessments are not completed. All the incentives run toward preventing the EPA from issuing “bad news” – i.e. findings that a chemical is more harmful, or harmful at lower levels of exposure than previously thought. One of the major reasons why EPA has had to rely so heavily on the IRIS program for assessments of chemicals is that the law that was actually intended for the assessment and regulation of chemicals – the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) -- has been almost a total failure. TSCA turned 35 last week (October 11th) and thus far it is most well-known for being the least effective of the major federal environmental statutes. The problems with TSCA are many, but some of the most important are that the law “grandfathered”62,000 chemicals that were in commerce when the law was enacted, without requiring that these chemicals be tested or required to meet a safety standard to remain on the market. The law also set an extremely high bar for EPA to require testing of those chemicals or take any action to regulate them. The bar was raised even higher by a conservative federal court that rejected EPA’s bid to ban most uses of the deadly carcinogen asbestos. As a result EPA has only required testing for roughly 300 of those 62,000 chemicals and has partially, barely, regulated only five. Since the law was enacted, some 22,000 additional chemicals have entered the marketplace. However, due to flaws in TSCA, industry provided no information on the health or environmental impacts of these chemicals when EPA was notified of their intent to manufacture them. These and various other failings are what ultimately led the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in 2009 to designate EPA’s two main programs for assessing and regulating toxic chemicals – the IRIS program and the TSCA program -- as “high risk” for, well, total failure.

Serious efforts to reform TSCA are underway, and Senator Lautenberg has introduced legislation, the Safe Chemicals Act, which would require the chemical industry to disclose sufficient information about their products to allow EPA to assess their safety. The bill would also require EPA to assess most chemicals to ensure their safety. In addition, EPA would have an easier time restricting the use of chemicals – or certain uses of chemicals -- that are unsafe. These are the general outlines of a reformed system that, if well-constructed, could lead to greatly expanded protections of public health and the environment, and a shift toward the use of safer chemicals that has been stymied for decades by a non-functioning law. That’s right; the lack of adequate regulation of the chemical industry has actually stifled innovation. However, for TSCA reform to really work, it is essential that the chemical industry does not have an incentive, or the ability, to prevent EPA from completing “safety assessments” under the law, as it has successfully done under the IRIS program.

To ensure that the process of assessing and regulating chemicals moves forward, a reformed TSCA must establish firm and enforceable deadlines for the EPA to complete its chemical assessments. If EPA fails to meet its deadlines for completing assessment of a chemical, an interim health protective standard should automatically take effect until EPA can complete its assessment. New or expanded uses of the chemical should be stayed or restricted until the assessment is completed. Under a new set of rules, the chemical industry will no longer be able to capitalize on the weaknesses of the law to play the delay game and avoid assessment and regulation of toxic substances.

The Safe Chemicals Act is expected to be marked-up by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee before the end of the year. That will give the Senate (and then the House) almost all of 2012 to consider and vote on legislation to increase the protection of children and families from exposure to chemicals linked to cancer, learning and developmental disabilities, birth defects and infertility. Decades of industry delay may finally come to an end, and the American public may get the health and environmental protection it has always wanted and deserved.

Last one out the door? EPA releases health assessment of TCE: Chemical industry and its allies continue to press EPA and the White House for a moratorium

2011-09-28T18:33:41Z

Daniel Rosenberg, Senior Attorney, Washington DC

Today EPA finalized its health assessment for the toxic solvent trichloroethylene (TCE), a notorious chemical that causes cancer and non-cancer health effects. Believe it or not, it has taken EPA more than 20 years to issue this update, largely due to interference and opposition by the chemical industry, and several federal agencies (DOD and DOE) that are responsible for helping to create hundreds of waste site contaminated with TCE. My colleague Jennifer Sass has a great blog summarizing that sad and sordid history.

The updated TCE assessment has been a long-time coming, and the EPA, including Administrator Lisa Jackson, and the IRIS staff scientists deserve great credit for sticking with it, and overcoming enormous political pressure, to get the job done. Issuance of the updated TCE assessment must be counted as a victory, particularly for the local activists across the country who have waged long and often lonely campaigns to get their communities cleaned-up, and who have suffered illness and death of family and friends due to exposure to TCE.

The win in the battle over EPA’s health assessment of TCE is of course part of a larger war the chemical industry continues to wage against independent and government science to block or discredit all avenues of information that might disclose and document the harm to public health and the environment posed by toxic chemicals. One of the central battlegrounds for this war has been EPA’s IRIS program – which prepares chemical health assessments that are then used by federal and state regulators to set health standards for drinking water, air emissions and cleaning up contaminated soil. It is the IRIS program that released today’s assessment. EPA has several other long-standing assessments pending, including those for formaldehyde, arsenic, styrene, and tetrachlorethylene (AKA “perc”). Each of these has been the subject of unending attacks from the chemical industry, just like TCE. For example:

The industry has called upon EPA Administrator Jackson to stall its assessment of hexavalent chromium – the chemical that was the subject of the real-life battle of Erin Brockovich – pending the outcome of several industry-funded studies that it asserts will exonerate the chemical.

Industry also continues to fight EPA’s assessment of styrene – and has opened another front in that battle – by suing the National Toxicology Program (NTP) over the conclusion in its Report on Carcinogens that styrene is reasonably anticipated to cause cancer in humans. Rumors persist that, in addition to the court challenge, the industry is trying to attach a rider to an appropriations bill that will require the NTP to send its report to the National Academy of Sciences for review.

Earlier this summer, the industry distorted a report by the National Academy of Sciences – which was critical of some aspects of EPA’s draft formaldehyde assessment – and used it as an excuse to call for a moratorium on EPA issuing any additional IRIS assessments. The industry has pressed the White House repeatedly to impose the moratorium on EPA.

And earlier this week, (E&E Daily, subscription required) Senators James Inhofe and David Vitter sent a letter to EPA’s Assistant Administrator for the Office of Research and Development, Paul Anastas to “request” that he suspend the IRIS review process “for all current reviews where serious concerns have been raised.” (My Translation: where industry has raised objections to draft assessments that suggest a greater harm posed by high-volume chemicals than had previously been established).

It would be nice to think that the White House is going to stick by the Administrator and the EPA and repel the chemical industry’s attack on the IRIS program (and the Report on Carcinogens) and take a stand for public health. However, based upon its record so far, there is little reason for optimism on that front.

Today is a day to appreciate what EPA has accomplished, and to plan the next steps forward for protecting the public health from unsafe exposure to TCE. But we’ll also need to keep a close watch to make sure EPA – and the IRIS program in particular – is allowed to continue to operate independently, and is not delayed or derailed by the chemical industry or its allies in Congress and the White House.

A Moderate Proposal - to Destroy our System for Protecting Health and the Environment

2011-09-23T17:08:14Z

Daniel Rosenberg, Senior Attorney, Washington DC

What is a “moderate”? Who – other than knowing and willful iconoclasts -- thinks that their own views aren’t moderate?

U.S. Senators Susan Collins, Mark Pryor and Rob Portman, have all cultivated their political image as moderates – attempting to use it as a badge of reasonableness, and, perhaps, a shield against closer scrutiny and criticism of their ideas and policy positions. But not carefully scrutinizing the “moderate” legislation they introduced yesterday to ostensibly “reform” the way agencies develop rules – including those to protect the public from toxic chemicals, tainted food, and all kinds of pollution would be a terrible mistake. Because the effect of their proposal would be anything but moderate.

The legislation proposes a sweeping rewrite of the Administrative Procedure Act, which has been the cornerstone of agency rulemaking for more than 60 years, and applies to virtually every agency (there are some general exemptions in the areas of “national security” and “monetary policy”). The crux of the bill is ostensibly to ensure that agencies select the regulatory option that is the “least costly,” and the “least burdensome,” and that any regulatory action that does not take the least costly or burdensome approach must be fully justified – by demonstrating that the marginal benefit of the more expensive approach is worth the extra costs.

How would that work in practice? Has that approach ever been tried before? The answer to the second question is yes, and the answer to the first question is, it failed miserably.

As I have written numerous times, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) is widely considered to be the greatest failure of any of the environmental laws of the 1970s. The law “grandfathered” the 62,000 chemicals then available in commerce, and did not require them to be tested or to meet a safety standard. In the 35 years since then, the EPA has only successfully required testing of roughly 300 of those 62,000 chemicals, and has partially, barely, inadequately regulated only FIVE.

The main reason that EPA has failed to regulate chemicals under TSCA is the provision requiring the agency to select the regulatory alternative that is the “least burdensome” on industry. In 1989, after spending TEN YEARS and MILLIONS OF DOLLARS, to develop a 45,000 page record, EPA (under George Bush the first) proposed to ban most uses of asbestos in the United States. The science on asbestos is strong. It is KNOWN TO CAUSE CANCER IN HUMANS (not just animals). Roughly 10,000 people die in the U.S. EACH YEAR as a result of exposure to asbestos. More than 50 other countries have banned its use. Those facts don’t matter. What matters is that in 1991 a federal court overturned EPA’s ban on existing uses of asbestos (it allowed a ban on any new uses). The court held that EPA had not met the “least burdensome” test by conducting a thorough cost-benefit analysis of each of the potential regulatory options at the agency’s disposal, and demonstrating that the one it chose was the least costly effective approach. As a result, products containing asbestos are still used in this country. And, in the 20 years since the court’s decision in the asbestos case, EPA has not proposed to regulate another toxic chemical.

How broken is the TSCA program? Don’t take my word for it. Earlier this year, H. Fisk Johnson, the CEO of the major consumer products company SC Johnson (they make Windex, Pledge, and Glade) stated: “Your child has a better chance of becoming a major league baseball player than a chemical has of being regulated by EPA,” under TSCA.

The legislation introduced today would make it many times harder for EPA to regulate asbestos, or any other toxic chemical, beyond the already impossible-to-meet requirements under TSCA. Rather than just having to consider the range of regulatory options available to EPA under the statute, and complete a cost-benefit analysis of each option – the bill would require EPA (or any other agency) to consider all alternatives raised by any interested party during several periods of public comment. The number of alternatives EPA would be required to consider could run from the dozens into the hundreds. The time and cost of conducting such analyses would be enormous, and EPA and other federal agencies, as we all know, are having their budgets cut.

The irresistible line that these Senators – and the very long list of corporate industries and trade associations that were quick to endorse it – will be offering in support of this legislation is that it is only intended to ensure that the costs of regulations don’t outweigh the benefits, nothing more, nothing less. In other words, the “moderates,” along with the chemical industry, the oil industry, the auto industry, the coal-fired power industry, the mining industry, the plastics industry are all primarily concerned with making sure that YOU, the taxpayer, do not have to suffer from the burden of costly regulations. Their support for the legislation is NOT, I repeat NOT in any way intended to result in any decrease in protection for public health or the environment from exposure to toxic chemicals in household products, pollution from oil refineries or automobiles, coal-fired power plants, mining or plastics. No. No! That is not their intent. Absolutely not.

The truth is; if this “moderate” bill were to become law, the work of EPA, -- protecting public health and the environment – would grind to a halt, as the TSCA program itself did 20 years ago.

Under the proposed bill, your child would be more likely to break Nolan Ryan’s record of no-hitters (7), and Rickey Henderson’s stolen base record (1,406), and Hank Aaron’s (untainted) home run record (755), and Mariano Rivera’s saves record (603 at the time of this post) than a chemical would have of being regulated under TSCA.

An industry-supported stealth attack on public health and safety, the bill makes it virtually impossible to protect the environment, the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe, or protect our children from exposure to toxic chemicals. If enacted, the bill would shift power from agencies whose mission is to protect the public to powerful corporations whose interest is the bottom line, not public health and safety. Food safety, toy safety, and other basic protections would be undermined by this cynical and unnecessary proposal.

Here is the list of industry trade associations that had their endorsement ready to go when the “reform” bill was introduced yesterday. If you support the idea of tying the hands of EPA and every other federal agency, so that they can’t take basic actions of fundamental importance – like protecting children and babies from exposure to toxic chemicals, you’ll want to thank those "moderate" Senators, and these industry “leaders:”

Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers

Aluminum Association

American Bakers Association

American Chemistry Council

American Farm Bureau Federation

American Forest & Paper Association

American Foundry Society

American Hotel and Lodging Association

American Machine Tool Distributors’ Association

American Petroleum Institute

Associated Builders & Contractors, Illinois Chapter

Associated Builders & Contractors, Inc.

Associated Builders & Contractors, Rocky Mountain Chapter

Associated General Contractors of America

Associated General Contractors of California

Automotive Parts Remanufacturers Association

Brick Industry Association

Business Roundtable

Colorado Roofing Association

CTIA – The Wireless Association

Edison Electric Institute

Equipment Marketing & Distribution Association

Financial Services Forum

Industrial Energy Consumers of America

Industrial Supply Association

International Sign Association

International Warehouse Logistics Association

Irrigation Association

Marine Retailers Association of America

Metals Service Center Institute

National Association of Electrical Distributors

National Association of Home Builders

National Association of Manufacturers

National Association of REALTORS®

National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors

National Black Chamber of Commerce

National Club Association

National Council of Chain Restaurants

National Electrical Contractors Association

National Federation of Independent Business

National Funeral Directors Association

National Marine Distributors Association

National Mining Association

National Newspaper Association

National Retail Federation

National Roofing Contractors Association

National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association

North American Association of Utility Distributors

North American Die Casting Association

North American Equipment Dealers Association

NPES—The Association for Suppliers of Printing, Publishing and Converting Technologies

Nuclear Energy Institute

Outdoor Power Equipment and Engine Service Association

Portland Cement Association

Property Casualty Insurers Association of America

Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council

SouthWestern Association (farm, industrial/construction and outdoor power equipment

retailers)

SPI: The Plastics Industry Trade Association

U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Update on Yesterday's Blog re White House Efforts to Derail EPA's Chemical Assessments

2011-09-14T23:04:10Z

Daniel Rosenberg, Senior Attorney, Washington DC

Today I received the following statement from EPA Press Secretary Betsaida Alcantara:

"EPA remains committed to finalizing IRIS assessments in a timely manner while ensuring that the best possible science is used to protect human health and the environment. Contrary to recent press reports, the Agency has posted the IRIS assessments for n-butanol and 1,4 dioxane and is on track to issue several additional assessments by the end of September."

Not surprisingly, this statement raises more questions than it answers. First of all, EPA’s commitment to finalizing health assessments of chemicals under its IRIS program has not been the topic of concern; it is whether the White House shares that commitment, and the extent to which it is interfering in EPA’s process of issuing those assessments. Understandably, EPA is not able to comment on the commitment of the White House to finalizing IRIS assessments, or other pending matters. That said, it is nice to hear EPA reaffirm its commitment.

The press statement does not say which chemical assessments are “on track” to be issued by the end of September. Will it include TCE? Tetrachloroethylene (“perc”)? Arsenic? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. In addition, the statement doesn’t address what has happened most recently. Why was the TCE assessment not issued as expected two weeks ago? Is the White House demanding changes to the assessment as a condition of approving its release?

As far as n-butanol and 1,4 dioxane, the press reports that both assessments were made “temporarily unavailable” without additional explanation were correct. The agency has subsequently updated its website several times to offer further explanation of the status of both assessments, which generally amounts to a short extension of the comment period for each. That doesn’t sound particularly nefarious, but there isn’t a clear explanation for the odd way the whole thing came about, or why the assessments were temporarily pulled back.

In short, the EPA statement appears to be an effort to offer public reassurance that everything is OK, and the integrity of the IRIS program is not in jeopardy. And, maybe things are actually fine, humming on all cylinders, no bumps in the road, no bears (or White House officials) hiding in the trees waiting to pounce, clear skies ahead. Perhaps the White House will indeed refrain from additional interference with EPA’s efforts to develop basic health assessments for chemicals. Still, the program merits watching, not just this month to see what is released, but in the months that follow.

The record of OMB interference with EPA on toxics issues under the Obama Administration is not encouraging. It has been nearly 500 days (subscription required) since the White House began its “90 day review” of EPA’s proposal to publish a small list of chemicals of concern – something the agency has been authorized to do by Congress since 1976 under the Toxic Substances Control Act. Just this week Senators Frank Lautenberg, who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee’s subcommittee on Superfund, Toxics and Environmental Health, and Sheldon Whitehouse, who chairs the Committee’s Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee, sent a letter to the anti-regulations Czar Cass Sunstein, urging OMB to complete its review of the EPA proposal and release it to be published in the Federal Register. Other EPA efforts that have been on hold at OMB far in excess of 90 days include testing or information requirements for PBDE flame retardants (a class of chemicals that EPA also seeks to propose for inclusion on its chemicals of concern list) and nano materials.

And there is no question that industry is getting plenty of face time with the White House. A Wall Street Journal story Monday, (“White House Regulation Shift is a Political Bet”) described Sunstein and Chief of Staff William Daley as the leaders of the Administration’s effort to suppress additional regulations. Bill Kovacs of the Chamber of Commerce offered the observation that Sunstein has been “far more visible” since Daley took over as Chief of Staff. And the Chamber’s top lobbyist, R. Bruce Josten, recently told the Washington Post (“Obama’s decision on smog rule offers hints on regulation strategy”) that he was in frequent contact with Daley and other top Administration officials.

What is interesting about both the health assessments under IRIS, and the proposed Chemicals of Concern list under TSCA, is that they aren’t regulations, they are information. It is disturbing that the White House is devoting time and resources to policing and, in some cases, preventing, the EPA from performing some of its core functions including providing important health and safety information to the public. That is indefensible, and no EPA statement can alter that reality.

White House sides with chemical industry against kids, stalls EPA hazard reviews of toxic chemicals indefinitely

2011-09-13T15:05:34Z

Daniel Rosenberg, Senior Attorney, Washington DC

Corporate polluters won two big victories recently, but you only heard about one. That was president Obama's decision to block EPA from issuing cleaner smog standards. His decision provoked such outrage across the country that the White House switchboard was jammed by angry callers.

You didn't hear about the second because, according to multiple sources, the White House worked behind the scenes to stop EPA from issuing a hazard assessment of the cancer-causing chemical TCE – and is working to effectively shut down the EPA’s program for assessing the hazards of chemicals – the basis for setting and updating health standards for drinking water, air quality, and clean-up of contaminated soil. TCE (Trichloroethylene) is a widely-used solvent and is one of the most commonly found chemicals at Superfund sites across the country. You may recall it was TCE that gave kids leukemia in Woburn, MA and because the subject of a famous book and movie, A Civil Action.

EPA was set to release its final updated assessment of TCE on Friday, September 2nd, (the same day the Administration blocked EPA from issuing a new health standard for ozone). The updated assessment concludes that TCE is a known human carcinogen (whether you drink it, breath it, or absorb it through your skin), and causes even more chronic diseases than previously thought. In addition to cancer, TCE has been linked with harmful effects to the central nervous system, kidney, liver, immune system, male reproductive system, and developing fetus. Because the updated assessment would lay the groundwork for more protective cleanup standards and exposure limits, the chemical industry has fought for more than twenty years to prevent EPA from updating its assessment – along with the Departments of Energy and Defense, which created a lot of those Superfund sites. Meanwhile, the EPA’s Science Advisory Board, and the National Academies of Science have consistently endorsed EPA’s updated assessment. In 2006, the National Academies recommended that EPA finalize its assessment so that efforts to reduce exposure to TCE could be made “expeditiously.” Friday came and went, but the TCE assessment was not released. The same day draft assessments of two other chemicals – (1,4 dioxane and n-Butanol) that had been made available for public comment on August 31st were mysteriously rendered “temporarily unavailable”.

These assessments are conducted by EPA’s IRIS program (IRIS stands for Integrated Risk Information System, which may be why few people are familiar with it). Although it is obscure, the assessments conducted under the IRIS program are extremely important. They are the scientific foundation for health standards that are set to protect us from pollution in air, drinking water and contaminated soil. Word has begun to circulate that the White House has moved to stop any more IRIS assessments from being released – including for tetrachloroethylene or “perc” which is best known as the cancer-causing chemical commonly used in dry-cleaning, and a new cancer risk estimate for arsenic. That’s funny, because that’s what the chemical industry and one of its scientists-for-hire demanded earlier this summer in a letter to the White House hatchet man Cass Sunstein, and in testimony before the House Science Committee’s Investigation and Oversight Subcommittee. That was part of the industry’s campaign to discredit EPA and its scientists by distorting and misrepresenting the findings of a National Academies review of another long-delayed assessment of formaldehyde. The chemical industry was also apoplectic that a separate Report on Carcinogens from the National Toxicology Program in June concluded that formaldehyde caused cancer, including leukemia, and that styrene was a probable carcinogen (the industry has now sued to overturn the NTP’s finding on styrene). In a beltway journal report [Risk Policy Report – subscription required] today an unnamed industry representative went so far as to brag about the work done “behind the scenes” to pull the strings that stalled the program.

The IRIS program was plagued by political interference throughout the Bush Administration and was sufficiently paralyzed that it was only issuing 2 assessments per year, creating a backlog of hundreds of chemicals requiring initial or updated hazard assessments. A key part of the problem was that the OMB under the Bush Administration inserted itself directly into the IRIS process, and required EPA to submit draft assessments for multiple rounds of review by the White House. The problem was so bad that the Government Accountability Office published a report about it, and designated the program as one at “High Risk” of failure due to the EPA’s inability to issue hazard assessments (the other two federal programs designated as “high risk” by GAO were those for regulating the financial industry and medical devices). When EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson first took office, she began to repair the damage to the IRIS program, and reduce the backlog of chemical assessments. Issuing the TCE assessment after two decades would be an important step forward toward restoring the program’s credibility and effectiveness. Maintaining a steady flow of assessments will be even more critical.

The public wants to be protected from exposure to toxic chemicals in the air, the water, and in the products they bring into their homes every day. But it seems that the White House isn’t thinking about health, the environment, or the public, only what the chemical industry and other big polluters are demanding. Preventing EPA from issuing a final assessment of TCE -- or reverting to the Bush administration’s approach of continual White House interference to block release of assessments or demand weakening changes sought by the chemical industry – would be a deliberate decision to consign America’s children, and the public at large, to prolonged exposure to carcinogens and other toxic substances in their air and water. In the health realm, it is hard to think of a worse legacy than that.

In the movie, A Civil Action: John Travolta played a lawyer with the swagger and cajones to stand up to W.R. Grace and their phalanx of lawyers and scientists for hire. He fought to protect public health, the environment and to win justice for innocent children and other citizens of Woburn who were harmed by cancer-causing chemicals in their drinking water. One would have thought that was a role President Obama and his White House advisors would be eager to play. Instead, behind closed doors, it appears they have sided with the polluters who continue to this day to fight efforts to strengthen health standards for TCE and hundreds of other toxic chemicals. Like a really sad movie, it’s enough to make you weep.

Getting a clearer picture on chemical use and production: EPA upgrades to digital black and white, but color has to wait until 2016

2011-08-03T14:55:43Z

Daniel Rosenberg, Senior Attorney, Washington DC

One of the many problems with our current system for regulating chemicals is that both EPA and the public lack good information on what chemicals are being manufactured in (or imported into) the U.S., how those chemicals are used, and how the public is likely to be exposed. This lack of information has myriad effects, including making it much harder to assess which chemicals are of the greatest priority to test or regulate, or determine which pose the greatest risk to human health or the environment. For that reason, strengthening reporting requirements for chemical production and use has been a priority for NRDC and our allies in the Safer Chemicals Healthy Families coalition. It has also been the subject of an extended rulemaking effort by EPA. Yesterday, EPA announced its final rule that will expand reporting requirements, and begin to provide the public with more information it needs to accurately assess the nature of chemical use and exposure in the U.S.

The rule announced yesterday takes several steps in the right direction: toward providing the agency itself and the public with greater information about the production, use, and likely exposure scenarios of more chemicals. Some of those improvements and expansions will kick-in next year, when the next round of reporting is due. But, unfortunately, the final rule pulls back in several key respects from what EPA originally proposed, and kicks several important proposed expansions to current reporting requirements down the road to 2016.

Some of the key improvements to current reporting requirements that will begin with next year’s reporting include:

Electronic reporting will be mandatory; (this will save a huge amount of time in getting the information processed and available to the public);
Claims that requested information is confidential (CBI) must be substantiated up front; (this closes, or narrows, a loophole that has been subject to abuse);
Reporting threshold for information on processing and use of chemicals drops from 300,000 lbs to 100,000 lbs;
Requires reporting information on the processing and use of chemicals that is “known or reasonably ascertainable” rather than the current “readily obtainable”; (this is a return to the standard used before the previous administration changed it, resulting in much less reporting);
Re-starts a 4-year reporting cycle; (a return to what existed prior to 2006 when the previous administration shifted to a 5-year cycle).

The new rule makes several other small but potentially important adjustments to reporting requirements, such as requiring companies to disclose the use of their chemicals when they select “other” rather than one of the 32 use categories specified by EPA. Prodding the industry to provide more detail, rather than opt for the most generic and least-informative disclosure option may yield valuable information on how chemicals are being used – and how people may be exposed.

Regrettably, the chemical industry is congenitally committed to procrastination -- why do this year what it can do five years from now? – so it will always seek to postpone any new regulatory requirements for as long as possible. And the White House, particularly the Office of Management and Budget, is equally committed to the soft bigotry of low expectations for the chemical industry – accepting that we can’t push it too hard or too fast, it’s just too fragile to provide more comprehensive information to the public now. Put it this way: if the chemical industry was a child, and OMB was its parent, the chemical industry would have a lot of cavities (and bad breath).

Some important and necessary improvements that are postponed until 2016 include:

Reporting will be triggered if a manufacturer exceeds the 25,000 lb threshold in any calendar year during the reporting period;
Reporting of production volume will be reqd. for each year of the 4 year reporting period; (previously, chemical manufacturers and importers only had to require on one year’s worth of production, every five years, despite wide disparities in production from year-to-year. EPA initially proposed requiring data in this reporting cycle for the years 2006-2010);
The reporting threshold for processing and use information will drop from 100,000 lbs to 25,000 lbs.; (EPA initially proposed dropping to 25,000 lbs for this reporting cycle);
For chemicals that are the subject of particular TSCA rules or orders – such as restrictions on use because they pose an unreasonable risk to human health or the environment, or have been identified by EPA as “chemicals of concern” -- the reporting threshold will drop from 25,000 pounds to 2,500 pounds (EPA initially proposed to eliminate the threshold entirely).

Without taking away anything from the improvements outlined above, and several others, the final rule still falls short of what is really necessary to provide the public with the information it needs to get a better handle on what chemicals are being produced (or imported) , where, and how they are being used. The reporting threshold for manufacture of chemicals, 25,000 lbs remains too high, particularly because it applies to the manufacture of chemicals per site, so significant aggregate production of chemicals at multiple sites will still be missed. Prior to 2006 when it was raised by the previous administration, the threshold had been 10,000 lbs, (per year, per site) and there is a strong case to be made that it should be lower.

Given the anti-EPA hysteria that seems to be prevailing in Washington, and the less than stalwart support that the agency has received from the White House, at least when it comes to proposed actions under the Toxic Substances Control Act, the fact that EPA is issuing a final rule to expand the reporting requirements for chemical manufacturers is good news. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and her staff deserve credit and appreciation for their efforts to strengthen and improve public access to information on chemical use and production (and risk). The Administrator and her team have labored, with limited but important success, to do what is right for the public. Those improvements will have lasting impacts; long after the current distorted political picture and it’s most important actors have faded from view.

Call Congress for Safe Chemicals!

2011-07-20T15:51:00Z

Daniel Rosenberg, Senior Attorney, Washington DC

Make your voice heard in the halls of Congress! Join fellow citizens from across the country calling for greater protection from toxic chemicals! Call 1-877-573-7693. Today is the day!

Many people lament the hold industry lobbyists have on Congress, and the resulting inability to fix many of the problems that confront the nation – including the failure to adequately regulate our exposure to thousands of chemicals in everyday products. And well they should. Lobbying disclosure reports compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, and reported today by E&E Daily [subscription required] reveal that three industry heavyweights: Dow Chemical, DuPont, and the industry’s trade association, the American Chemistry Council (formerly known as the Chemical Manufacturers Association) spent $4 million dollars in the first quarter of this year on lobbying efforts, including TSCA reform, legislative efforts to restrict the use of Bisphenol A, and a proposal by EPA to increase public reporting on chemical use and exposure. The report discloses that Dow reported spending $2.2 million on its lobbying efforts, and DuPont $1.2 million. The trade association of the chemical manufacturers is on pace to spend roughly $8 million for the year, the same as it spent last year.

So, tens of millions of dollars are being spent to lobby Congress each year, much of it in opposition to strong proposals to protect public health and the environment from unsafe chemicals, and to expand the public’s right to know about what chemicals are used, where, and how people are exposed to them.

Is there a way to break the grip of the industry lobbyists on Congress (and the White House)? YES! The fastest, easiest, and most direct way to counter the gazillions of dollars (cumulatively) being spent to prevent chemical policy reform is to pick up your phone and call your Senators to demand reform that protects us from unsafe chemicals. Specifically, and most urgently, call your Senators and urge them to co-sponsor the Safe Chemicals Act (S.847).

The Safe Chemicals Act would:

Direct chemical companies to produce health and environmental data for chemicals;
Require chemicals to meet a safety standard to remain on the market;
Give EPA greater authority to require testing of chemicals and to take action to protect the public from those that are unsafe;
Expand public access to information about chemicals, including their potential effects as well as uses and likely sources of exposure;
Ensure EPA decisions are made based upon the most up to date science and methods of assessing the risks of chemicals;
Promote action to clean up those communities that have been hardest hit by significant and disproportionate exposure to toxic chemicals.

Hundreds of health, science, consumer and environmental organizations that are part of The Safer Chemical Healthy Families campaign are participating in today’s National Call-in Day for Safer Chemicals. You can add your voice to thousands of others calling for reform by calling 1-877-573-7693. Call today!

Through the Looking Glass: Chemical Industry to Star in the Role of Weeping Walrus at House Hearing on EPA's Assessment of Toxic Chemicals

2011-07-13T19:08:52Z

Daniel Rosenberg, Senior Attorney, Washington DC

Tomorrow morning, the House Science Committee’s Investigation and Oversight Committee will hold a hearing on EPA’s premier program for assessing the dangers of chemicals. It is called the IRIS program, (which stands for Integrated Risk Information System). The IRIS program looks at the science available on the potential dangers of a chemical and determines what hazard that chemical may pose – such as causing cancer, birth defects, diseases, etc., and what level of exposure, if any, is likely to be without an appreciable risk of harm. The IRIS program doesn’t issue regulations; it is focused on assessment of chemical hazards. But other parts of EPA, such as the air program and the water program, rely upon the IRIS assessments in setting their health standards to protect people from toxic chemicals. Other states and countries also rely upon the IRIS assessments.

Because of the importance of IRIS assessments for determining what types of harm a chemical might cause, and what levels of exposure may or may not be safe, the assessments conducted by IRIS are constantly scrutinized, challenged, and attacked by the chemical industry. New or updated assessments by the IRIS program that suggest greater harm from a chemical than was previously recognized are particularly anathema to the chemical industry, and they will do whatever it takes to prevent such determinations from being finalized. Industry’s campaign has been so successful, that in 2009 the GAO added the IRIS program to its (short) list of federal programs being at “high risk” of failure, due to its completing so few assessments that it would become irrelevant. (The GAO decision was based in part on the problems with the IRIS program, and in part with the problems with the TSCA program). The GAO will testify at tomorrow’s hearing.

The most recent example of this on-going battle is formaldehyde, which will be the main subject of tomorrow’s hearing. The chemical industry has been fighting for more than a decade to weaken and delay EPA’s updated assessment of formaldehyde and in particular to counter the growing evidence that formaldehyde not only causes cancer of the nose and throat (which has been well-established for some time) but also can cause myeloid leukemia. An important part of the evidence for the link between formaldehyde and leukemia is two large studies of workers exposed to formaldehyde. EPA relied upon these studies in combination with other supportive scientific information as part of its draft assessment which concluded that formaldehyde can cause myeloid leukemia.

To prevent EPA from finalizing its assessment, and in the hope of discrediting the science showing harm, major manufacturers of formaldehyde formed The Formaldehyde Council, which marshaled its forces to block EPA from moving forward. The Formaldehyde Council worked with Louisiana Senator David Vitter to block the confirmation of President Obama’s nominee, Dr. Paul Anastas, to run EPA’s Office of Research and Development (which is where the IRIS program is located). Senator Vitter held the nomination hostage until EPA agreed to send its assessment to the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for review – ensuring a delay of at least two years before EPA could update its assessment of formaldehyde. EPA ultimately agreed to refer the assessment to the NAS and Anastas was subsequently confirmed by the Senate. Dr. Anastas will testify at tomorrow’s hearing.

In April, the NAS issued its report. Its most important element did not live up to industry’s hopes. The Academies supported EPA’s determination to include leukemia in its calculation of cancer risks. But, in a case of the wrapping being better than what is inside the box, the NRC used the opportunity to take EPA to task for the way the draft assessment presented its information and communicated the science. The NAS leveled heavy criticism for the report being too long (more than 1,000 pages), unclear, repetitive, and for EPA failing to fully “explain their work” – state clearly why certain studies were relied upon for reaching decisions. Jonathan Samet, the Chair of the NAS panel will testify at tomorrow’s hearing.

These are criticisms that the NAS had made in previous chemical reviews, and clearly the reviewers were venting some frustration at feeling that their concerns were being inadequately addressed by EPA. Between the time the draft assessment was sent to the NAS for review (as a condition of Paul Anastas getting confirmed) and the time the NAS report was released, the head of the IRIS program had been replaced, and changes were already underway at the program. And EPA has formally announced a set of changes it will be making to its assessments to address the NAS’s specific recommendations.

But that’s not good enough for the chemical industry, which seized upon the NAS report as a golden opportunity to slam the IRIS program, EPA more generally, and even other federal science agencies, for lacking scientific credibility or integrity, and to accuse government scientists of “politicizing” the scientific process. The chemical industry has launched a campaign, based upon the procedural criticisms of the NAS panel to call for a set of extreme measures that are not supported by the NAS, but would serve two industry purposes: further delay the issuance of EPA’s assessments, including the formaldehyde draft; and actually “politicize” the assessment process, with a thumb on the scale in favor of the chemical industry and other polluters, by shifting oversight of the IRIS program from EPA to the White House. Rena Steinzor of The Center for Progressive Reform penned an excellent letter to the OMB, in response to the chemical industry’s letter calling for takeover of the IRIS program. She will be testifying at tomorrow’s hearing.

The leader of this effort has been Cal Dooley, head of the chemical industry’s trade association – the American Chemistry Council (ACC, formerly the Chemical Manufacturers Association) – which represents all of the major chemical companies you have heard of – DuPont, Dow, BASF, Procter and Gamble – as well as those you probably haven’t (Lubrizol, LyondellBasell). I last wrote about Cal Dooley back in December when he held a press conference to affirm the chemical industry’s commitment to reforming our chemical management system to protect people from unsafe chemicals – on the same day the chemical industry killed an amendment in the Senate to ban the use of the endocrine-disrupting chemical bisphenol A (BPA) in baby bottles and sippy cups. That was vintage Cal.

Tomorrow we’ll likely get more of the same from the chemical industry witnesses – both from Cal Dooley and scientist-for-hire (by the chemical industry) Gail Charnley. They won’t necessarily be straight-forward in their hostility to the agency and its mission. They’ll come “more in sorrow than in anger” under the guise of trying to improve the system for assessing chemicals to ensure greater protection of the public, without mentioning their never-ending campaign to undermine and discredit the agency, and the IRIS program in particular. They’ll likely adopt a posture similar to that taken by the Walrus in Alice in Wonderland, who weeps in pity for the oysters he is eating on the beach.

And they’ll likely be enabled by the majority on the Committee, who share industry’s view that this is a golden opportunity to exaggerate and misrepresent the NAS criticisms of EPA, and use it as a weapon to further constrain the agency’s ability to take action to protect the public.

I admire the industry’s opportunism – it’s just too bad they don’t devote more of those energies to developing safer chemicals and getting the carcinogens like formaldehyde and hormone disrupters like BPA off the market.

Take Me Out to the Ballgame: the Chemical Industry Attacks Government Scientists, the White House Stays Quiet, Pressure Grows for National Chemical Reform

2011-06-26T03:48:54Z

Daniel Rosenberg, Senior Attorney, Washington DC

Every week or two’s worth of news in the area of toxics is its own microcosm of both what is wrong with our national system for regulating chemicals, and how pressure to fix it continues to build.

Earlier this week, Fisk Johnson, the CEO of the consumer products company SC Johnson said in a speech (Inside EPA, subscription required) that “Your child has a better chance of becoming a major league baseball player than a chemical has of being regulated by EPA,” under TSCA. He identified the problem as being, in large part, the lack of good information available about the hazards of chemicals in the marketplace, and the limited ability of EPA to regulate chemicals.

It is exactly this problem that has led to both widespread calls for reform from “downstream” companies that use chemicals in their products – like SC Johnson -- and unilateral actions from large retailers and individual companies such as Wal-Mart, Target, Toys R Us and Staples to control the use of chemicals in products stocked on their shelves. The same problem has spurred unprecedented action in state legislatures across the country, and a groundswell of health, scientific and medical associations expressing concern about the health threat from toxic chemicals and calling for reform.

Meanwhile, the chemical manufacturers have escalated their well-funded war against independent science with the aim of blocking any action, proposal, statement, or suggestion by the government to address the dangers toxic chemicals pose to our health. Failing that, “Plan B” is a campaign to discredit whatever scientists or regulators have done or said that calls into question the safety of any chemical.

On June 7th, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce fired off a letter to the White House with a “legal analysis” of why the Administration should block EPA from releasing for public comment a proposal to list a small number of chemicals as “chemicals of concern,” something which it has the clear legal authority to do under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). The proposed list would include the endocrine-disruptor Bisphenol A (BPA), several phthalates, and a class of toxic flame retardants (PBDEs). Each of those chemicals (or group of chemicals) has already been banned for certain uses, either in Europe, by Congress, or by one or more states. (Both the Center for Progressive Reform and EDF countered the Chamber’s letter with their own memos) The trade association of the chemical manufacturers, the American Chemistry Council (ACC), is one of the Chamber’s “Committee of 100 Members” that “recommend Chamber policy on association-related issues, propose programming, foster networking and collaboration, and encourage involvement in Chamber activities.”

The timing of the Chamber’s letter is curious. Why now? Although the White House review of EPA’s proposal is only supposed to take 90 days, it has been on ice for more than a year. It is unclear whether the Chamber just woke up a year later and decided now was the time to offer its views, or whether the letter was newly solicited by opponents of EPA’s proposal, from inside or outside the White House.

The Chamber’s aggressive attack on science and public right to know here inside the beltway stands in stark contrast to what just happened in Maine. There, the (Republican-controlled) state legislature voted unanimously to modify its existing law – the Kid Safe Products Act --that requires the state to develop a list of chemicals of concern that are used in children’s products (and, for some of them, identify and substitute safe alternatives). While the national chemical industry joined with the state’s Tea Party Governor to try and gut the law entirely, the Maine Chamber of Commerce negotiated a responsible compromise that kept the fundamental purpose of the law – to inform and protect the public -- intact. Seems like the Chamber of Commerce members in Maine – as opposed to their lawyers inside the Beltway – better understand how to protect their interests, while also protecting the public.

Just a few days later, on June 10th, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) which houses the National Toxicology Program (NTP) released its 12th Report on Carcinogens. The report is mandated by Congress to be released every two years, to inform the public on the latest scientific understanding of what substances are known human carcinogens or reasonably anticipated to be human carcinogens. The big news in this report was 1) that the NTP recognized formaldehyde as known to cause not only cancer of the airways, but also myeloid leukemia and 2) that styrene was identified as reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen. The release of the report was also significant because it had been held up for four years due to unrelenting political pressure from the chemical industry. In the New York Times story about the report, the CEO of the ACC, Cal Dooley, attempted to discredit the report, saying that the chemical manufacturers he represents were “extremely concerned that politics may have hijacked the scientific process,” -- earning a spot in the cynicism Hall of Fame.

The chemical industry was particularly incensed that the Report on Carcinogens was released only two months after the National Academy of Sciences issued its own report that was critical of several elements of a separate assessment of formaldehyde being conducted by EPA. That assessment is intended to identify actual levels of exposure to formaldehyde below which are presumed to be safe, not simply whether formaldehyde causes several types of cancer. For weeks, the chemical industry has been overstating and distorting what the NAS said in its report, and using it as a weapon to attack EPA and other agencies whose job it is to assess the potential health and environmental impacts of toxic chemicals.

The NTP explained in an addendum why it was not necessary to change its own findings on formaldehyde in the wake of the NAS report. The chemical manufacturers were so outraged that the National Toxicology Program didn’t follow industry’s script, that on Wednesday, Dooley sent a letter to the White House, declaring that the Office of Management and Budget “must take greater responsibility in the coordination and review of chemical safety assessments.” In other words, the chemical industry wants the economists, lawyers and political appointees at the White House – over whom the industry appears to have greater influence -- to do a better job of supervising, second-guessing, and censoring, independent government scientists at EPA, the National Toxicology Program and elsewhere. Of course, the chemical industry included the usual window-dressing in its letter: “Protecting public health and safety must be our top priority…” which is the same thing the tobacco industry always said with great piety when waging its own decades-long war on independent science and “inconvenient truths” about the dangers of smoking.

The chemical industry’s argument is that 1) the government’s release of congressionally-mandated, independent, peer-reviewed science is both “faulty” and “political” -- when it reaches conclusions the industry doesn’t like -- and 2) information released to the public about the health risks of chemicals threatens American jobs. Because it has remained silent, and blocked EPA’s proposal to identify chemicals of concern from moving forward – as well as several other efforts by EPA to collect more information about the use of toxic chemicals -- it is an open question whether the White House actually agrees with the chemical industry that the disclosure of basic health and science information to the public will “kill jobs” or that it is just too timid – particularly during difficult political times -- to defend independent science (and scientists) and the public’s right to know about the dangers of toxic chemicals.

Meanwhile, everyone else this week was pretty much ignored the chemical industry and acted as though the unregulated use of thousands of chemicals in consumer products, -- found in our homes, schools, workplaces and supermarkets – is a problem that requires speaking out, and taking action.

Delaware’s House of Representatives unanimously passed legislation banning the use of Bisphenol A in baby bottles, sippy cups and water bottles – as the state Senate had already done. . You can see my colleague Jennifer Sass’s testimony in support of the legislation here. That makes Delaware the 10th state to enact bans on some uses of Bisphenol A (joining the entire European Union, Canada, China, and a number of other countries).
The American Medical Association adopted a new policy at its Annual Meeting this week supporting a ban on the use of BPA in baby bottles, sippy cups, and food containers. The AMA also called for “a shift to a more robust, science-based federal regulatory framework for oversight of BPA.” And the AMA urged “that BPA-containing products with the potential for human exposure be clearly identified” Hmm. Sounds like a serious expression of concern. Who else needs to go first before EPA is allowed to speak?
Senator James Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, and Senator Frank Lautenberg, (E&E Daily, subscription required) Democrat of New Jersey convened bi-partisan discussions with stakeholders about TSCA reform legislation and Senator Lautenberg’s legislation, the Safe Chemicals Act.

As noted above, in the face of the chemical industry’s onslaught, the White House has done and said nothing to defend (let alone promote) the work of agency scientists. At least not publicly. The President is very close with a number of the Captains of the Chemical Industry. DuPont CEO Ellen Kullman is a member of his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness (you can see a nice picture of them sitting together recently here). And it was just announced yesterday that Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris has been appointed to co-chair the President’s Advanced Manufacturing Partnership.

I don’t know if either CEO has kids who dream (or used to dream) like mine do about playing baseball in the major leagues. But I hope they both occasionally dream of serious chemical policy reform, including TSCA reform, becoming a reality in this country. That dream, if fulfilled, would benefit their companies – and the U.S. chemical industry – while providing greater health protection – and lower health care costs – for all Americans. Surely they know that the industry’s attacks on EPA, the chemicals of concern list, the National Toxicology Program, the Report on Carcinogens, and independent peer-reviewed science, are not the path to realizing that dream. Surely they must have some say as to how their lobbyists in Washington play the game. They could throw out the tobacco industry playbook.

If he hasn’t done so already, the President should take the opportunity the next time he is sitting down with those chemical company executives to defend EPA, the National Toxicology Program, and the other government agencies that are charged with conducting the best scientific assessments of toxic chemicals. They are under massive pressure, scrutiny and attack from the chemical industry and its army of lawyers, lobbyists and scientists-for hire. Along with their discussions about Jobs and Competitiveness, and Advanced Manufacturing Partnerships, he should take the time to push back on the absurd notion that being honest with the public about chemicals that cause cancer, or interfere with our hormonal systems, or persist in the environment and build-up in our bodies hinders our competitiveness, kills jobs, or stifles innovation. Who knows, they might even agree with him. Come on Mr. President, step up to the plate.

Maine Governor Paul Le Page is the Biggest Loser: Attack on Maine's chemical safety law falls flat

2011-06-09T17:37:27Z

Daniel Rosenberg, Senior Attorney, Washington DC

In a victory for common-sense, protecting public health and reforming our failed system for regulating toxic chemicals, Maine’s state Senate this week unanimously voted in support of a bill to carefully amend the state’s Kid Safe Products Act. The Senate vote follows last week’s unanimous vote by the state House of Representatives. The bill was negotiated between legislators with the help of key stakeholders including the Environmental Health Strategy Center and the Maine Chamber of Commerce.

The consensus of the entire state legislature for modest adjustments, including strengthening changes, is a major defeat for freshman Governor Paul Le Page who took office barely six months ago and put gutting the Kid Safe Products Act at the top of his legislative agenda. It is actually the second major defeat on the issue of chemical policy reform during the Governor’s short but noteworthy (and newsworthy) tenure. The novice Guv’s campaign to revoke the state’s proposed restrictions on the use of the endocrine-disrupting chemical bisphenol A from baby bottles, sippy cups and water bottles was both a complete failure and, from a PR perspective, a total disaster.

I haven’t yet mentioned the partisan affiliation of anyone involved in Maine’s public fight over the fate of its chemical policies, but now I will: both the House and Senate in Maine are controlled by the Republican party. That isn’t remarkable. Support for chemical reform in Maine has long been bi-partisan – with the public and their elected representatives. What is remarkable is how badly Governor Le Page, who was elected with strong Tea Party support, misjudged the will and desires of the citizens of Maine and the entire state legislature on this issue. What accounts for his attack on a popular law, in complete disregard for peoples’ views, and his resulting thorough defeat?

I think it is because the Governor wasn’t really listening to the people of Maine. Instead, the Governor surrounded himself with staff who worked as paid lobbyists for the chemical industry, and large industries that use a lot of chemicals (like the toy industry and grocery manufacturers who use food packaging that contains chemicals whose safety is increasingly being questioned). The chemical industry and others saw the election of Governor Le Page as an opportunity to roll back a precedent-setting public health law in Maine, and create their own momentum for defeating or overturning similar proposals that are in play in legislatures across the country. So the Governor received from his staff a heavy dose of the perspective of their former clients, not the people.

A win in Maine for the chemical industry and their allies would have – from their perspective – also provided a bit of a release valve from the pressure building for strong reform of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) at the national level. It would have been a feather in the cap of the industry lobbyists as they attempt to spin members of Congress in Washington DC as to why now is not a good time for reform, why proposals along the lines of what was adopted in Maine are too "extreme," a “non-starter” that should be considered “dead on arrival,” and why they have failed to offer any affirmative proposals of their own.

But Mainers – including its legislators, health groups, and home grown business interests – wrote a different script. What just happened in Maine is instead further proof that:

1) the public strongly supports sensible chemical policy reform;

2) state-based politicians -- who are closer to their constituents than to lobbyists for the chemical industry – also recognize the need for reform, and support it with strong bi-partisan majorities;

3) it is possible to work out important differences, and address legitimate concerns of business with chemical reform proposals, while ensuring strong public health protections are adopted, if both sides are serious about negotiating, and not just stalling.

So, for chemical reform, as far as Maine is concerned, Governor Le Page is clearly the biggest loser. Nationally, the chemical industry is the biggest loser. The biggest winners – or potential winners -- are any politicians in Washington – Republican, Democrat or Independent – who wake up to what is going on across the country (and across the globe) and seize the opportunity to work in good faith to craft strong, sensible legislation to reform our broken chemical safety law. They will be rewarded by their constituents, whether the chemical industry likes it or not.