chemicals policy
cmonforton | October 20, 2017The headlines are grabbing people's attention:
CBC News: "Pollution causing more deaths worldwide than war or smoking"; CNN: "Pollution linked to 9 million deaths worldwide in 2015, study says"; BBC: "Pollution linked to one in six deaths"; Associated Press: "Pollution killing more people every year than wars, disaster and hunger, study says"; The Independent: "Pollution is killing millions of people a year and the world is reaching 'crisis point', experts warn."
News outlets are referring to a report released yesterday by The Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health. The report’s authors…
cmonforton | August 18, 2017Earth Justice, the United Steelworkers, the Environmental Defense Fund and other public interest groups are suing the Trump administration over two new regulations to address toxic substances. The groups filed petitions last week with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. They are asking to court to review the rules which EPA published on July 20, 2017. The groups will argue that the regulations are contrary to Congress' intent.
The Natural Resources Defense Council's Daniel Rosenberg and Jennifer Sass use these photos to illustrate the matter. It's the difference between what…
lborkowski | July 24, 2017Members of the public health community are aware of many of the ways the Trump administration and the 115th Congress are hindering and reversing evidence-based actions for public health – from an executive order requiring agencies to scrap two regulations each time they create a new one to advancing legislation that would make it harder for EPA to obtain and use the most up-to-date science in its work. With so many threats to public health arising each month, it can be hard to catch all of them, though. The Union of Concerned Scientists has performed a tremendous service by producing the…
cmonforton | June 13, 2017[This post is dedicated to Doug Larkin. Doug was the co-founder of the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization. He suffered in recent years with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and passed away yesterday.]
Dallas-based OxyChem imports about 300,000 pounds of asbestos each year. Yes, asbestos. The deadly mineral that most Americans think is banned (it's not) and responsible for about 15,000 U.S. cancer deaths annually.
OxyChem is likely the largest asbestos importer in the U.S. The company is required under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to report its asbestos imports to the EPA.…
kkrisberg | May 16, 2017At BuzzFeed, Kate Moore tells the story of the “radium girls,” the hundreds of women during WWI who worked painting watch dials with luminous radium paint — a substance that would eventually poison and kill them even though they were told it was perfectly safe. What followed was years of employers covering up and denying evidence that radium was killing workers, while berating the women for attempting to get help with their mounting medical bills.
Eventually, Moore writes, their fight for justice led to one of the first cases in which an employer was held responsible for the health of workers…
kkrisberg | May 2, 2017At ProPublica, Michael Grabell investigates how U.S. companies take advantage of immigrant workers, focusing on Case Farms poultry plants, which former OSHA chief David Michaels once described as “an outrageously dangerous place to work.” He reports that Case Farms built its business by recruiting some of the world’s most vulnerable immigrants, who often end up working in the kind of dangerous and abusive conditions that few Americans would put up with.
Grabell chronicles the history of Case Farms and how it first began recruiting refugees from Guatemala who were fleeing a brutal civil war in…
cmonforton | April 20, 2017The Environmental Defense Fund’s (EDF) Richard Denison, PhD tipped me onto news that the chemical industry’s chief trade association now has one of its own in a key EPA office.
Nancy Beck, PhD began work on Monday as second in command of EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. Immediately prior to her appointment, Dr. Beck was with the American Chemistry Council (ACC) in the position of Senior Director of Regulatory Science Policy. Prior to that she worked in the White House's regulatory czar's office during parts of the G.W. Bush's and Obama's administrations.
President…
cmonforton | April 19, 2017A new commentary by CUNY School of Public Health professor Franklin Mirer is timed perfectly for this weekend's Marches for Science.
Mirer writes about the ongoing interference by Members of Congress on the science behind the designation of formaldehyde as a carcinogen. His commentary, "What’s Science Got to Do with It?" appears in the current issue of April issue of the Synergist, a membership publication of the American Industrial Hygiene Association.
Mirer's example concerns a rule published by EPA in December 2016 on testing formaldehyde emissions from composite wood products (e.g.,…
kkrisberg | March 21, 2017At the Sacramento Bee, Ryan Lillis and Jose Luis Villegas report on the effects that Trump’s immigration crackdown is having on California farms, writing that fear of deportation is spreading throughout the state’s farming communities. While many farmworkers believe immigration raids are inevitable, farm operators, many who voted for Trump, hope the president will bring more water to the region and keep immigration officials off their fields. Lillis and Villegas write:
Fear is everywhere. The night before, the local school board became one of the first in California to declare its campuses a…
kkrisberg | March 1, 2017In 2015, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released a report finding 457 fracking-related spills in eight states between 2006 and 2012. Last month, a new study tallied more than 6,600 fracking spills in just four states between 2005 and 2014. But, as usual, the numbers only tell part of the story.
Not every spill counted in that new number represents a spill of potentially harmful materials or even a spill that made contact with the environment. In fact, the study’s goal wasn’t to tally an absolute number of fracking spills. Instead, researchers set out to collect available spill data…
kkrisberg | February 24, 2017Earlier this month, news broke of a study that found potentially health-harming chemicals in a variety of fast food packaging. Upon hearing such news, the natural inclination is to worry that you’re ingesting those chemicals along with your burger and fries. Study researcher Graham Peaslee says that’s certainly a risk. But perhaps the greater risk, he says, happens after that hamburger wrapper ends up in landfill and the chemicals seep into our environment and water.
The chemicals in question are per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs), which are used to make consumer products nonstick,…
kkrisberg | January 4, 2017At the Toronto Star, Sara Mojtehedzadeh reports on the “lethal legacy” of a General Electric plant in the Canadian city of Peterborough, Ontario, where hundreds of compensation claims have been filed for illnesses that workers say were caused by occupational chemical exposures. In fact, one occupational health expert described the plant as a “cancer generator.”
Mojtehedzadeh reports that a study commissioned by General Electric and that the Star obtained found that male workers at the plant were up to 57 percent more likely to die of lung cancer than the general population, while female…
lborkowski | December 29, 2016The Pump Handle is on a holiday break. The following, which was originally published on March 9, is one of our favorite posts from 2016.
by Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH
The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) continues to make the case that consumers and contractors should stay away from paint strippers that contain methylene chloride. The CDPH’s latest effort is a 7-minute video released last week by the agency's Occupational Health Branch. It features a painter named Jason who nearly died while working with a methylene chloride-based paint stripper. He and two co-workers were…
cmonforton | December 13, 2016Poultry processing workers and food safety inspectors are being doused with chemicals in the name of food safety. A slew of antimicrobial agents are approved by the USDA to be used on meat and poultry. The chemicals are considered edible for consumers, but no assessments are made by USDA (or other agencies) on the health risks to workers.
The problem now has the attention of some Members of Congress. Representatives Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and others sent a letter last week to USDA Secretary Vilsack, HHS Secretary Burwell, and Labor Secretary Perez. They expressed "deep…
cmonforton | December 8, 2016EPA deserves another pat on the back. The agency is again moving swiftly to use its authority under the chemical safety law passed by Congress earlier this year. Yesterday the agency announced a proposed rule to ban the use of trichloroethylene (TCE) in two specific applications. If adopted, TCE would be prohibited from use as a spot- cleaning agent in dry cleaning operations and as an aerosol spray degreaser in commercial and consumer settings.
Exposure to TCE is associated with adverse health effects to the kidneys, liver, and immune and reproductive systems. It is a developmental toxin,…
cmonforton | November 30, 2016Good for them! They beat Congress’ deadline by 20 days.
That’s the first thing that came to mind yesterday when I read EPA’s announcement about the first 10 chemicals it's selected for risk evaluations. EPA’s announcement is the first major milestone established by Congress when it passed sweeping changes earlier this year to the Toxic Substances Control Act. One provision of the law (Section 2605(b)(2)(A)) directed EPA to select 10 chemical substances from its 2014 "TSCA Work Plan for Chemical Assessments" and begin risk evaluations on them no later than 180 days after the law was enacted (i…
cmonforton | November 3, 2016The American Public Health Association (APHA) adopted 11 new policy statements which will guide its work in the coming years. They include:
Raising the minimum wage: The policy calls on states to increase their minimum wage, index the minimum wage to inflation, and prohibit state-government preemption of municipal minimum wage policies. Among other things, the new APHA policy also recommends research on the effects of living wages on public assistance budgets.
Reducing exposure to highly fluorinated chemicals: The policy calls on Congress to fund research on alternatives to perfluoroalkyl and…
kkrisberg | October 26, 2016Charles Ornstein at ProPublica and Mike Hixenbaugh at the Virginian-Pilot investigate the man known as Dr. Orange for his “fervent” defense against claims that exposures to Agent Orange sickened American veterans. A part of their long-running investigation “Reliving Agent Orange,” this most recent article reports that the Veterans Administration has repeatedly cited Dr. Orange’s (real name: Alvin Young) work to deny compensation to veterans, even though many argue Young’s work is compromised by inaccuracies, inconsistencies and omissions. In addition, the very chemical companies that make…
egrossman | October 24, 2016The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced the first five chemicals it will “fast-track” under the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act for the 21st Century (LCSA). The EPA now has until June 22, 2019 to identify where these chemicals – all considered persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic – are used, how exposures occur, and propose possible restrictions on their use.
“The threats from persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic chemicals [PBTs] are well-documented,” Jim Jones, assistant administrator in EPA’s office of chemical safety and pollution prevention, explained in a…
kkrisberg | September 30, 2016Just 10 years ago, it wouldn’t have been possible to bring leading physicians, scientists and advocates together in a consensus on toxic chemicals and neurological disorders in children, says Maureen Swanson. But with the science increasing “exponentially,” she said the time was ripe for a concerted call to action.
Swanson is co-director of Project TENDR (Targeting Environmental Neuro-Developmental Risks), a coalition of doctors, public health scientists and environmental health advocates who joined forces in 2015 to call for reducing chemical exposures that interfere with fetal and child…