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Open in TheBrain

Arsenic

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MERRI OK

SEE CANCER

see coal ash, also mercury and hvy metals

SEE WHEELER , JOHN GRAHAM, PRUITT, ZELDIN 2

NANCY BECK

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[### Trump administration aims to roll back limits on toxic ...

The Hill

https://thehill.com › policy › energy-environment › epa...](https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/epa-toxic-wastewater-coal-fired-power-plants/)

22 hours ago — It is the latest step that President Donald Trump's administration has taken to pull back regulations on coal mining and coal-fired power and ...Read more

AI Overview

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin is facing intense scrutiny over policies that roll back federal limits on toxic heavy metals like arsenic, lead, and mercury from industrial polluters.

U.S. Senate (.gov) +3

Controversial Actions and Impact:

Sierra Club +2

Earthjustice +3

U.S. Senate (.gov) +1

Criticism and Responses:

Congresswoman Jennifer McClellan (.gov)

Earthjustice +2

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Lee Zeldin Intends to Allow More Heavy Metals ... - Sierra Club}:}:

Jun 30, 2025 — Lee Zeldin's proposal to allow coal companies to dump more heavy metals into our waterways defies all common sense.

Sierra Club

McClellan and Tonko Send Letter to Administrator Zeldin Urging ...

Jul 23, 2025 — McClellan and Tonko Send Letter to Administrator Zeldin Urging EPA to Retract Proposal to Weaken Pollution Standards * “It is the ...

Congresswoman Jennifer McClellan (.gov)

WATCH: In Senate EPW Hearing, Kelly Presses EPA on Lead ...

Apr 29, 2026 — Sen. Kelly shows EPA Administrator Zeldin how close the hazardous lead and arsenic smelter is to an elementary school during an EP...

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HILL

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency moved Thursday to roll back limits that require coal-fired power plants to prevent the release of toxic heavy metals into streams and rivers through polluted groundwater, saying a three-year-old rule is unduly costly for the energy industry at a time when energy demand is spiking.

It is the latest step that President Donald Trump’s administration has taken to pull back regulations on coal mining and coal-fired power and empower fossil fuels as a primary energy source to feed the rapid growth of artificial intelligence data centers.

In its proposed rule, the EPA said a 2024 rule under President Joe Biden misjudged the effectiveness and cost of the regulation, and had the effect of shutting down coal-fired power plants at a time when energy demand is spiking.

Changing the rule is critical to making electricity more affordable and reliable, while advancing the economy, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a statement.

“The AI and data center revolution is creating an electricity and baseload power demand that cannot be met under the overly restrictive policies of past administrations,” Zeldin said. “The Trump EPA will continue doing its part to address these burdensome regulations on the coal-fired power plant sector that hold American communities back from the new opportunities presented by this new 21st century energy reality.”

Reps. Thompson and Moolenaar on bipartisan bill that would bar foreign adversaries from buying US farmland

In 2024, the EPA strengthened wastewater rules over coal-fired power plants that keep coal ash — a byproduct of burning coal — in unlined, uncovered dumps that leach toxic heavy metals such as mercury, arsenic and selenium into groundwater.

In the rule, the EPA required plant owners to report whether the groundwater was contaminated and, if so, pump and treat the contaminated groundwater before discharging it into streams and rivers, Thom Cmar, an attorney for environmental advocacy group Earthjustice, said.

The EPA initially had given power plant owners until Dec. 31, 2029, to meet the new limits.

The EPA said the rule proposed Thursday, if finalized, would reduce power generation costs by as much as $1.1 billion a year. Coal and power industry trade associations cheered the EPA’s move. Environmental groups slammed it as a public health danger and giveaway to the coal-power industry.

Earthjustice said the lakes, rivers and other waterways that will see more pollution as a result of the EPA’s proposal are often sources of drinking water that tens of millions of people rely on. Coal-fired power plants are by far one of the largest sources of toxic pollutants in America’s rivers, lakes and streams, Earthjustice said.

“This plan would eliminate safeguards on hundreds of millions of pounds of wastewater with neurotoxins and cancer-causing contaminants. It would allow coal power plants to avoid cleaning up contamination that threatens our drinking water sources,” Cmar said.

The proposal unveiled Thursday would exempt contaminated groundwater seeping into waterways from the mandatory treatment requirements, Earthjustice said. Power plant owners would only be required to treat the contaminated groundwater if they were already complying with the 2024 rule to pump it to the surface to treat it, Earthjustice said.

States could, however, still investigate whether power plants are polluting the groundwater and, if they are, try to force owners to treat the polluted groundwater under federal clean water laws, Cmar said.

“The problem is, at the state level, many states are reluctant to use that tool that they all have to hold up the permitting process and force the companies to do an adequate job of documenting and limiting the pollution,” Cmar said.

The EPA said dozens of coal-fired power plants — likely up to 104 — are polluting groundwater through the uncontrolled runoff. It found seven plants were complying with the rule to pump and treat the groundwater, it said.

The EPA had estimated in 2024 that its new rule that year would reduce pollutant discharges by 660 to 672 million pounds per year, provide $3.2 billion in public health benefits each year and especially benefit “low-income communities and communities of color that are disproportionately impacted by pollution from coal-fired power plants.”

It had projected that electricity bills for the average residential household would increase by less than $3.50 per year.

Follow Marc Levy at https://twitter.com/timelywriter

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AI Overview

Tobacco, asbestos, and arsenic are widely considered among the most potent or widespread carcinogens impacting human health, with strong evidence linking them to cancer. Tobacco products are the leading cause of cancer, while asbestos causes mesothelioma and lung cancer, and arsenic is a common environmental toxin linked to multiple cancer types.

leveland Clinic +2

Here are the top 3 and other highly significant carcinogens, according to leading health organizations:

  1. Tobacco Smoke: Smoking and secondhand smoke are responsible for the majority of cancer deaths in the US, linked to lung, throat, mouth, and other cancers.

Cleveland Clinic +4

Other Significant Carcinogens

These substances are classified by major organizations like the National Toxicology Program (NTP) and International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).

Cleveland Clinic +4

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January 27, 2017 ENFORCER // GROVER

The Count on Coal coalition launched a Congressional Scorecard for the 115th congress to track votes on coal-related issues.30

“Count on Coal ‘s scorecard was developed to ensure vital coal industry priorities remain at the top of members’ priority lists and are translated into action that provides coal communities with urgent relief from further economic harm,” the NMA press release reported.

One of the key votes tracked would be what NMA described as a “unnecessary” stream rule:

“Swift and decisive action on the Stream Rule is required to restore balance, save high-wage jobs and protect an energy source integral to our nation’s success,” said NMA president and CEO Hal Quinn. “The combination of unnecessary government overreach, regulatory duplication and harm done through this rule meets every test for CRA action and for a key vote to kick off our scorecard for the 115th Congress.”31

On February 16, President Donald Trump signed an order to repeal the Stream Protection Rule.The Sierra Club noted that the rule covers waterways near surface coal mining operations including mountaintop-removal mines.The rule, introduced in 1983 and later strengthened by the Obama Administration, wrote that coal mines could not damage the “hydrologic balance” outside of their permit areas by doing things like dumping debris into valleys that could pollute rivers and streams with heavy metals such as selenium, mercury, and arsenic.32

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The Environmental Protection Agency is slated to roll back key Obama-era regulations to protect waterways near coal-fired power plants from being flooded with toxic coal ash today. Coal ash contains mercury, arsenicand other toxic chemicals. Food & Water Watch has vowed to sue the Trump administration over the rollback of the rules, which it says would “lead directly to more water contamination, more birth defects, more childhood cancer and more pain and suffering for American families — all for the sake of a dirty industry’s last grasp at profits.”

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llinois Is Poised to Crack Down on Hazardous Coal Ash Waste to Protect Health and Rivers

BY: NINA PULLANO

Lawmakers targeted coal ash after testing showed Illinois was the No. 1 state for the most coal-fired power plants leaching unsafe levels of contaminants like arsenic into the groundwater.

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Illinois is poised to become the latest state to crack down on power plants' coal ash waste, a hazardous byproduct of coal burning and source of groundwater contamination.

The state has more coal ash ponds leaching unsafe levels of contaminants into groundwater than any other state in the nation, a recent analysis of federally mandated water testing showed. That pollution can pose health risks for humans: Coal ash can contain chemicals and heavy metals, including arsenic, mercury and lead, that have been linked to cancer, heart disease, reproductive issues and brain damage in children.

Lawmakers passed legislation this week that, once signed by new Democratic Gov.J.B.Pritzker, would amend the Illinois Environmental Protection Act to set stricter requirements for coal ash cleanup and to mandate public comment periods prior to closing coal ash sites. It also would give the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency funding to run cleanup programs through permit fees.

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Arsenic and Other Toxins Found in 80% of Baby Formulas also cadmium 11/17.

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http://www.ecowatch.com/lead-mercury-arsenic-autism-kennedy-2181997944.html

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CTW tried to recover on after CO2?

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CEI lost on arsenic but won on superfund 227 strat

BC got punked on logging salvage rider mark rey, but risked govt shutdown to save ANWR 41 (shutdown led to furlouhs that allow monica to deliver pizza) 41 Dombeck aslo got aggressive/effective on forests roadless 58mil acres; EPA sued power plants (on track to get rid of 1/4 of all indust pollut) 42  BC up effic stds, rule no govt contract for polluters (or other lawbreakers) ,lower arsenic and fact farm runoff 45, lower diesel emissions  b2 put 371 rules on hold in 1st 90 min 46  b2 3rd wave of attack, RR clumsy, Newt 94 failed, but rove and luntz learned: look like you're doing no harm 47

OIRAJG ~ Joe  Lieb; OIRA could ask agency to repeal laws; rejects 58 RR; 16 BC; 316 B2 2001 (CTT and trade gp input) 64  dioxin no safe level, but ok to spread on crops and parks 64  nrdc found 34-56 mill ppl had arsenic; BC browner went for 10 ppb (CTT said pvt well shd do something if 5 ppb) but ~ 1o ppb at epa; Rvoe and Karen Hughes ~  b/c NMex close election, backed by CEI arsenic "an essential ingredient" and good for us 67 CEI angela logomasini  NAS backed Browner and B2 caved, also on other BC rules allowed, based by CEI Jon Adler.

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http://www.alternet.org/environment/americas-toxic-prisons-environmental-injustices-mass-incarceration

Morgenstern is convinced his Hodgkin's lymphoma was caused by exposure totoxic coal ash from the massive dump right across the road from SCI Fayette, a maximum-security prison in LaBelle, Pennsylvania, where he is currently serving a 5- to 10-year sentence. "In 2010 and until I left in 2013, the water always had a brown tint to it. Not to mention the dust clouds that used to come off the dump trucks ... which we all breathed in.... Every single day I would wake up and there would be a layer of dust on everything," he writes from inside the prison. When Morgenstern was sent back to SCI Fayette in 2016 after he violated parole, he found that the dust issue had abated a bit -- work at the dump has been stalled for a year due to litigation -- but the water still runs brownish and sometimes has "a funky smell." He says he knows that the environment in and around the prison is still "messed up" and he's concerned that his immune system, already weakened from fighting and overcoming cancer, won't be able to withstand another onslaught of toxic exposure. "I myself have no doubt that if I'm kept here at Fayette, I will once again become sick," he writes.

Likewise, in Navasota, Texas, Keith Milo Cole and John Wesley Ford, aging prisoners at the Wallace Pack Unit, worry about how their prolonged exposure toarsenic-laced water and extreme heat during summer months may have affected their health over the long term. Like Morgenstern, Cole says the water at his unit was brown until a federal judge ordered the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) to provide the prisoners safe drinking water. "It used to be where you could take a white wash rag and put it in the sink and water would run on it about 10 or 15 minutes, and it would actually turn brown," says Cole, who is serving a life sentence.

Farther west, in California, Kenneth Hartman was nearly 30 years into a life sentence when he contracted valley fever in 2008 at the California State Prison in Lancaster. The infection, caused by inhaling a soil-dwelling fungus, can be devastating.Though it is often mistaken for the common flu, it can kill people or leave those infected with lifelong symptoms. "The intensity or severity [of my symptoms] kept increasing to the point that I clearly remember thinking, if I get any sicker, I'm going to die," Hartman says, writing from Lancaster where he is still incarcerated. "My physical strength was near to zero. ... I had a persistent dry cough, severe night sweats and bouts of vertigo that rendered me practically immobile."

The plight of these prisoners points to a nationwide problem that's inextricably linked to power imbalances within the US criminal legal system -- a system in which prisoners are often out of sight and thus out of the public mind.

As a special investigation by Truthout and Earth Island Journal shows, the toxic impact of prisons extends far beyond any individual prison, or any specific region in the United States. Though some prisons provide particularly egregious examples, mass incarceration in the US impacts the health of prisoners, prison-adjacent communities and local ecosystems from coast to coast.

A 700 Percent Increase in Prisoner Population

The US locks up more people per capita than any other nation in the world. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, currently some 2.3 million people are confined in more than 6,000 prisons, jails and detention centers operated by multiple federal, state, county and private actors. That's about the population of Houston, Texas, the fourth largest city in the nation.

Since the 1970s, the US has seen a 700 percent increase in the number of people imprisoned, a result of the growth in "tough on crime" and "war on drugs" policies, as well as a concerted effort to control and minimize the power of social movements and other forms of resistance from within communities of color, says David Naguib Pellow, a professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who's writing a book on prisons and environmental justice. The rate at which we lock people up today is some five-times higher than most countries, even though the crime rate in the US is comparable to that of other stable, industrialized nations.

Holding large groups of people in closed facilities brings with it a host of associated civil and human rights problems -- problems that have been well documented. But until recently, not much thought or research had been expended on the connections between mass incarceration and environmental issues, that is, problems that arise when prisons are sited on or near toxic sites, as well as when prisons themselves becomes sources of toxic contamination.

Paul Wright, executive director of the Human Rights Defense Center, was among the few people who began to look into this connection on a broad scale nearly three decades ago. When Wright was serving time in Washington State's McNeil Island prison in the 1990s, the tap water there too, used to run brown. "Yet the prison officials would be putting up signs saying the water is safe to drink," he recalls. "There were a lot of environmental issues going on within the prison. It got me thinking. Just seeing how the prisons were on everything, I didn't think they would be any better on the environment."

So Wright, who along with fellow prisoner Ed Mead, had recently started publishing Prison Legal News -- a magazine where prisoners and their families speak up about criminal legal policy and reform -- began filing public records requests for water pollution related complaints in state and federal prisons across the country. "Sure enough, we got all kinds of stuff back saying that the prisons were literally sources of toxic pollution," he says. In 2007, Prison Legal News published findings from 17 states exposing issues related to sewage and sanitation violations in dozens of prisons.

Once he got out in 2003 after serving 17 years, Wright expanded Prison Legal News into the Human Rights Defense Center, a Florida-based nonprofit that advocates on behalf of people held in US detention facilities. In 2014, the Center launched thePrison Ecology Project, which Wright says aims "first and foremost" to map the extent of the intersections between mass incarceration and environmental degradation, and then "do something to change it."

"People [on the outside] generally aren't thinking of prisons and jails as environmental problems or as places where people have legitimate concerns about the environment," Wright says.

It's well known that low-income communities and communities of color are disproportionately impacted by environmental degradation. Polluting facilities are more likely to be built in these communities, and environmental regulations are often less stringently enforced in these neighborhoods. This legacy of environmental injustice extends to the siting of prisons, which, too, are often located in or close to low-income communities. Additionally, they are built on some of the least desirable and most contaminated lands in the country, such as old mining sites, Superfund cleanup sites and landfills. According to a GIS [geographic information system] analysis of a 2010 dataset of state and federal prisons by independent cartographer Paige Williams, at least 589 federal and state prisons are located within three miles of a Superfund cleanup site on the National Priorities List, with 134 of those prisons located within just one mile.

"A lot of people, when they think of environment and toxic polluters, they think corporations, and they think that the government is somehow a solution to this problem," Wright says. "The prison ecology issue turns that whole thing on its head because in these cases it's the government that's chosen to build these prisons on toxic waste sites or allowed them to become sources of toxic waste. And it is literally holding people at gunpoint at these sites and exposing them."

Former Industrial Sites "Recycled" for Prisons

To get to SCI Fayette, where Matthew Morgenstern is incarcerated along with more than 2,000 other men, you may have to pass through the borough of Brownsville -- a small industrial area along the Monongahela River southwest of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This used to be a bustling business center connected to the steel industry, but today downtown Brownsville wears the look of a town that's well past its glory days.

America's rust belt is scattered with places like this, where the retreat of industries in the 1970s left working class folks without opportunities. In many of these places, prisons began to fill in the gap, occupying lands left degraded by industrial activities and offering often-unfulfilled promises of employment to impoverished communities.

The land being "recycled" has, in many cases, already been devastated -- to an extent that the construction of a prison may be seen as its only "acceptable" use.

"One of the patterns that we see is where corporations have come in, they pillage the environment, be it by mining, forestry or whatever, and then when everything has been exhausted, when trees have been cut down, every last grain of ore has been ripped from the soil, and everything has been contaminated and poisoned in the process, the final solution is, okay now we're going to build a prison here," Wright says.

SCI Fayette -- which is located in the small rural community of LaBelle, about a 12-minute winding drive from Brownsville -- is a perfect example of this. The 237-acre men's prison began operating in 2003 on one corner of what, in the 1940s through the 1970s, was one of the largest coal preparation plants in the world, where coal from nearby mines was washed and graded. The "cleaned" coal was then shipped off to power plants and other markets, while the remaining coal refuse was dumped on and around the hilly, 1,357-acre site. By the mid-1990s, when its owners filed for bankruptcy and abandoned the site, an estimated 40 million tons of coal refuse had been dumped there. At some places the waste piled up some 150 feet.

In 1996, the property was purchased by a local company, Matt Canestrale Contracting (MCC), which entered into a contract with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to dump coal ash -- waste produced by burning coal in power plants -- on the site as part of a land "reclamation" effort. Since it opened in 1997, more than 5 million tons of coal ash has been deposited at the dumpsite, which is right across the road from SCI Fayette.

The problem with coal ash is that it's way more toxic than unburned coal waste as it contains higher concentrations of heavy metals and minerals, including mercury, lead, arsenic, hexavalent chromium, cadmium, boron and thallium. At unlined sites, like LaBelle, contaminants can leach into the local water and fine "fugitive dust" can blow into the air.

Coal ash can cause or contribute to many serious health conditions, including respiratory problems, hypertension, heart problems, brain and nervous system damage, liver damage, stomach and intestinal ulcers, and many forms of cancer, including skin, stomach, lung, urinary tract and kidney. Therefore, many environmental experts say the risks posed by such reclamation efforts outweigh the so-called benefits.

Right when the coal ash dumping started, LaBelle residents began complaining to the DEP that fugitive dust was making them sick. Over the years, they reported suffering from respiratory problems, kidney failure, and several types of cancer. But the DEP did little more than issue fines. It allowed the prison construction to go forward, essentially putting the health of the entire prison population, as well its staff, at risk.

In 2013, Citizens Coal Council, a coal industry watchdog, filed a federal lawsuit against MCC, alleging that the company was responsible for polluting the local air and water due to its failure to curb fugitive dust. The suit noted that 50 families lived in LaBelle, but made no mention of the prisoners at SCI Fayette.

However, prisoners and staff at SCI Fayette have been experiencing health issues that are similar to those reported by local community members. In fact, SCI Fayette is also exposed to two other potential sources of pollution: The boiler system for the prison burns coal for its power (and creates additional coal ash waste), and a new coal terminal along the riverbank, right next to the prison, transfers 3- to 10-million tons of coal per year from boats to rail.

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4/16

coal ash South AA

http://www.southernstudies.org/2016/04/slander-suit-against-citizens-battling-alabama-coa.html

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http://www.alternet.org/books/heres-how-chemical-companies-decide-whats-toxic-not-epa-or-fda

an excerpt from the new book Nation on the Take by Wendell Potter& Nick Penniman (Bloomsbury Press, 2016):

Arsenic, like formaldehyde, can cause health and developmental problems and at high levels is linked to certain cancers. Columbia University professor Joseph Graziano jokes, darkly, that arsenic makes lead look like a vitamin. That’s because, as he told the Center for Public Integrity’s David Heath, it “sweeps across the body and impact[s] everything that’s going on, every organ system.” It’s in weed killers marketed to fight your lawn’s crabgrass, and, in many places, it’s in the water we drink.

A 2008 draft assessment by the EPA estimated that arsenic was seventeen times more potent than previously thought. In assessing the impact of arsenic on women in particular, the agency estimated that if a hundred thousand women were to consume the legal limit of arsenic currently permitted, 730 would get bladder or lung cancer.

After seeing the draft assessment, the producers of arsenic-based pesticides that hired Charlie Grizzle to lobby for them, Drexel Chemical Co. and Luxembourg-Pamol, began to take action, as did mining companies like Rio Tinto, which also would have been affected by the regulation. As the Center for Public Integrity’s David Heath reported, a group of lobbyists, including Grizzle, set up a meeting with Representative Mike Simpson, the Republican from Idaho, who by 2015 had received a total of $8,000 in campaign donations from Grizzle, according to data compiled and analyzed by the Sunlight Foundation and the Center for Responsive Politics.

All it took to send the EPA’s draft assessment to the National Academy of Sciences for a review was for a congressman to slip one paragraph into in a 221-page spending bill. When Heath asked Simpson about the paragraph, he said he worried about small communities not being able to meet drinking water standards.

Such stealth maneuvers are not uncommon in Congress. A senator, for example, cananonymously put a hold on legislation, completely blocking it. Committee members can insert language written by lobbyists directly into a large spending bill before anyone has adequate time to review it. As Chellie Pingree, a Democrat from Maine, bemoaned to Center for Public Integrity reporter David Heath in June 2014: “It’s happening more and more in this Congress that we see less and less of what goes on behind the scenes, that members aren’t informed until the last minute. So things like this, major policy changes like this, can happen somewhat in the dark of the night with very little information to the public.”

When confronted by a reporter, Simpson said he didn’t know that the paragraph inserted into the spending bill kept a weed killer containing arsenic on the market, and he said he had “no idea” that Grizzle had donated to his campaigns.

Delays continued in subsequent years as industry-funded scientists presented their views to the Academy, sometimes without disclosing their financial ties. (The Center for Public Integrity reported that one such scientist suggested that an arsenic dose even higher than the current drinking water standard doesn’t cause cancer.) The result: in 2015, seven years after the EPA’s draft assessment that arsenic is considerably more dangerous than previously thought, many public health experts said the federal government was continuing to allow too much arsenic in our water and in products like weed killers. 

“Nobody’s Looking Out for Our Welfare”

“We have a broken Toxic Substance Control Act,” says Tom Neltner. That’s the big problem that “federal health officials, prominent academics and even many leaders of the chemical industry” agree on, the Atlantic’s senior health care editor, Dr. James Hamblin, wrote in 2014.

The obstacles for public health are (1) the vast majority of the eighty thousand industrial chemicals available for use are not regulated or even tested by the government, and (2) companies are not even required to submit most of them for testing. 

“What most Americans don’t realize is nobody’s looking out for their welfare,” Mount Sinai’s Philip Landrigan told us. “The great fear is always that there might be other chemicals out there that have never been tested but to which children are exposed.”

In addition, the EPA (like the FDA) has to meet a very high standard before it can ban a toxin. The EPA has banned or limited only five. Weak laws even made it difficult to ban asbestos.

There were signs in 2015 that the chemical safety laws might be strengthened when legislation to update the laws for the first time in thirty-nine years received bipartisan support in the Senate. It would, among other things, require more frequent testing at the federal level and make it easier for the government to pull products off the shelves.

Sponsored by industry favorite David Vitter and New Mexico Democrat Tom Udall, who in the past has supported increased environmental protection, the bill even received kudos of sorts from some environmental advocacy groups, including the Environmental Defense Fund, which view the legislation as an improvement over the broken status quo. Other green groups maintained it was much too weak. Senator Barbara Boxerwas pushing a separate, more stringent bill that allowed for testing of more chemicals each year.

Vitter’s spokesman wrote that the “legislation provides common-sense reforms that are necessary to update the United States’ forty year old chemical regulatory program. Senator Vitter has worked with colleagues across this aisle, stakeholders from all sectors, and the EPA to draft this legislation that will drastically increase EPA’s ability to ensure the safety of chemicals being used in the United States.” It soon became apparent, however, that the bill was being vetted—and possibly even written, at least in part—by industry lobbyists. Using metadata on a Microsoft Word document circulated by Udall, a reporter for Hearst Newspapers found that the document originated at the American Chemistry Council. Senator Boxer said she felt certain the industry wrote it, citing a Senate information technology staffer who investigated the issue.

Udall, who the New York Times suggested had formed an “unlikely alliance” with the chemical industry, maintained that the document originated in his office. One of his aides told Hearst that “it was shared with a number of stakeholders including at least one other senator’s office.One of those stakeholders was the ACC.” But the council did not deny authoring that draft of the bill. “There’s no way for anyone to tell,” a council spokesperson said. Others, including Udall’s office, said anyone could change some metadata. A spokesperson for Udall said the senator has been engaged with all groups on all sides of the issue.

Regardless of who wrote the bill’s language, the end product was more than palatable to the chemical industry. The American Chemistry Council called the bill the “culmination of a multi-year effort” to secure “compromise, common-sense” legislation that it characterized as “a balanced, science-driven solution that reassured the public that our products are safe and that keeps our economy growing.”

The ten biggest chemical companies spent $154 million lobbying on the bill over 2013 and 2014, the watchdog group MapLight found. In contrast, public interest, environmental, and medical groups together spent less than $18 million. The environmental groups spent $6.6 million.

Those chemical companies also contributed almost more than $4 million in campaign contributions to several candidates’ campaigns in the 2014 election as the sponsors were shepherding the bill through Congress, MapLight found. TheACC also donated $150,000 to a super PAC supporting Vitter’s gubernatorial bid in Louisiana.

The ACC also spent $4 million plus on TV and radio advertising in support of the reelection of Udall and the industry’s other allies in Congress, the Timesreported. The ads portrayed Udall as a man who brings “both sides together to get results.” According to the Times, Udall “emphatically rejects” that he was doing the industry’s bidding: “We can’t do something that is pie in the sky; we have to deal with reality,” he said.

Nick Penniman is the President of Fund for the Republic, a national nonpartisan organization working to reduce the undue influence of money in politics through grant making, convening and catalyzing new initiatives. He is the former executive director of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, founder of the American News Project, publisher of the Washington Monthly, DC director of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, executive editor of TomPaine.com, associate editor of American Prospect magazine and director of the Alliance for Democracy.

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J graham bs sp 2001 ref predecessor wendy gramm on transparency:

Third, we have sent clear signals to agencies that we care about regulatory analysis, QUALITY regulatory analysis. We are using both the carrot and the stick. The carrot we have offered is more deferential OMB review of proposals that agencies have voluntarily subjected to independent peer review. Administrator Whitman's recent decision on arsenic,whether you like it or not, was supported by just that type of review. The Bush Administration recognizes that we should consider and account for the consensus views of the leadership of the scientific community, regardless of whether it leads to a pro- or anti- regulation result. The stick has been a revival of the dreaded "return letter". In the last three years of the Clinton Administration, there were exactly zero return letters sent to agencies for poor quality analysis. I have signed more than a dozen such return letters in the last six months and they are available for scrutiny on OMB's web site. Recently we have witnessed some agencies simply withdrawing rules rather than face a public return letter. Knowing that we care, agencies are beginning to invite OMB into the early stages of regulatory deliberations, where our analytical approach can have a much bigger impact.

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http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/06/28/15000/how-politics-derailed-epa-science-arsenic-endangering-public-health

Arsenic is consumed by people in small amounts in the food we eat and the water we drink.

    EPA scientists have concluded that if 100,000 women consumed the legal limit of arsenic each day, 730 of them eventually would get lung or bladder cancer.

   A single paragraph inserted into a committee report by a member of Congress essentially ordered the EPA to halt its evaluation of arsenic, or make public its arsenic findings, an action that could trigger stricter drinking water standards.

    A lobbyist for two pesticide companies acknowledged that he was among those who asked for the delay. As a direct result of the delay, a weed killer the EPA was going to ban at the end of 2013 remains on the market.

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Brennan is not alone. Urine samples collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from volunteers reveal that most Americans regularly consume small amounts of arsenic. It's not just in water; it's also in some of the foods we eat and beverages we drink, such as rice, fruit juice, beer and wine.

Under orders from a Republican-controlled Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency in 2001 established a new drinking-water standard to try to limit people's exposure to arsenic. But a growing body of research since then has raised questions about whether the standard is adequate.

The EPA has been prepared to say since 2008, based on its review of independent science, that arsenic is 17 times more potent as a carcinogen than the agency now reports. Women are especially vulnerable. Agency scientists calculated that if 100,000 women consumed the legal limit of arsenic every day, 730 of them would eventually get bladder or lung cancer from it.

After years of research and delays, the EPA was on the verge of making its findings official by 2012. Once the science was complete, the agency could review the drinking water standard.

But an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity found that one member of Congress effectively blocked the release of the EPA findings and any new regulations for years.

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A ubiquitous poison

Arsenic is virtually synonymous with poison. But it's also everywhere, found naturally in the Earth's crust. Even if the toxin were eliminated from drinking water, people would still consume it in food, a more vexing problem to address.

Scientists are debating whether there is such a thing as a safe level of arsenic. New research has raised questions whether even low levels of arsenic can be harmful, especially to children and fetuses.

The findings of the study Wendy Brennan enrolled in were published in April. Researchers from Columbia University gave IQ tests to about 270 grade-school children in Maine. They also checked to see if there was arsenic in their tap water at home. Maine is known as a hot spot for arsenic in groundwater.

The researchers found that children who drank water with arsenic - even at levels below the current EPA drinking water standard - had an average IQ deficit of six points compared to children who drank water with virtually no arsenic.

The findings are eerily similar to studies of lead, a toxin considered so dangerous to children that it was removed from paint and gasoline decades ago. Other studies have linked arsenic to a wide variety of other ailments, including cancer, heart disease, strokes and diabetes.

"I jokingly say that arsenic makes lead look like a vitamin," said Joseph Graziano, a Columbia professor who headed the Maine research. "Because the lead effects are limited to just a couple of organ systems - brain, blood, kidney. The arsenic effects just sweep across the body and impact everything that's going on, every organ system."

For 15 years, Brennan and her family drank water with arsenic levels five times greater than the current drinking-water standard. She has no way of knowing what effect this has had on her two daughters.

Carrington Brennan, now 14, says it bothers her to think that drinking water may have affected her intelligence.

"It shocked and scared me, I guess," she said. "I think it should be prevented in future cases."

Wendy Brennan, center, outside her home with husband Peter, daughter Caitlyn and granddaughter Madelyn Begin.

Amy Temple

Chemical reviews lag

:{:{It's the job of the EPA to protect the public from toxic chemicals. To do that, the agency must first review the scientific literature to determine which chemicals are harmful and at what doses. This duty falls on an obscure program with a drab bureaucratic name, the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS).}:

There are tens of thousands of chemicals on the market and by one estimate, 700 new chemicals are introduced every year. Yet since 1987, IRIS has completed evaluations on only 557 of them.}:

The last time IRIS analyzed arsenic was in 1988, just a year before the Safe Drinking Water Act called for the EPA to set a new drinking-water standard for the toxin. The EPA missed that deadline, so in 1996, a Republican-controlled Congress gave the agency five more years to comply. The EPA turned to the prestigiousNational Academy of Sciences for help. Scientists there reviewed the EPA's 1988 analysis. They said it was badly out of date and underestimated the risk of arsenic.

After the EPA set a new drinking-water standard in 2001, the IRIS program moved to update its analysis of arsenic. EPA scientists spent five years reviewing hundred of studies before sending a draft report to the White House's Office of Management and Budget in October 2008.

EPA scientists concluded that arsenic was 17 times more potent as a carcinogen than the agency currently reports. Put another way, the risk of someone eventually getting cancer from drinking the legal limit of arsenic every day is 60 times greater than any other toxin regulated by drinking-water laws.

:{The White House at that point had become a nemesis of EPA scientists, requiring them to clear their science through OMB starting in 2004. Scientific assessments were often sent to OMB only to die, seemingly the victim of political influence.:{ A stinging report by the Government Accountability Office in 2008 said that IRIS was at serious risk of becoming obsolete, unable to keep up with the workload or the science. The GAO noted that in 2007 the EPA sent 16 assessments toOMB, where they got held up. That year, the agency managed to complete only two assessments.}:

Within five months of Obama taking office, the EPA wrested back control of the process. The agency also set up an ambitious timetable to complete toxic-chemical assessments within two years. By that point, the arsenic assessment had already been in the works for six.}:

The arsenic draft had to go through an external peer-review before being considered valid. But IRIS officials were optimistic about completing it by the end of 2011.

:{:{}:

Meanwhile, in an entirely different office within the EPA, negotiations were under way that would ultimately prevent IRIS from finishing its work.}:

Arsenic: decades of delays

Groundwater fears

Veterans Community Park is one of the busiest parks in Naples, Florida, with softball fields, basketball and tennis courts and a playground. In early 2004, Collier County began spraying theherbicide MSMA on the fields to control weeds. But soon, tests detected high levels of arsenic in the groundwater.

It wasn't the first time alarms had sounded about MSMA. Tests at nine golf courses using the weed killer had detected significant levels of arsenic in shallow groundwater and ponds, a concern because 90 percent of all drinking water in Florida comes from wells. The EPA had already banned all pesticides containing inorganic arsenic, considered to be the most toxic form of the metal. But evidence showed that the organic arsenic in MSMA converts to inorganic in soil. EPA scientists feared that MSMA could be contaminating drinking water.

:{:{In 2006, the EPA's Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances announced plans to ban all uses of herbicides containing arsenic and began negotiating with the few companies still selling them. Within three years, they had reached an agreement. The pesticide companies would phase out all uses of MSMA, except on cotton fields, by the end of 2013.}:

But the agreement included a condition. It required the EPA to complete a scientific review of arsenic before the ban could take effect. The pesticide office apparently assumed that the IRIS assessment, then six years in the making, would be done by then.

In all likelihood, IRIS would have met the deadline. But two pesticide companies and their lobbyist turned to Congress.}:

The two companies are Drexel ChemicalCo. of Memphis, Tennessee, and Luxembourg-Pamol, whose parent, Luxembourg Industries, is based in Tel Aviv, Israel. Both are family-owned. Luxembourg-Pamol doesn't release sales figures; Drexel Chemical says its sales exceed $100 million a year.

Though anyone can buy MSMA, the label cautions that it should be sprayed only on cotton fields, sod farms, highway shoulders and golf courses. The market for MSMA is likely worth several million dollars for these companies. The EPA estimated in 2006 that about 3 million pounds of MSMA and another similar compound were sold each year in the United States. The weed killer retails for about $5 a pound.

An example of the herbicide MSMA for sale on Amazon.com

The companies joined forces to hire Charlie Grizzle, a lobbyist who worked as an EPA assistant administrator during the President George H. W. Bush era. When the EPA released a public draft of its arsenic assessment in February 2010, the pesticide companies countered with a unique argument. DQA

:{Michal Eldan, a vice president at Luxembourg-Pamol, said her company had the:{ scientific literature scoured and found 300 studies published since 2007 that the EPA had not included in the draft.}:

"If the report is not up to date, a risk assessment cannot be based on that," Eldan said in an interview. "We mentioned that because this is the one inarguable detail. You can argue about toxicity. You can argue about risk assessment. You can't argue about 300 publications that are missing from the list of references."

Grizzle added, "I think it's safe to say that the missing 300 studies, if you will, really exposed EPA to accusations from congressmen and stakeholders that they were cherry-picking the data."

In August 2010, 15 Republicans in the House and Senate made that very argument in a letter to then-EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson:

"We are informed that there are nearly 300 studies in the scientific literature on arsenic published since 2007 that were not included in the agency's evaluation. We find that troubling and are concerned that this could allow critics to conclude that the agency is 'cherry-picking' data to support its conclusions."

After reading the letter, Michael Hansen, a senior scientist at Consumers Union who has followed the arsenic review closely, said, "This is a really dishonest couple of sentences ...That's because the [EPA] document was written in early 2008, and the only reason the public is seeing it [in 2010] is because OMB sat on it."}:

"It's not cherry-picking the data. When the document was written, those studies hadn't been published yet," he said.

Yet the missing publications ultimately became the rationale for Congress to derail the EPA's assessment. In July 2011, language appeared in a House Appropriations Committee report ordering the EPA to take no action on its arsenic assessment and turn the job over to the National Academy of Sciences. The report instructed the academy to include "the 300 studies in the published scientific literature EPA failed to review for its 2010 draft assessment."

U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine,

Committee reports explain how to implement a bill. Government agencies could ignore them, but they seldom do, for fear of angering congressional leaders who control funding. Burying language in a report - as opposed to the bill itself - was the same technique once used for earmarks. Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonprofit group that closely monitors the Appropriations Committee, said rank-and-file members of the House cannot strike or amend language in a report. In fact, he said, only a couple of lawmakers in leadership would likely know who put the language in the report.

Rep. Chellie Pingree, a Maine Democrat on the subcommittee that oversees EPA funding, said she has no way of knowing who is responsible for trying to kill the arsenic assessment.

"It's happening more and more in this Congress that we see less and less of what goes on behind the scenes, that members aren't informed until the last minute," she said. "So things like this, major policy changes like this, can happen somewhat in the dark of the night with very little information to the public."

Congress' arsenic concerns echoed industry's

By Chris Zubak-Skees June 28, 2014

Congressional letters and reports questioning the EPA's process for arsenic echoed one industry group's concerns. Among the points made by the Organic Arsenical Products Task Force, and later, Congress include whether a Taiwanese study could be relied upon and whether a working group ignored a list of nearly 300 studies attached to a letter from the group....

So, who did it? All the evidence from the Center's investigation pointed to one congressman: Mike Simpson of Idaho.

:{:{}:

Simpson was one of the Republicans who signed the letter to the EPA administrator complaining about the missing 300 studies. He was the chairman of the subcommittee that controlled funding for the EPA, where the language first appeared. He was also a member of another committee where the language surfaced again in a different report. He even asked the EPA administrator about arsenic at a subcommittee hearing.}:

Simpson, who worked as a dentist and state legislator before entering Congress, is a frequent critic of the EPA. But in the 2012 and 2014 election campaigns, he has been portrayed as too liberal by Tea Party candidates funded by the right-wing Club for Growth.

:{:{}:

In a brief interview outside his Capitol Hill office, Simpson accepted creditfor instructing the EPA to stop work on its arsenic assessment.

"I'm worried about drinking water and small communities trying to meet standards that they can't meet," he said. "So we want the Academy of Science to look at how they come up with their science."}:

:{:{Simpson said he didn't know that his actions kept a weed killer containing arsenic on the market. He denied that the pesticide companies lobbied him for the delay.}:

But lobbyist Grizzle offered a different account.

"I was part of a group that met with the congressman and his staff a number of years ago on our concerns," Grizzle said, adding that there were four or five other lobbyists in that meeting but he couldn't remember who they were.}:

Other organizations that disclosed lobbying the EPA and Congress on the agency's arsenic evaluation were the U.S. Rice Federation; the Mulch and Soil Council;the Association of California Water Agencies; and theNational Mining Association, including the mining companies Arch Coal and Rio Tinto.

:{:{Grizzle began making donations to Simpson's re-election campaign in January 2011, a few months before Simpson took action to delay the arsenic assessment. Since then, Grizzle has given a total of $7,500. That's more than he's given in that time to any other candidate.}:

Asked if the contributions were made in exchange for the delay, Grizzle said, "I don't see a connection. I've been a friend and supporter of Congressman Simpson for a long time."}:

When Simpson was asked if he was aware of the donations, he terminated the interview, saying, "I have no idea. But I've got a hearing."

Industry playbook

The National Academy of Sciences was created during the Civil War to provide objective advice from the nation's most highly regarded scientists. In 1999 and 2001, the academy twice reviewed the EPA's analysis of arsenic and concluded it badly underestimated the risk. The EPA's draft that has been delayed was built in part off the academy's critique.

Taking scientific assessments out of the hands of the EPA and giving them to the academy has become a tactic to delay regulations, said Charles Fox, a former EPA assistant administrator who oversaw the development of a new drinking water standard for arsenic.

"The standard playbook that industry uses first begins with questioning the science, and they can question the science in any one of a number of different forms," he said. "There is a scientific advisory board at EPA. There's the National Academy of Sciences."

But endless delays to perfect the science can jeopardize public health, Fox said.

"We always as regulators had to do our best to make decisions based on the best available science we had at the time. Science will always improve and you can always revisit that decision down the road, but fundamentally we have an obligation to protect public health in the environment, and that decision needs to be made on the best science that you have today."

In a letter last October telling buyers that the EPA had lifted its ban for at least three years, the MSMA manufacturers said in a joint statement that they "fully expect[] the NAS review to result in a less stringent risk value for human exposure to inorganic arsenic."

If so, the companies said, they are confident the threat of a ban will be lifted permanently and the EPA may even allow other uses of MSMA.

The two manufacturers of the herbicide are still trying to influence the scientific assessment. The National Academy held a meeting in April2013to review the science on arsenic. It invited 14 scientists to give presentations. Two of those scientists are funded by Drexel and Luxembourg-Pamol, which lobbied Simpson to delay the EPA.

The academy doesn't require presenters to disclose their financial ties; some choose to do so and some don't. Neither of the scientists funded by the pesticide companies disclosed their ties at the meeting.

Dr. Samuel Cohen, a professor at the University of Nebraska College of Medicine, told the panel that inorganic arsenic doesn't cause cancer or any other diseases in people below a certain threshold dose, which he suggests is substantially higher than the current drinking water standard. Cohen has been funded by the MSMA manufacturers for more than a decade, according to disclosures in published articles.

Barbara Beck, who works for Gradient, a scientific consulting firm often hired by industry, also gave a presentation without disclosing her ties.

Eldan, with Luxembourg-Pamol, acknowledged that both scientists are paid by her company. Beck prepared a 32-page report on the EPA's arsenic assessment. Eldan said that Beck and Cohen disclose their ties in published articles in scientific journals. In some cases, Eldan, a scientist herself, is listed as a co-author.

Cohen said in an email that he disclosed his funding in published articles that he provided to the academy. Records show that Cohen sent the academy three articles that listed funding only from the "Arsenic Science Task Force," with no further explanation about the task force.

Beck said, "Although I have done work for the Organic Arsenical Products Task Force [composed of the two pesticide companies], my presence and presentation at the April 2013 meeting were funded wholly by Gradient …. At both meetings, I am solely responsible for my comments."

Joseph Graziano, who chairs the National Academy of Sciences panel on arsenic, said he hadn't realized that Beck and Cohen were being funded by the pesticide companies when they spoke at the workshop. "I was not aware of that," he said, "and I don't think the committee was aware of it."

Congress rescues theformaldehydeindustry

This is not the first time Congress has pressured the EPA to hand over science on toxic chemicals to the National Academy. In 2009, Sen. David Vitter, a Republican from Louisiana, held up the nomination of a top EPA official as leverage to force the agency to have the academy review the risks of formaldehyde.

The World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer and the National Institute of Health's National Toxicology Program both say that formaldehyde can cause cancer. The EPA was preparing to say the same.

Yet the agency ultimately relented to Vitter's demand. After months of review, the academy criticized the IRIS draft on formaldehyde for being repetitive, poorly organized and failing to clearly present all the evidence of its findings. The panel recommended the EPA redo the draft to be more clear and concise. Recognizing that the EPA was having a problem in completing assessments, the academy said it wasn't calling for a delay.

Soon, however, the formaldehyde industry was turning to Congress to help it delay the assessment. Right next to Simpson's language in the committee report about delaying the arsenic assessment was another set of instructions to the EPA. This time, IRIS was told to apply the academy's recommendations on formaldehyde to all ongoing and future assessments. When asked if he requested the language, Grizzle acknowledged only that he was one of the lobbyists for the Formaldehyde Council, an arm of the industry.

The EPA said in a report to Congress it won't start all its assessments over from scratch, but it will try to incorporate the academy's recommendations. As a result, the 47 pending reviews have been further delayed.

IRIS Director Vincent Cogliano said the changes will lead to more rigorous assessments that should have an easier time getting through peer review. When asked how IRIS responds to political pressure, he said he had little control over that.

"We're doing our best to keep our assessments focused on the science," he said. "What happens after that is not part of the IRIS process."

'It's not their right'

Eldan said people shouldn't be worried about her company's weed killer.

"To be honest, we believe that this is a good product, that it does not pose a concern to health and the environment," she said.

Clearing weeds from the sides of highways can be a safety issue, she said, because tall plants can block vision. Even on golf courses, there are safety concerns, she said.

"The weeds have a tendency to spread. If you don't use herbicides, it's not only one weed. They can cover the golf course," Eldan said. "The players can stumble on them."

Wendy Brennan and her granddaughter, Madelyn Begin.

Amy Temple

Madelyn, left, and Abigail Begin. Madelyn is leaning on the well that contains arsenic.

Amy Temple

Meanwhile, in Maine, Wendy Brennan worries about all the years her family was drinking arsenic-tainted water.

"I know a lot of people around the area that have had cancer, and so you always think, 'Jesus, that's going to be my kids. It's going to be me or my husband,' " Brennan said.

Her congresswoman, Pingree, also worries about her constituents.

"When you have a toxic chemical in the environment that could be affecting child development or people who could eventually be contracting cancer from their exposure to this, we shouldn't be delaying," Pingree said.

She fears that after the National Academy of Sciences completes its review, the pesticide companies will find another delaying tactic.

"That's the sad part; there's nothing to stop Congress from finding another roadblock to delay," Pingree said. "Congress can say, 'Well, here's another 200 studies, you better review them.' "

Brennan doesn't understand why there's a need to wait.

"If they've already got some proof that it's 17 times more potent, you'd think they'd want to get the information they had out and then continue to explore scientifically more," she said.

"We need to know what's going on with our drinking water. If somebody wants to not let us know because they want to keep some pesticides making money for five more years … it's not their right. It's not their body. It's not their decision."

More stories about

United States Environmental Protection Agency, Toxicology, Arsenic, Metalloids, Pnictogens, Wendy Brennan

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/06/28/15000/how-politics-derailed-epa-science-arsenic-endangering-public-health

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