chemco acc bak

chem219

see also American Chemistry Council

chem tag zombied

==

EPA Adopts Fringe Science Claim That Small Doses of Pollution Are Healthy 2/19 see Chemicals.

omfg

Sam Nickerson

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in April 2018 proposed relaxing standards related to how it assesses the effects of exposure to low levels of toxic chemicals on public health.

Now, correspondence obtained by the LA Times revealed just how deeply involved industry lobbyists and a controversial, industry-funded toxicologist were in drafting the federal agency's proposal to scrap its current, protective approach to regulating toxin exposure.

The proposed change came just two weeks after a top EPA official contacted toxicologist Ed Calabrese, whose claim that low doses of carcinogens and radiation are healthy stressors akin to physical exercise that activate the body's repair mechanisms has been panned by more mainstream researchers.

"I wanted to check to see if you might have some time in the next couple of days for a quick call to discuss a couple of items … " EPA deputy assistant administrator Clint Woods wrote to Calabrese.

The EPA's proposed regulation, signed by then-Administrator Scott Pruitt and published in the U.S. Government's Federal Register, copied Calabrese's recommendations to Woods almost verbatim.

Calabrese, who was also quoted in the EPA's press release for the proposal, celebrated the announcement in an email to former coal and tobacco lobbyist Steve Milloy, who served on President Donald Trump's EPA transition team.

"This is a major big time victory," Calabrese wrote. Milloy, who is also a Fox News commentator, replied that it was "YUGE."

The EPA's proposal is a departure from its long-time "linear no-threshold" approach to regulating the study of toxins: once a substance is found to be harmful at one level, the danger applies at all levels. In other words, there can be no safe level of radiation exposure.

Calabrese argues this approach is overly cautious and a financial detriment to industry. The new rule would require that regulators look at "various threshold models across the exposure range" for pollutants.

Low doses of otherwise toxic chemicals can be beneficial to human health in specific clinical situations, the LA Times noted, but experiments have produced mixed results and experts say it would be a risk to apply the findings to regulation for the general public.

"There is no way to control the dose a person gets from an industrial or agricultural chemical," David Jacobs, a professor of public health at the University of Minnesota, told the newspaper. "It's not being doled out in pills and monitored by a physician who can lower it if the patient isn't responding well."

The EPA has not announced a date for when it will make a decision on the rule proposal.

Health experts believe that if the EPA does adopt the rule, it could lead to wholesale changes to the agency's standards for regulating toxic waste, pesticides, and air and water quality.

"Industry has been pushing for this for a long time," George Washington University professor of environmental and occupational health David Michaels told the LA Times. "Not just the chemical industry, but the radiation and tobacco industries too."

Calabrese has long been connected to these industries and has received funding from tobacco firm R.J. Reynolds, Dow Chemical, Exxon Mobil and others, the LA Times reported.

Calabrese's role in the EPA's proposal illustrates how the Trump administration has pursued environmental policy recommendations from industry lobbyists based on research running counter to mainstream science.

According to the LA Times, Calabrese first emailed Milloy about whether it would be possible to get the EPA to abandon the linear no-threshold model in September 2017, not even nine months after Trump was sworn into office.

EPA Adopts Fringe Science Claim That Small Doses of Pollution Are Healthy 2/19 see Chemicals.

ref

https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-secret-science-20190219-story.html

Scientist says some pollution is good for you — a disputed claim Trump’s EPA has embraced

By SUSANNE RUST

FEB 19, 2019 | 5:00 AM

Scientist says some pollution is good for you — a disputed claim Trump’s EPA has embraced

Water samples are taken for testing from a canal in the Cawelo Water District near Bakersfield in 2015. A researcher who has suggested that exposure to toxic chemicals can be good for humans is helping to shape Environmental Protection Agency policies. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

In early 2018, a deputy assistant administrator in the EPA, Clint Woods, reached out to a Massachusetts toxicologist best known for pushing a public health standard suggesting that low levels of toxic chemicals and radiation are good for people.

“I wanted to check to see if you might have some time in the next couple of days for a quick call to discuss a couple items …,” Woods wrote to Ed Calabrese.

Less than two weeks later, Calabrese’s suggestions on how the EPA should assess toxic chemicals and radiation were introduced, nearly word for word, in the U.S. government’s official journal, the Federal Register.

“This is a major big time victory,” Calabrese wrote in an email to Steve Milloy, a former coal and tobacco lobbyist who runs a website, junkscience.com, that seeks to discredit mainstream climate science.

“Yes. It is YUGE!” wrote Milloy, in response.

It was a glorious moment for Calabrese, who had been snubbed for decades by mainstream public health scientists because of his controversial research and theories.

Massachusetts toxicologist Ed Calabrese

Massachusetts toxicologist Ed Calabrese (University of Massachusetts)

It also signified the major shift the EPA has taken under the Trump administration. More than any before it, this White House has actively sought out advice from industry lobbyists and the scientists they commission in setting pollution rules.

Denouncing the Obama-era EPA as an agency beholden to environmental extremists, the administration has not only dismissed mainstream science but embraced widely discredited alternatives that critics say are not consistent with the agency’s focus on improving public and environmental health.

Calabrese’s role illustrates a different side of this shift: the potential removal of longstanding public health practices and the incorporation of industry-backed and disputed science into federal environmental policy.

Calabrese spent decades advancing his ideas, facing skepticism and criticism from peers in the toxicology community while winning funding from companies whose bottom lines conformed with his views.

He says most of the pushback he receives comes from left-of-center toxicologists who see him as “the devil incarnate” for accepting industry funding and challenging their ideology. He maintains his science is solid and will be vindicated in time.

“These environmental regulatory people are very closed-minded,” he said. They won’t reconsider their standards, and see that some of the agents they call harmful “actually can induce adaptive responses,” Calabrese said.

This view — that pollution and radiation can be beneficial — has many experts worried. The fact that such a position may become EPA policy, they say, portends a future in which corporate desires outweigh public and environmental health.

“Industry has been pushing for this for a long time,” said David Michaels, former assistant secretary of labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration who’s a professor of environmental and occupational health at George Washington University. “Not just the chemical industry, but the radiation and tobacco industries too.”

If the EPA ultimately adopts Calabrese’s proposed new regulations, researchers say it could change decades of standards and guidelines on clean air, water and toxic waste. It could also fundamentally alter the way the government assesses new chemicals and pesticides entering the marketplace.

“This is industry’s holy grail,” said Michaels.

If the EPA ultimately adopts Ed Calabrese’s proposed new regulations, researchers say it could change decades of standards and guidelines on clean air, water and toxic waste, such as those that apply to PBF Energy's Torrance Refining Co.

If the EPA ultimately adopts Ed Calabrese’s proposed new regulations, researchers say it could change decades of standards and guidelines on clean air, water and toxic waste, such as those that apply to PBF Energy's Torrance Refining Co. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

Can pollution be healthy?

For decades, federal agencies charged with investigating and regulating carcinogens, toxic chemicals and radiation have been guided by the assumption that if a substance is dangerous at some level, it is harmful at any level. The higher the exposure, the more harm done. The lower the dose, the less. And the risk doesn’t entirely disappear until the substance is removed.

This is known as the linear no-threshold model, and industry dislikes it because it generally assumes that there is no level, or threshold, of exposure that can be considered totally safe.

But research done on low exposures to toxins has been less than definitive. Experiments designed to test carcinogens and radiation at low levels often produce conflicting results — with, for example, some studies of a chemical showing harm, other studies showing no effect, and a few suggesting a net benefit. In other cases, there is no information at all to guide regulators.

In the face of such uncertainty, the EPA and other agencies have taken a cautious approach by relying on the linear no-threshold model. Where data are absent or uncertain, they assume some level of risk.

It is an imperfect but protective approach, say many public health specialists. They argue that in a human population that varies widely in age, health and levels of chemical exposures, it is imperative that the agency cast a wide, conservative and protective net.

For decades, national and international scientific bodies have upheld this approach. It has been reviewed and re-reviewed dozens of times, including most recently by the congressionally chartered National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine and the EPA.

At the same time, industry has funded scientists to conduct and promote research designed to poke holes in the linear no-threshold model.

And that is where Calabrese comes in. He has long argued that regulators “erred on the side of being protective” at the cost of billions of dollars per year to industry.

Calabrese is a proselytizer of hormesis, the idea that dangerous chemicals and radiation are beneficial at low doses. He says they have a stimulating effect.

Polluting industries have promoted hormesis as an alternative to linear no-threshold for decades, but they had gotten little traction until the EPA embraced it last April.

“It’s clearly not mainstream,” said Thomas Burke, professor and director of the Risk Sciences Institute at Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Burke and other experts say there are clearly scenarios where toxic chemicals can have beneficial effects in clinical and pharmacological settings, such as in the case of tamoxifen, which at low doses is effective at preventing and treating breast cancer but at higher doses can lead to blood clots, stroke and uterine cancer.

But, they say, what happens in a clinical setting can’t and shouldn’t be immediately applied to a regulatory, public health setting.

In the clinical case, “you have a doctor controlling and administering the medication to an individual,” said David Jacobs, a professor of public health at the University of Minnesota, who has published studies showing hormetic effects in some industrial pollutants. “The doctor can pull the medication at any time.”

“There is no way to control the dose a person gets from an industrial or agricultural chemical,” he said. “It’s not being doled out in pills and monitored by a physician who can lower it if the patient isn’t responding well.”

Therefore, Jacobs said, it would be dangerous to use hormesis as a framework for protecting public and environmental health.

“It really doesn’t pass the sniff test” when applying it to public health, Burke said, while allowing for its place in the forum of ideas. “I always teach my classes that there are other theories. It’s like any part of science, there are different points of view. Whether it’s about climate change or low doses.”

But he also teaches that one needs to know who has skin in the game. And in the case of hormesis, he said, that’s industry.

EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C.

EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C. (Associated Press)

Big Tobacco embraces disputed research

In the early 1980s, Calabrese was a tenured professor at the University of Massachusetts, stringing together public agency and industry-funded grants to study chemicals in drinking water and the effects of ozone on mice.

His funders included the EPA, the state of Massachusetts, the Hoffman-LaRoche pharmaceutical company and semiconductor giant Digital Corp.

Then in 1985, he reached out to the Council for Tobacco Research, the research arm of the tobacco industry, seeking a grant to examine “a possible inherited and metabolic susceptibility to lung cancer in smokers.” His proposal was declined.

Sheldon Sommers, a physician at New York’s Lenox Hill Hospital and scientific director of the council, wrote in response to the grant application that Calabrese’s proposal “... is a mad hatter’s tea party sort of epidemiologic approach, and a total $2.1 million plus would likely be frittered away in my opinion,” according to documents from the UC San Francisco Truth Tobacco Industry Documents archive.

But by the 1990s, Calabrese had solidly established himself as a trusted scientist with the tobacco industry. He found they were interested in research that questioned the methods that regulatory agencies use to assess risk.

In a 1994 proposal to R.J. Reynolds, Calabrese offered to investigate a new kind of smokeless cigarette for the company, but also incorporate into his research “the loss of current benefits associated with smoking, such as protection from certain types of cancers and other illnesses…”

It was when he began his work on hormesis that Calabrese got attention from a broader range of industries.

With seed money from R.J. Reynolds, Dow Chemical, Procter & Gamble and others, as well as the EPA, Calabrese established a hormesis working group at the University of Massachusetts, which he called the Biological Effects of Low Level Exposures, or BELLE. Minutes from a 1990 advisory board meeting show the group chose not to use the word “hormesis” in its official name.

According to documents, Calabrese and his funders also held off on pushing a hormesis regulatory agenda until they’d built a sizable base of published scientific research.

Between 1990 and 2013, Calabrese received more than $8 million from companies and institutions, including R.J. Reynolds, Exxon Mobil, Dow Chemical, General Electric, the Department of Energy and the U.S. Air Force, to conduct research on hormesis.

Spokesmen from Exxon Mobil and the Air Force say they no longer fund Calabrese’s work.

Calabrese established his own scientific society, the International Dose Response Society, and his own hormesis journal — now called Dose Response — where he served as editor-in-chief.

He wrote hundreds of articles, in his own journal and in others (including “Should hormesis be the default model in risk assessment?” and “The importance of hormesis to public health”), organized dozens of conferences and delivered scores of talks.

And while his publication portfolio is vast, it is also broad. It includes not just studies of hormesis, but research on soil ingestion, opinion pieces on law and regulatory policy, historical treatise on science, and a few scathing, posthumous rebukes of revered scientists, such as Herman Muller, a Nobel prize-winner and supporter of linear no-threshold.

Calabrese insists his funding does not influence his work.

“My job involves finding financial support to do studies in my field,” said Calabrese. “I seek support from the private and public sectors. The University independently evaluates each of these for compliance with the rules.”

Not all of his money comes from industry or government agencies with extensive toxic waste sites. Between 2000 and 2013, Calabrese received $50,000 from the EPA to hold a conference on soil ingestion, and $50,000 from CalEPA for a reference database he built on cancer publications. He also received a $750,000 joint grant from the EPA and the American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry’s trade group, to study soil ingestion by construction workers.

Yet, despite his prolific career, he has instigated criticism and rebuke from many of his peers for his push on public and environmental health policy. He has been described as a “prominent industry consultant,” having “outlying views,” whose science is “way out there.”

For years he failed to get regulatory agencies to take him seriously.

Then Donald Trump was elected president.

President Trump and former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt

President Trump and former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt (Associated Press)

‘We are winning’

On Sept. 5, 2017, nearly nine months after Trump was sworn in as president and seven months after Scott Pruitt was confirmed as head of the EPA, Calabrese wrote an email to Milloy, the former coal lobbyist who is a Fox news commentator. The Los Angeles Times obtained the emails through a public records request to the University of Massachusetts.

“I wanted to connect with you on whether and how it may be possible to get the EPA to consider changing the LNT [linear no-threshold model] to something far better,” Calabrese wrote.

Milloy had served on Trump’s EPA transition team and was still in touch with high-ranking officials in Pruitt’s agency.

A few months later, Calabrese wrote to Milloy again, letting him know that he’d corresponded with Ryan Jackson, Pruitt’s chief of staff, and sensed interest in a move against linear no-threshold.

Not long after Woods, the EPA’s deputy assistant of the Office of Air and Radiation, emailed Calabrese asking if he wanted to talk about “default linear assumptions” and other items.

The two arranged a call, and on April 19, 2018, Woods sent Calabrese draft language for a small section in the EPA’s proposed new ruling on transparency, called “Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science.”

“It is good what you have but you need a little more,” wrote Calabrese, who then suggested a line, which he altered twice, in email exchanges with Woods, before settling on this: “EPA shall also incorporate the concept of model uncertainty when needed as a default to optimize low dose risk estimation based on the major competing models (LNT, Threshold, and Hormesis).”

In other words, if the EPA is uncertain about a particular chemical’s impacts at low doses, it would abandon linear no-threshold as a default, and try other models instead, including hormesis.

On April 25, Milloy sent Calabrese the final wording for the draft proposal, which included Calabrese’s line nearly word for word.

“I am almost passing out with surprise and euphoria… ” Calabrese wrote Milloy after seeing the document.

The rule was posted for comment in the Federal Register on April 30, although a final ruling has not been announced.

John Konkus, an EPA spokesman, said the input and perspective from “the Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Dose Response” was welcomed, and reflected the perspective of “a wide variety of scientific experts” the agency reached out to when drafting the proposal.

Public health specialists outside the agency say that if the final language is adopted, it is likely to tie the EPA up in knots as it tries and then debates all the alternative models. It could also have profound effects on current and future standards for drinking water, air and toxic waste sites.

“EPA tries to be conservative in its setting of risks,” said Jan Beyea, a retired radiation physicist who has worked with the National Academies of Science. “Calabrese and collaborators think that most pollutants are good for you at low doses, so no need to be conservative.”

EPA spokeswoman Molly Block declined to speculate on whether the rule would be passed and how it would affect environmental rules that were set based on the linear no-threshold model.

Industry groups have praised the proposed change.

“We support moving away from over-reliance on the linear no -threshold default,” wrote a spokesman for the American Chemistry Council, the trade group for the chemical industry. It’s a method, he says that “frequently results in inflated health risk estimates and unwarranted, costly risk management decisions.”

Milloy also seemed pleased with the proposed ruling.

“The EPA should be open and transparent about how and what they are basing their decisions on,” he said, “and they should be using the best science available.”

In any case, he said, “we’re winning.”

Susanne Rust

CONTACT

Susanne Rust is an investigative reporter specializing in environmental issues. Before coming to the Los Angeles Times, she was the editor of Columbia University’s Energy & Environmental Reporting Project, where she oversaw several reporting projects, including a series that examined ExxonMobil’s understanding of climate science in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. Rust started her career in 2003 as a science reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She is the recipient of numerous journalism awards, and was a John S. Knight fellow at Stanford University in 2009, and the Center for Investigative Reporting’s environment reporter between 2010 and 2014.

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PFAS

goretex plastic

https://www.ecowatch.com/michigan-water-contamination-wurtsmith-2559356236.html

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https://www.ecowatch.com/plastic-made-illegal-2509110321.html

...Unfortunately that legal battle would require likely copious amounts of money to fight the plastic industry, most notably the American Progressive Bag Alliance, a pro-plastic lobbying group run by the American Chemistry Council. In her documentary Plastic Patch: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which I initially watched after returning from India, journalist Angela Sun revealed that the council is an umbrella organization for Dow Chemical Company, DuPont and ExxonMobil.

According to a recent report in The Huffington Post, the group is the moneybag behind legislation to ban the banning of plastic bags. These types of laws have already passed in states like Florida and Arizona. As depicted in Sun's film, the American Progressive Bag Alliance ran negative, untruthful commercials urging Californians to vote against that state's proposed plastic bag ban years ago. This year, the Iowa became the most recent state to ban plastic bag bans following a push from the organization and the American Legislative Exchange Council.

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7/17 new tool:

http://www.exposedbycmd.org/2017/07/26/poison-papers-expose-decades-collusion-industry-regulators-hazardous-pesticides-chemicals

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http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/these-corporations-have-biggest-influence-climate-policy

report's key findings:

35 of the 50 most influential are actively lobbying against climate policy. They include companies in the fossil fuel value chain (ExxonMobil, Valero Energy, Chevron), energy intensive companies (BASF, ArcelorMittal, Bayer, Dow Chemical and Solvay) and electric utilities with large amounts of coal generating capacity (Southern Company, Duke Energy and American Electric Power).

swamp thing: nb cf bannon chl rose  djt ban and only limited # ppl avail to fill posts

https://www.ecowatch.com/epa-chemical-safety-2484776932.html

For decades, a weak law left Americans at risk from toxic chemicals in everyday products such as cleaners and fabrics. As a result, chemicals tied to infertility, learning disabilities and even cancer found their way into all our homes, schools and workplaces.

A turn-around looked likely in 2016 when Congress passed a strong, bipartisan law to overhaul the Toxic Substances Control Act to better protect our health. The agency charged with carrying out the new law hit the ground running and was making good progress.

That is, until a new president was elected and new leadership took over the reins at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The Trump administration first installed a top official from the main chemical industry lobbying group to oversee changes to rules that will determine how chemicals are reviewed for safety. The changes she made could undermine efforts to protect us from harmful chemicals for many years to come, according to Politico.

The push to return America to its toxic past may now accelerate with Trump's subsequent nomination of Michael Dourson to run the EPA's entire chemical safety program.

Dourson has made a career as a hired gun for the chemical industry, helping clients play down concerns over toxic chemicals with known and potentially severe health effects.

Defended tobacco and Teflon

If confirmed to the top job at the EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, Dourson will be regulating his old industry friends. It's a pattern we keep seeing with Trump's administration as the president and his appointees turn the federal government's mission to protect public health on its head.

Dourson's paid work for industry goes back several decades and includes work he did for the tobacco industry in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Also on his resume is his work involving the "Teflon" chemical PFOA, which continues to affect drinking water in places such as West Virginia, Ohio, New York and Vermont. And he worked for the manufacturer of the controversial pesticide chlorpyrifos, which Dourson defended and the Trump EPA decided not to ban despite expert calls to do so.

Dourson: Toxic toys? Kids should wash hands

Among other things, Dourson's company used industry money to develop and run a now-defunct website, "kidschemicalsafety.org," with copy penned by staff from chemical industry consulting firms who sought to put chemical hazards "into context."

The website told parents, for example, that even water can be toxic at high exposure levels, "but few people would want to ban" water.

It also played down concerns about chemicals in products such as toys, shifting the burden to parents by suggesting they make sure to read labels, keep toys out of their children's mouths, and make sure kids wash their hands after playing.

His defense: Jesus hung out with shady people, too

Of course, none of Dourson's work will come as a shock to anyone who has followed industry tactics closely. Whether professional climate deniers or big tobacco, manufacturing doubt is a well-known dark art.

The problem here is that if the Senate votes to confirm him, Dourson will speak from a government office.

Running the toxics office at the EPA is unlikely to change Dourson's outlook. After all, this is the man who defended his work for tobacco to downplay concerns about second-hand smoke by saying "Jesus hung out with prostitutes and tax collectors."

That logic may help Dourson sleep at night, but it won't provide much solace to those of us who were hoping the new law would do a better job protecting us from toxic chemicals.

Jack Pratt is the chemicals campaign director at Environmental Defense Fund.

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the midst of three pending mega-mergers between agrichemical corporations, Donald Trump's recent pick of Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris to head the American Manufacturing Council signals yet more serious potential conflicts of interest in top government posts that could damage American farmers, the health of the public and the environment. The council serves as a liaison between the U.S. manufacturing industry and the federal government.

Tuesday, shareholders of agrichemical giant Monsanto approved a proposed takeover of the company by Bayer. Meanwhile, Liveris' company, Dow Chemical, is in the midst of negotiating a merger with DuPont.

"Andrew Liveris should be disqualified for the position due to his likely conflicts of interests. Serving as head of the American Manufacturing Council could allow Liveris to use a government post to benefit Dow Chemical and to line his own pockets," said Friends of the Earth Food Futures campaigner Tiffany Finck-Haynes.

The final decision on the mergers will fall to the Department of Justice, where Trump named Jeff Sessions as potential Attorney General. Sessions, who has received campaign contributions from Monsanto and Bayer, will head the agency investigating the economic impact and antitrust implications of the proposed mergers.

"Donald Trump's picks demonstrates that he is willing to allow corporate interests to control the food that's grown in our country and determine what's on our plates," said Finck-Haynes. "Despite his promise to 'drain the swamp,' his actions prove he is more concerned with advancing corporate interests than protecting the American people, workers and farmers."

The top six agrichemical and seed companies are currently negotiating mergers, which could result in just three powerful multinational corporations controlling this industry. If Monsanto and Bayer, Dow and DuPont and Syngenta and ChemChina form their proposed partnerships, they will control nearly 70 percent of the world's pesticide market, 80 percent of the U.S. corn-seed market and more than 61 percent of commercial seed sales.

The day before Trump's announcement, DuPont's Chief Executive Ed Breen, said a Trump administration won't impact the proposed Dow-DuPont merger. Edward Liveris and Breen, chief executive officers of Dow and DuPont, are expected to earn $80 million from the merger. Meanwhile, Dow already plans to eliminate 2,500 jobs and 8 percent of its Michigan workforce due to its takeover of the smaller company Dow Corning and DuPont is implementing a cost-cutting plan by planning to cut1,700 workers in Delaware, in preparation for the merger.

"Trump's appointment signals that he will rubber stamp these mega-mergers, limiting farming and food options and increasing prices for farmers and consumers," said Finck-Haynes. "The mergers would also further tilt the balance of power away from independent science and the health and safety of the American people towards the influence of chemical corporations."

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edf 7/15

The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act was introduced in the Senate this year, and is our best chance in a generation to solve this problem. But some are supporting provisions that would make us less safe from dangerous chemicals.

These provisions would allow new chemicals on the market without meeting a basic safety threshold, let companies continue to make trade secret claims to hide health information, and—most shockingly—create a virtually unlimited opportunity for the chemical industry to decide which chemicals get reviewed by EPA.

Tell the Senate: It's not reform if the chemicals industry gets to set the agenda and pull the strings.

If that happens, EPA could spend virtually all of its effort and resources evaluating chemicals that industry requests be evaluated, rather than those EPA identifies as the real risks. That means industry can tie up all the EPA's time with insignificant chemical reviews, while the real dangers continue to lurk in our homes, schools, and workplaces.

In contrast, the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act fixes the biggest problems with our current law. It requires, for the first time, safety reviews for all new and existing chemicals. It explicitly requires protection of our most vulnerable populations, like pregnant women and children, and it makes more information available by limiting companies' ability to hide chemical safety data. And it places strict limits on industry-requested chemical reviews.

==

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2015/05/chemical-safety-law-rewrite-triggers-strong-reactions/

udall, say it ain't so:

5/15

What do you get when you let the chemical industry write a “chemical safety” bill?

A bill that protects chemical companies, not consumers.

The last time Congress passed a chemical safety bill — the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) — was in 1976. The TSCA “was broken from the start,” according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), because it grandfathered in thousands of chemicals already on the market. It was so “broken and weak,” says EWG, that it didn’t even allow the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to ban asbestos, a known cause of cancer.

Now, 39 years later, tens of thousands of new chemicals have been introduced, the majority of which have never been safety tested by the EPA. These chemicals, more than 80,000 of them, are in the food we eat, the clothes we wear and the homes we live in.

It’s time for reform. But unfortunately, S.697 — which still doesn’t address asbestos — falls far short of accomplishing that. That could have something to do with the fact that the chemical industry has spent $190 million lobbying for this bill. Democratic Sponsor Tom Udall’s (D-N.M.) campaign received $49,050 from the Chemical industry in the 2014 cycle, plus $23,500 from lobbyists employed by the American Chemistry Council. Republican sponsor David Vitter’s (R-La.) campaign received $20,600 in the 2014 cycle, and $14,300 from American Chemistry Council lobbyists. We need your voice to stop this bill.

On April 27 (2015), the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved a rewritten version of S.697, sending it to the Senate floor for a vote. The revised bill gave slightly more protection to state chemical safety laws, by changing the grandfathered date to Jan. 1, 2015, instead of Aug. 1, 2015. The new version also no longer allows federal chemical rules to preempt state clean water and clear air laws.

But the bill is still inadequate, according to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.):

"The legislation does nothing to ensure that terrifying disease clusters of children's cancers are addressed, and the killer of 10,000 Americans a year — asbestos — was entirely left out of the bill," Boxer said. "I will continue to call attention to the flaws of the bill and the improvements that are needed to protect our families."

Boxer and her colleague Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) have introduced anopposing bill, which they say offers far better protection than S. 697, which they say cripples state efforts to regulate toxic chemicals, while leaving the federal government without the resources needed to properly safety test them.

One of the bill’s biggest shortcomings is that it allows the EPA to review no more than 25 chemicals in the first three years. At that pace, it would take more than a century to address the backlog of chemicals in need of review. We already know that some chemicals, such as Bisphenol A (BPA), are hormone disrupters, yet BPA is still found in baby food containers. As for thousands of other unregulated chemicals, the effects are unknown.

In the absence of federal action, states have taken the lead in monitoring toxic chemicals and setting safety standards for industry — 33 states have passed laws to include some form of monitoring or restrictions to harmful chemicals like formaldehyde, mercury, asbestos and BPA. S.697, though it will grandfather in many of these state laws, will hinder states from taking stronger action in the future.

More on how chemicals are regulated here and here.

Take action: Tell Congress that we need real chemical safety standards — oppose S.697.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/03/18/1371650/-Chemical-lobby-set-to-gut-U-S-toxic-chemical-regulations#

3/15

Chemical lobbyist exposed as author of new bill to regulate industry (link to video segment):

Rachel Maddow reports on the discovery that a draft of a new law to make much-needed updates to regulations on the chemical industry was authored by the American Chemistry Council, the leading trade organization and lobbyist for the chemical industry

The last time U.S. toxic chemical regulations were updated was 39 years ago. Since then many states have opted to enact stricter safety standards than those Federal standards of the past to keep pace with newer chemicals and innovations developed over the years as well as the latest methods to evaluate toxic chemical hazards more accurately. These state standards are now in jeopardy as new Federal regulations are in the making that would cap and essentially override safer more complete laws in some states. California is one of those states. There are many more.

A reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle discovered that a Microsoft Word draft of the new Federal regulations soon on its way to congress was authored by the American Chemistry Council. The Lobbying firm has denied they wrote the Bill. Further investigation by IT experts proved that denial to be untrue.

In recent days, a draft of the bill — considered the product of more than two years of negotiation and collaboration between Sen. David Vitter, R-La., Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., and both chemical industry and environmental groups — was circulated by Udall’s office ahead of the hearing. The draft bill, obtained by Hearst Newspapers, is in the form of a Microsoft Word document. Rudimentary digital forensics — going to “advanced properties” in Word — shows the “company” of origin to be the American Chemistry Council.

Senator Barbara Boxer weighed in:

Call me old-fashioned, but a bill to protect the public from harmful chemicals should not be written by chemical industry lobbyists. The voices of our families must not be drowned out by the very industry whose documented harmful impacts must be addressed, or the whole exercise is a sham,” Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said Monday.

Boxer, who chaired the committee when the Democrats held the majority, and Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., have introduced an alternative version of the bill with much more stringent regulatory provisions.

Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, who will testify against the bill at Wednesday’s hearing had this to say:

“We’re apparently at the point in the minds of some people in the Congress that laws intended to regulate polluters are now written by the polluters themselves,”

Indeed. I'm glad some people are doing their jobs. And thank you Senator Ed Markey and others on top of this for showing how it's done.

P.S. this story is a day or so old, but it is so important that I thought it worth repeating.

• H/T to kfunk937 for posting this petition link: Don't Abolish State Protections Against Toxic Chemicals

==

koch lobby against DHS protection:

Another misleading claim from Koch Industries’ chemical security policy statement is that, “during this time not one incident of terrorism has occurred.” The danger of this argument is that it directs attention away from the real issue: terrorists are actively seeking opportunities to attack our chemical infrastructure, and a single successful attack could be catastrophic for millions of Americans. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, for example, it was discovered that the hijackers’ ringleader, Mohammed Atta, may have been interested in staging an attack on a chemical facility that stockpiled 250 tons of Sulfur Dioxide, a chemical of interest regulated under CFATS. More recently, the Lashkar-i-Taiba terrorist network, the group responsible for the 2008 Mumbai attacks, had terrorists conduct surveillance operations on a high-risk chemical facility in Maryland. Information from the journal of Osama Bin Laden has revealed Al Qaeda’s interest in attacking the American rail system, the most common method used to transport hazardous chemicals throughout the country.  The Department of Homeland security has also issued a warning to utilities, including water treatment facilities that use chlorine gas, that their facilities may be victims of an insider attack.  The assumption that because terrorists have not yet attacked a U.S. chemical facility, they will not do so is simply wishful thinking.  To truly end the catastrophic threat that chemical facilities pose to communities we must eliminate any possibility of a chemical disaster, terrorist induced or accidental.

http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/campaigns/toxics/toxic-chemical-threats/Toxic-Koch-Keeping-Americans-at-Risk-of-a-Poison-Gas-Disaster/

==

Chemacccapt 3/14

seer BPA eastman tobacco doubt, sci suppression

connected to donors trust? (cf video)

vitter reform tosca co sponsors

Number of Cosponsors: 25

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN)

Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK)

Sen. John Boozman (R-AR)

Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC)

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA)

Sen. Susan M. Collins (R-ME)

Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID)

Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL)

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)

Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC)

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA)

Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND)

Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-OK)

Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA)

Sen. Mary L. Landrieu (D-LA)

Sen. Joe Manchin, III (D-WV)

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ)

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA)

Sen. Mark L. Pryor (D-AR)

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-NY)

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA)

Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM)

Sen. David Vitter (R-LA)

TUESDAY, JUNE 14, 2011

Formaldehyde Added to “Known Carcinogens” List Despite Lobbying by Koch Brothers, Chemical Industry

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has added formaldehyde to a list of known carcinogens, despite years of lobbying by the chemical industry. Formaldehyde is found in plastics and often used in plywood, particle board, mortuaries and hair salons. The government also said Friday that styrene, which is used in boats, bathtubs and in disposable foam plastic cups and plates, may cause cancer. The conservative billionaire Koch brothers have led the lobbying effort against labeling formaldehyde as a carcinogen, and Georgia-Pacific, a subsidiary of Koch Industries, is one of the country’s top producers of formaldehyde. [includes rush transcript]

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We turn to our continued coverage of a major development in public health and safety. The government has added formaldehyde to a list of known carcinogens, despite years of lobbying by the chemical industry. Formaldehyde is found in plastics and often used in plywood, particle board, mortuaries and hair salons. The government also said Friday styrene, which is used in boats, bathtubs, disposable foam plastic cups and plates, may cause cancer. The conservative billionaire Koch brothers have led the lobbying effort against labeling formaldehyde as a carcinogen. Georgia-Pacific, a subsidiary of Koch Industries, is one of the country’s top producers of formaldehyde.

For more, we’re joined by two guests: Jennifer Sass, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, joining us from Washington, D.C., and here in New York we’re joined by Joaquin Sapien, a reporter at ProPublica focusing on environmental issues.

Joaquin, start off by talking about the significance of this report.

JOAQUIN SAPIEN: I think that this report is — shows that there is a growing consensus around the dangers from formaldehyde exposure. The report on carcinogens is something that’s been held back for, I believe, four years now. Like you said, in spite of tremendous pressure from the chemical manufacturing industry, it’s finally out, and it said what I think many in the public health community have known for quite some time, that formaldehyde is indeed a carcinogen, and there is strong evidence showing that it’s been linked to leukemia.

In the meantime, there’s still another risk assessment that has been in the works now since 1998, that the Environmental Protection Agency has been working on, and that one will — is probably the document that will have more of an impact on regulations in terms of how much formaldehyde can come off of everyday products like plywood and other things. And so, it’s yet to be seen what influence the report on carcinogens will have on that assessment, but I think a lot of people are looking to the EPA now for some closure.

AMY GOODMAN: Jennifer Sass, you’re with the Natural Resources Defense Council. You have been following this report very closely over many years. Just explain the time line on what was finally released on Friday and then, you know, comes out in the papers Saturday, the least read paper of the week.

JENNIFER SASS: Sure, Amy. This announcement was actually made on Friday afternoon, so it was — sort of bypassed a lot of media attention. But the formaldehyde assessment has been in the works, really, by government assessors and government scientific experts trying to do this for about 20 years, for a long time at EPA, and then more recently with the National Toxicology Program’s Report on Carcinogens. And in that 20 years, the formaldehyde industry, and really the American Chemistry Council, so the ACC, which represents all the chemical manufacturers, have been pulling out all the guns to try and stop this assessment from coming out.

They’ve used a number of standard tactics, or what I call their sort of dirty bag of tricks. So, for example, they start out by saying that first the chemical isn’t actually toxic, that it’s not hazardous. But a long time ago it was realized that formaldehyde causes cancers of the nose and throat. And finally, at some point, even the industry couldn’t deny that. But they really wanted to deny that it causes cancer anywhere else in the body, so they’ve been spending a lot of money, hiring a lot of scientists, and also giving money to a lot of people in Congress to try and delay or prevent this report from coming out.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about, Joaquin, who are these lobbyists — for example, the Koch brothers, and their significance in this delay.

JOAQUIN SAPIEN: Well, there is an industry trade group called the Formaldehyde Council that hired a fairly prominent lobbyist in Washington by the name of Charles Grizzle, who I wrote about quite a bit last year. And Charles Grizzle was key in getting Stephen Johnson appointed to the EPA. He was a Bush pioneer. And the Formaldehyde Council, which no longer exists today, interestingly, hired him for — I think from 2008 until 2010. And he was sort of instrumental in currying favor from David Vitter, as well as Senator James Inhofe, who acted on behalf of the industry by doing things like holding up Obama administration appointees until the EPA agreed to have their risk assessment of formaldehyde reviewed by an outside panel of scientists.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, this is the Louisiana senator, David Vitter.

JOAQUIN SAPIEN: Right, who ironically represented a number of people who lived in formaldehyde-contaminated trailers that were provided by FEMA for Hurricane Katrina victims.

AMY GOODMAN: He, instrumental in preventing formaldehyde being classified as a carcinogen?

JOAQUIN SAPIEN: Yeah, and if you look at sort of the time line of some of the favors that he did for the industry and the campaign contributions, you’ll see that, you know, he was — he would write letters to the EPA urging them to have this review of their risk assessment done by an outside panel of experts, which is a sort of a classic industry move, similar to what Jen was describing, where essentially the review of these documents causes a tremendous delay. And delay, in the very short term, means more money for this industry. And so, you’d see him write a letter to the EPA, and then, within weeks, he would get a check from someone like Charles Grizzle or one of the many people that he represents on the Hill.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me get some responses from industry groups. After the Department of Health and Human Services listed styrene in its 12th Report on Carcinogens, the Styrene Information and Research Center issued a statement saying, quote, "The designation is completely unjustified by the latest science and resulted from a flawed process that focuses on only those data that support a cancer concern, and in the case of styrene ignored the preponderance of data that fail to suggest a cancer concern for this substance." Jennifer Sass, your response?

JENNIFER SASS: Yeah. You know, this is part of what public health people sort of call the "four dog defense," you know, and it’s sort of the four dogs that the industry puts in the fight. And you see these tricks over and over again. They were probably first developed by the tobacco industry, and they’ve been carried through with asbestos and all the other toxic chemicals.

So the first is, you know, "My dog doesn’t bite. My dog isn’t harmful." And that’s the first line of defense, is to deny that the chemical is harmful at all. So, both styrene and formaldehyde industry have done this.

The second one is, "Well, OK, my dog bites. The evidence is there. I can’t deny it anymore. But it didn’t bite you. You’re not exposed. So don’t worry about it. You’re still safe. It causes some cancers in lab rats, but you’re not exposed to my chemical."

Then we start finding it in our environment. We find it in our food, in our water, in our air, and in people’s bodies with biomonitoring. And then the chemical industry will say, "OK, my dog bites. It bit you. You’re exposed. But it didn’t hurt you. Don’t worry." And the arguments there go something like, "Well, it causes cancers in lab rats, but those lab rats are different than people," for differences that are hard actually to explain for the industry. "And so, don’t worry about it. Jut because it causes cancers in lab animals, don’t worry. You’re safe. Even though you have it in your body, your families, it’s in your food, in your drinking water, it’s contaminating the air you breathe, don’t sweat it."

And then, what they might say at the end is, "Well, OK" — you know, really when they’re pushed with the evidence, they’ll say, "OK, my dog bit you, and it hurt you, but it was your fault." And this might be something like, "OK, my chemical causes cancer. Yes, you’re exposed to my chemical, but that your levels are too low." And that’s sort of the stage that they’re at here, Amy. So with the formaldehyde industry, they’re saying, "Well, you know, these studies of tens of thousands of workers that are exposed to formaldehyde over a working lifetime and have cancers" — not only of the nose and throat, but also of the blood and bone marrow, of leukemias and lymphomas, which is what the industry is trying to deny — they say, "Well, those workers were exposed at much higher levels, and you’re not exposed to those high levels."

But actually, when people are exposed, they’re exposed even when they’re children or infants, because a lot of that formaldehyde is in your home. And the indoor levels are actually much higher than the outdoor levels, because the fumes are emitted from a lot of that particle board and plywood and composites that furniture and other things in your home are made of. So, it’s a real problem, because pregnant women are exposed. People are exposed, therefore, pre-birth, early in childhood. If people live in the homes, they may spend really most of the day in the home, and so vulnerable periods of their development they’re exposed to these chemicals. And that’s much more serious, in a lot of ways, than an adult healthy male worker.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me just ask Joaquin some — quick question, as we wrap up the show. David Koch was on the board of the National Institutes of Health, right?

JOAQUIN SAPIEN: That’s right. He —

AMY GOODMAN: So, one of the chief lobbyists for formaldehyde is on the board, then leaves. Is there any relation to now the report’s coming out?

JOAQUIN SAPIEN: Well, he offered his resignation in October after an article came out in The New Yorker by Jane Mayer that first raised the issue of his involvement with the board on the National Institutes of Health. How closely this report is linked to his resignation and the conclusions that it made is yet to be seen.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both for being with us, Joaquin Sapien with ProPublica and Jennifer Sass with the Natural Resources Defense Council. That does it for our show. We’ll link to their articles at democracynow.org.

==

Truthout / By Peter Montague [1]

Why Basic Protections from Harmful Chemicals Are So Hard to Get

August 19, 2013  |

The environmental movement has been campaigning since 2005 to modernize U.S. chemicals policy, an uphill battle. The greens have done everything by the book -- written a model law, built a national grass-roots coalition, and dispatched lobbyists to capitol hill.  Now, however, the chemical industry has executed a classic "divide and conquer" maneuver, cleaving the greens into disarray. If the present momentum continues, Congress could end up passing a chemical reform bill that's far worse than what we've got now.

What we've got now is the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA, pronounced Tosca) enacted in 1976 and not revised since. As theNew York Times described it [2] May 24, 2013, "[TSCA] purports to regulate potentially harmful chemicals in industrial and consumer goods, like plastic bottles and children's pajamas. But the law is better known for its failures than for its successes. Of roughly 85,000 chemicals registered for use in the United States, [since 1976] only 200 have been tested by the Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] and fewer than a dozen -- including polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxin and hexavalent chromium -- have been restricted.

"After a federal appeals court denied the E.P.A. the authority to issue new limits on asbestos in 1991 [22 years ago], the agency all but abandoned its efforts to enforce the law, even as evidence of health problems from exposure to a range of chemicals in consumer products has piled up," the Times wrote.

TSCA works like this: New industrial chemicals are presumed to be safe. Ninety days before selling a new chemical, a manufacturer must notify EPA. At that time, the manufacturer must divulge any toxicity data it has for the chemical. If there's no toxicity data, there's nothing to divulge -- a powerful incentive to avoid safety testing. EPA then has 60 days to approve the new chemical or to demand more toxicity data. But EPA's demand for more data must be supported by substantial evidence that new information is warranted by an "unreasonable risk" to public health or the environment. Obviously, this is a catch-22: without evidence of harm (or safety), EPA has no power to demand studies that might show harm (or safety). So every year, on average, 700 new chemicals enter commercial channels untested for effects on human health or the environment. That's TSCA in a nutshell. (For more on U.S. chemicals policy, seehere [3],  here [4], and here [5].)

A Campaign to Reform U.S. Chemicals Policy

A national campaign to reform TSCA bubbled up from the grassroots where people from Maine to California had been waging trench warfare against the petrochemical industry since 1978 when toxic waste was first discovered oozing onto a school playground at Love Canal in Niagara Falls, N.Y., where kids were getting sick.  Nationwide, when people started looking, they found toxic waste everywhere.

Communities like Woburn, Mass. and Toms River, N.J., discovered clusters of disease among their children, and suddenly ordinary people found themselves locked in battle with armies of lawyers representing major corporations -- in Woburn's case, Beatrice Foods and W.R. Grace, and in Toms River's, Ciba-Geigy -- to end the toxic trespass. The Woburn fight was documented in a book [6] and movie, both titled A Civil Action. Dan Fagin documented the Toms River fight in a book [7] by that name. At the height of "the toxics movement" an estimated 7,000 local groups were engaged in hand-to-hand combat with one chemical polluter or another in all 50 states, plus Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands.

Along the way, there were state-level victories. For example in 1986, a ballot initiative ("Prop 65 [8]") forced California state government to list all chemicals known to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm. The list gets updated once a year and now contains about 800 chemicals. California businesses must notify their customers about the presence of any of these chemicals in products they sell.

But ultimately town-by-town, fight-by-fight opposition to toxic chemicals wasn't changing national policy. In May, 2004, a disparate group of toxics and environmental justice activists met in Louisville, Ky. to hammer out a "Louisville Charter for Safer Chemicals [9]" -- the Magna Carta of TSCA reform.   In 2005 Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) began carrying the banner for modern chemicals policy, and a serious national TSCA reform campaign began to take shape. In 2008 Lautenberg introduced his first TSCA-reform proposal, theKid-Safe Chemicals Act [10].

Features of Kid-Safe included:

1. Require Basic Data on Industrial Chemicals

Chemical companies must demonstrate the safety of their products, backed up with credible evidence. Chemicals that lack minimum data could not be legally manufactured in or imported into the United States. [Section 505]  In other words, no data, no market.

2. Place the Burden on Industry to Demonstrate Safety

It's not up to government to prove harm; it's up to industry to show that their products pose a reasonable certainty of no harm. EPA must systematically review whether industry has met this burden of proof for all industrial chemicals within 15 years of adoption. [Section 503]

3. Restrict the Use of Dangerous Chemicals Found in Newborn Babies

Hazardous chemicals detected in human umbilical cord blood would be immediately targeted for restrictions on their use. [Section 504]

4. Use New Scientific Evidence to Protect Health

EPA must consider and is authorized to require additional testing as new science and new testing methods emerge, including for health effects at low doses or during fetal or infant development and for nanomaterials. [Section 503]

Together, these features of the Kid-Safe Chemicals Act add up to a "precautionary approach," turning TSCA on its head. The Kid-Safe reform assumes that industrial chemicals may be harmful until chemical companies produce data showing their products pose a reasonable certainty of no harm.

Plus, the mere presence of industrial chemicals in cord blood triggers special action to eliminate those exposures, which are presumed to be undesirable in a newborn.

In a world where cancers, attention deficits, autism, asthma, and diabetes are increasing in children year after year, precaution for chemical exposures is clearly a rational approach.

Grassroots and Grasstops

To pass legislation in Washington, grass-roots campaigners from the hinterland need the insider known-how of the "grasstops" lobbying organizations in D.C. -- in this instance, NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), EWG (the Environmental Working Group), and EDF (Environmental Defense Fund). For their part, the grasstops lobbyists in D.C. need grass-roots groups all across the country to pressure key legislators at crucial times in the legislative sausage-making process.

Sometimes the grasstops in D.C. forget that they can't win without support of a broad grass-roots base. There's no better example of this than the inside-the-beltway campaign in 2009 to pass "cap-and-trade" legislation [11] to curb emissions of carbon dioxide. The grasstops groups, led by Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), imagined that they could play David to the fossil fuel industry's Goliath (oil, coal, natural gas, and electric utilities) without engaging grass-roots campaigners nationwide. Predictably, Goliath slew David handily.

Just as cap and trade was going down to embarrassing defeat, the grasstops took a different tack for TSCA reform -- they helped launch a large national grass-roots coalition now known as Safer Chemicals Healthy Families [12] (SCHF), today comprising some 450 groups with perhaps 11 million total members. From the beginning, the coalition was partly staffed by grasstops: the coalition's web site lists its two "issue exerts" as Sarah Jensen, a physician with NRDC, and Richard Denison, a scientist employed by EDF. Indeed, the press release announcing the formation of the coalition [13] August 4, 2009 listed Richard Denison of EDF as the first of two spokespeople for the coalition.

Thus, it all seemed to be working the way it was supposed to. Except that Congress was not cooperating. The petrochemical industry has a phenomenally deep pocket, and it was not about to roll over for a few green lobbyists, even if they had the backing of 11 million supporters in places like Boise and Little Rock. According to Common Cause, between 2005 and 2012 the chemical industry spent$375 million lobbying [14] to prevent meaningful TSCA reform. That's more than $700,000 for each of the 535 members of Congress.

As time passed, Senator Lautenberg continually watered down his Kid-Safe proposal, each new version weaker than the last. In April of this year Lautenberg and Kristin Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) once again re-introduced a "Safe Chemicals Act." By now, the precautionary approach was long gone, as was the goal of protecting vulnerable populations like babies.

Senator Lautenberg evidently knew that even this compromised bill wasn't going anywhere because one month later -- May 22, 12 days before he died -- he introduced an even more industry-friendly version, "The Chemical Safety Improvement Act" or CSIA. This time his co-sponsor was Sen. David Vitter, conservative Republican from Louisiana and loyal servant of the petrochemical industry.

To say that Lautenberg-Vitter is industry-friendly understates the case. The chemical industry is salivating over the CSIA.

Here's a short list of industry groups that have endorsed [15] the Lautenberg-Vitter bill: Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, Association of Global Automakers, Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association, California Building Industry Association, California Chamber of Commerce, California Manufacturers & Technology Association, Consumer Electronics Association, Information Technology Industry Council, Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association, National Electrical Manufacturers Association, and the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute.

The heaviest hitters supporting CSIA include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce [16], the Vinyl Institute [17], and, heaviest of all, the American Chemistry Council [18], trade association of the chemical manufacturers.

CSIA: "Somewhere between a rout and a retreat"

The position of the Safer Chemicals Healthy Families coalition is crystal clear [19]: "We do not support the legislation in its current form."  Ken Cook, president of EWG in D.C. doesn't mince words: "If you look at the bill Lautenberg was pushing last year, I don't know if this is a retreat or a rout, but it's somewhere in that range," he says of the CSIA.

Objections to the Lautenberg-Vitter CSIA bill include these:

1. EPA must decide that "no unreasonable risk of harm to human health or the environment will result from exposure to a chemical." To determine what's "unreasonable," EPA must do a cost-benefit analysis -- weighing the dollar value of the chemical against the dollar value of the cancers, birth defects, attention deficits, and other diseases it may cause over the years. In such studies, the commercial value of the chemical can be estimated, but the dollar value of the harms is not easily quantified. In the past, after losing too many such duels with industry, EPA has refused to engage, allowing chemicals onto the market unchallenged.  CSIA seems unlikely to change that pattern.

2. Once EPA determines that a chemical presents "no unreasonable risk of harm" (for example, by refusing to challenge it in a cost-benefit duel) federal and state courts would not be allowed to accept new evidence in toxic tort lawsuits. Whatever evidence was available to EPA at the time of its decision would be the only information that a judge or jury could hear. New scientific studies would beexcluded from courtrooms [20].

3. Lautenberg-Vitter contains sweeping language that preempts states [20] from enforcing existing laws, or adopting new ones, designed to supplement federal law. So California's "Prop 65" labeling requirements would be illegal under Lautenberg-Vitter. Washington state's current restrictions on flame retardants would be nullified. Maine's goal of eliminating toxic mercury from products would be set aside.

The California attorney general's office [21] says Lautenberg-Vitter, as currently drafted, "cripples the police powers that California relies upon to protect public health... and, in addition, severely compromises California's authority to supplement and complement federal efforts to regulate the safety of chemicals."

Greens have universally condemned the Lautenberg-Vitter bill, with one exception: EDF supports the bill [22] and Richard Denison has been lobbying for it on capitol hill.

This is not really a surprise. EDF has long been known as "a home for business-friendly [23] environmentalism."  People who engage with EDF generally do so knowing that it's often on the opposite side of issues that matter to grass-roots pollution-fighters.

In this instance, EDF's position on CSIA creates a real conundrum for the Safer Chemicals Healthy Family Coalition, where EDF's Denison is both a scientific adviser and a coalition spokesperson yet is employed by an organization lobbying against the coalition's position..

Now, during intense jockeying in the senate, no one can be quite sure who they're talking to when Richard Denison comes knocking. Is he representing EDF, which supports CSIA, or the Safer Chemicals coalition, which opposes it?

The EDF web site is no help in sorting out this question. To a naive viewer, the site could even give the impression that the Safer Chemicals Healthy Families coalition supports EDF's pro-CSIA position, which it emphatically does not. The "Chemicals Policy" page on EDF's site [24], urging passage of Lautenberg-Vitter, says, "EDF is a founding member of the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families campaign, a broad coalition of state and national environmental groups, associations of health professionals, advocates for health-affected individuals and environmental justice organizations. The group has launched a broad effort to achieve comprehensive reform of TSCA. The campaign is advocating for a set of legislative proposals in Congress summarized in its platform [PDF [25]]."

Nowhere does the EDF web site clarify that the Safer Chemicals Healthy Families coalition opposes Lautenberg-Vitter, which EDF supports.

The value of EDF's stance to the chemical industry cannot be overstated. With EDF on its side, the Chemical Industry Council's chief lobbyist, Calvin M. Dooley, can tell senators that "reasonable" environmentalists support Lautenberg-Vitter. Only green extremists oppose it.

For its part, EDF management may be feeling a bit desperate to back a winner. With an annual budget of $105 million, and egg on its face from the cap-and-trade fiasco of 2009-2010, EDF perhaps needs to claim a victory after years invested in TSCA reform. Faced with the disastrous Lautenberg-Vitter bill, perhaps siding with the chemical industry against its 450 grass-roots allies in the Safer Chemicals coalition will prove to be a wise financial decision for EDF going forward.

For the Safer Chemicals coalition, on the other hand, Lautenberg-Vitter portends hard times ahead not only for chemicals policy but for the politics of reform more generally. Not only must future coalitions dissect what went wrong this time, but they must try anew to figure out how to discern in advance who are their real friends, and who's likely to sell them out at the last minute.

One thing's for sure: divide and conquer is still industry's most powerful tactic. "We're delighted there's a path forward," says Calvin Dooley of the Chemical Industry Council, "and we're eager to capitalize on it."

See more stories tagged with:

chemicals [26],

safety [27],

health [28],

regulations [29],

tsca [30]

Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/environment/why-basic-protections-harmful-chemicals-are-so-hard-get

Links:

[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/peter-montague

[2] http://goo.gl/i6qf4n

[3] http://goo.gl/09RpJD

[4] http://goo.gl/eLdes6

[5] http://goo.gl/T91kWm

[6] http://goo.gl/sYUoDi

[7] http://goo.gl/xSl2bg

[8] http://goo.gl/KznRzs

[9] http://goo.gl/NO9rrS

[10] http://goo.gl/3wiYvN

[11] http://goo.gl/kkddtV

[12] http://www.saferchemicals.org/

[13] http://goo.gl/kOJxNX

[14] http://goo.gl/kNdKqf

[15] http://goo.gl/LqYKth

[16] http://goo.gl/mOXGz8

[17] http://goo.gl/WgCLzV

[18] http://goo.gl/2mX8Ym

[19] http://goo.gl/QWMVNX

[20] http://goo.gl/sbRZSE

[21] http://goo.gl/s1EziN

[22] http://goo.gl/RgEfKO

[23] http://goo.gl/hcmxG1

[24] htttp://goo.gl/gEZOsu

[25] http://goo.gl/o70pQj

[26] http://www.alternet.org/tags/chemicals-0

[27] http://www.alternet.org/tags/safety-0

[28] http://www.alternet.org/tags/health-0

[29] http://www.alternet.org/tags/regulations

[30] http://www.alternet.org/tags/tsca-0

[31] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

http://investigativereportingworkshop.org/investigations/toxic-influence/story/white-house-stalls-critical-epa-report-highlightin/

White House stalls critical EPA report highlighting chemical dangers to children

BY SHEILA KAPLAN

Friday, December 21st, 2012 ShareThis

A landmark Environmental Protection Agency report concluding that children exposed to toxic substances can develop learning disabilities, asthma and other health problems has been sidetracked indefinitely amid fierce opposition from the chemical industry.

America’s Children and the Environment, Third Edition, is a sobering analysis of the way in which pollutants build up in children’s developing bodies and the damage they can inflict.

The report is unpublished, but was posted on EPA’s website in draft form in March 2011, marked “Do not Quote or Cite.”  The report, which is fiercely contested by the chemical industry, was referred to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), where it still languishes.

For the first time since the ACE series began in 2000, the draft cites extensive research linking common chemical pollutants to brain damage and nervous system disorders in fetuses and children.  It also raises troubling questions about the degree to which children are exposed to hazardous chemicals in air, drinking water and food, as well exposures in their indoor environments — including schools and day-care centers — and through contaminated lands.

In the making since 2008, the ACE report is based on peer-reviewed research and databases from federal agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, Housing and Urban Development and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  Public health officials view it as a source of one-stop shopping for the best information on what children and women of childbearing age are exposed to, how much of it remains in their bodies and what the health effects might be. Among the “health outcomes” listed as related to environmental exposures are childhood cancer, obesity, neurological disorders, respiratory problems and low birth weight.

The  EPA’s website still notes that the report will be published by the end of 2011.  But after a public comment period that was marked by unusually harsh criticism from industry, additional peer review and input from other agencies, the report landed at OMB last March, where it has remained. No federal rule requires the OMB to review such a report before publication, but an EPA spokeswoman said the EPA referred it to the OMB because its impact cuts across several federal agencies.

The spokeswoman said the agency had no idea when OMB would release it, allowing publication.  Neither agency would discuss what changes had been made to the draft.

Some present and former EPA staffers, who asked not to be named for fear of losing their jobs, blamed the sidetracking of the report on heightened political pressure during the campaign season.  The OMB has been slow to approve environmental regulations and other EPA reports throughout the Obama Administration — as it was under George W. Bush, according to reports by the Center for Progressive Reform, a nonprofit consortium of scholars who do research on health, safety and environmental issues.

“Why is it taking so long? One must ask the question,” said a former EPA researcher who works on children’s health issues. “It is an important document and it strikes me that it’s falling victim to politics.”

The EPA states that the report is intended, in part, to help policymakers identify and evaluate ways to minimize environmental impacts on children. That’s an unwelcome prospect to the $674 billion chemical  industry, which stands to lose business and face greater legal liability if the EPA or Congress bans certain substances mentioned in the report or sets standards reducing the levels of exposure that is considered safe.

Among other findings, the report links numerous substances to ADHD, including certain widely available pesticides;  polychlorinated biphenyls  (PCBs), which were banned in 1979 but are still present in products made before then and in the environment; certain polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), used as flame retardants; and methyl mercury, a toxic metal that accumulates in larger fish, such as tuna. The draft also cites children’s exposure to lead, particularly from aging lead water pipes, as a continuing problem (See Toxic Taps.)

Among the other widespread contaminants linked to learning disabilities is perchlorate, a component of rocket fuel, fireworks and other industrial products, which has polluted water around the country. The Department of Defense, which wants to avoid paying to clean it up, is alarmed by research showing that the chemical interferes with thyroid function and otherwise damages the nervous system, according to R. Thomas Zoeller, a biology professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and an expert on perchlorate, who has served on EPA advisory panels studying toxic chemicals. The Air Force is so concerned about the issue that it hired two contractors, Richard D. Mavis and John N. Sesso, who in 2009 defended the chemical in a letter to the prestigious journal Environmental Health Perspectives, which had published an EPA scientist’s study noting that perchlorate impaired brain function.

One of the new sections of the report notes that children may be widely exposed to pollutants in schools and day-care centers. Among them are pesticides; lead; PCBs; asbestos, a mineral fiber long used as insulation and fire-proofing; phthalates, chemicals that are used to soften vinyl and as solvents and fixers, and are found in numerous consumer goods, among them: toys, perfumes, medical devices, shower curtains and detergents; and perfluorinated chemicals, which are used in non-stick and stain-proof products.  The study notes that these substances are variously associated with asthma, cancer, reproductive toxicity and hormone disruption.

The American Chemistry Council (ACC) , the chief industry trade group, has accused EPA of lacking objectivity and vilifying its products. It has filed dozens of pages of comments accusing the EPA of ignoring certain studies — including some funded by ACC itself — that would help businesses make the case that their products are safe. The ACC also contends that the EPA has not included enough positive comments about the role of chemicals in society.

“ACC members apply the science of chemistry to make innovative products and services that make people’s lives better, healthier and safer,” wrote ACC senior toxicologist Richard A. Becker. … “The exclusive focus on exposure is particularly problematic as it may lead to the incorrect conclusion that exposure to chemicals (e.g. phthalates) at any level is not only cause for concern, but also a direct source of negative health effects.”

Becker also expressed the ACC’s contention that EPA was painting too bleak a picture of children’s health in America.

“It is troubling that the draft ACE report seems to make such little effort to provide a complete overall picture of child health in the United States,” Becker wrote. “For example, the draft report does not refer to The Health and Well-Being of Children: A Portrait of States and the Nation … which concludes the health and well-being of children in the U.S. is improving overall with 84.4% of children in the United States listed as being in excellent or very good health, an increase from 83% in 2003.” Other ACC  members, representing manufacturers of BPA, phthalates and other substances, also weighed in against the report.

Nsedu Witherspoon, executive director of the Children’s Environmental Health Network and a member of the EPA Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee, which oversaw the report, called it a major accomplishment, reflecting the explosion of science since the first ACE was published. She also praised EPA chief Lisa Jackson for standing behind it.

Industry critics, Witherspoon said, “in many cases are the same ones out there trying to debunk the original research,” that the study cites.

Rena Steinzor, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law and president of the Center for Progressive Reform, said the ACE report need not have gone to OMB for review in the first place. Steinzor notes that Executive Order 12866 states that proposed significant regulations — generally defined as those that could cost more than $100 million — need be reviewed by OMB, but studies do not.  The Executive Order gives  OMB up to 60 days to review such proposals — although it allows for extensions. In practice, OMB has missed numerous such deadlines. But the ACE report, which is not a proposed regulation, falls into a gray area.

“If it’s not a rule, I don’t know what it’s doing there,” Steinzor said. “And even if it were a rule, there would be a deadline, and they’d be violating it.”

In an email statement to the Investigative Reporting Workshop, EPA spokeswoman Julia Valentine said, “The report was provided to OMB so that they could conduct an interagency review process to ensure accuracy and consistency.” ??She noted that because the report addresses children's health, it includes issues that are the focus of many departments and agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services — including the Centers for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Cancer Institute.

Steinzor, whose organization has studied OMB under numerous presidents, doesn’t buy it.

The report should be released now, she said, “because to protect children adequately we need all the information we can get … I guess I understand why there was great anxiety and paranoia before the election … (but) why would you not do it now? It’s sad that things have gotten so polarized that we’re afraid to release scientific information.”

==

James Connaughton, Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality

Bush’s top environmental advisor is not only a former lobbyist for ARCO (Atlantic Richfield Company), Alcoa and General Electric, he also worked for the powerful Chemical Manufacturers Association, the powerful trade association representing some of America’s top polluters. With Connaughton in the administration, the chemical industry has pulled off one of the most remarkable feats of corporate influence in recent history: despite an EPA warning that a terrorist strike on any of 123 of the nation’s most dangerous chemical plants could kill or injure more than a million people, a bill tightening security among the plants has never even come to a vote on the Senate floor.

rfk2

Ch 9 nat' sec

7 weeks after 911 NY Corzine proposed less dangerous chem inventory in stock and

use less harmful when cost ok passed env and public wks comm 19-0. ACC lawyers James

Conrad on trans team, fred webber ex pres Bush pio got 25 other chem co's to give

$ 38m to gop 95-2002, another 30m lobbying 158; while fighting bill, another 1/3m

PAC 159  bill called Stalinesque, heritage said real "goal of a chemical-free

world"  CEI" radical env agenda" jihad 159  8 gop incl inhofe (chair) (8 got 750K

since 95  160  ctw tried to do x b/c of pressure, but authority taken away by

homeland.  odd that Pitts Trib Rev reporter 2002 critical Carl Prine entered pants

unchallenged [thus proving?]

BM fire retardant:

Burson-Marsteller has also made a name for itself by creating and managing astroturf groups, defined in Campaigns & Elections magazine as corporate grassroots groups that involve “the instant manufacturing of public support for a point of view in which either uninformed activists are recruited or means of deception are used to recruit them.” Journalist and author William Greider simply calls faux-grassroots groups “democracy for hire.” Burson-Marsteller has created astroturf groups for the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries.

After the 2003 bans in California, Burson-Marsteller organized the Bromine Science and Environmental Forum and Citizens for Fire Safety Institute, the PR arm and astroturf group of the flame retardant superfecta. Since 2007, Burson-Marsteller has spent at least $6.6 million on behalf of the Bromine Science and Environmental Forum, while Citizens for Fire Safety spent at least $2.2 million on “other payments to influence.”

BPA newly-released study by WHO, the World Health Organization, titled "State of the Science of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals," says pesticides, plasticizers and product additives contain endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs). They act like synthetic hormones, throwing off the body's natural hormonal system. A hormone is a chemical messenger produced in the glands in our endocrine system and released in our blood and affects everything from mood to metabolism. One of the chemicals investigated in the study is BPA, or bisphenol A, which mimics estrogen if it's introduced into your body.Entire food system may be contaminated with BPA and other plastic nasties 2/13. CA may limit BPA, despite industry counterattack. 3/13.Erin Brockovitch, see Chromium-6 Taints Water Supplies Around the CountryChromium VI: EPA Contaminated by Conflict of Interest. The 2000 movie "Erin Brockovich" chronicled the struggles of the small town of Hinkley, Calif., against the monumental Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E), who was polluting their water with the toxic substance chromium-6. However, more than ten years later, Hinkley is still dealing with dangerous levels of the chemical in its groundwater. Brockovitch.=== In September 2010, scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency came to a startling conclusion: Even a small amount of a chemical compound commonly found in tap water may cause cancer. The compound, hexavalent chromium, gained infamy in the Oscar-winning film Erin Brockovich, based on the David-vs.-Goliath legal duel between desert dwellers in Hinkley, Calif., and Pacific Gas & Electric Co. The film ends in Hollywood fashion, with the corporate polluter paying $333 million to people suffering from illnesses. But in real life, the drama continues. More than 70 million Americans drink traces of chromium every day, according to the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit research organization.

TOXIC INFLUENCE is an ongoing series of reports exploring the nexus between industry, science and policy.This story is being produced in partnership with the Center for Public Integrity. And now, more than a decade after the film, EPA scientists cite “clear evidence” that the chemical compound, also known as chromium (VI), can cause cancer. The federal agency was poised to announce its findings in 2011, a step almost certain to trigger stricter drinking-water standards to prevent new cancers and deaths. The chemical industry’s trade association and chief lobbyist, the American Chemistry Council, urged the EPA to wait for more research, a common practice to delay action on toxic chemicals. However, Vincent Cogliano, the soft-spoken head of EPA’s chemical-assessment program, rebuffed the powerful group, writing in an April 2011 letter that “strong” new research was already available. Ten months later, the EPA reversed itself, quietly posting a notice on the Internet that it was pushing back the release of its findings for at least four more years. Environmentalists were stunned at the reason: The agency would wait for the results of new studies costing $4 million and paid for by the American Chemistry Council. The EPA decided to wait at the urging of a panel of scientists chosen to give an unbiased review of the chromium findings. But the EPA doesn’t vet these scientists directly, instead handing the task over to outside contractors. An investigation by the Center for Public Integrity found that several of the panelists had worked on behalf of PG&E to defend the company in the Brockovich lawsuits. President Obama pledged during his 2008 campaign to halt meddling and interference in government science. The president put restoring integrity to science on his short list of priorities in his first inaugural address, right after fixing the economy and before health care reform. “We'll restore science to its rightful place,” he said.

Ouster of Scientist from EPA  Panel Shows Industry Clout The story of chromium (VI), full of twists and turns, offers a case study in how the Obama administration has failed to shield science at the EPA from industry influence. Companies with a stake in chromium have borrowed from the Big Tobacco playbook, using science to create doubt.

Ever since the brassy Brockovich knocked on doors in Hinkley to organize a class-action lawsuit, scientists paid by industry have tried to convince the courts and regulators that chromium (VI) poses no health risk. Some of those scientists ended up on the panel chosen to review the EPA’s chromium findings, the Center for Public Integrity found:    Three of the five panelists who urged delay had worked on industry's behalf in the Hinkley court cases.   One of those scientists was retained by PG&E in the company’s ongoing chromium cleanup in Hinkley at the same time he was serving on the EPA panel.   Another scientist who urged the EPA to wait for the American Chemistry Council studies served as a consultant on those studies. “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that this is corrupt and unacceptable,” contends Rena Steinzor, a law professor at the University of Maryland and president of the Center for Progressive Reform, a think tank that recently published a report on the chemical industry’s influence. Companies with a stake in chromium have borrowed from the Big Tobacco playbook,using science to create doubt. Those members served on the EPA’s toxic-chemical-assessment program, the Integrated Risk Information System. IRIS, as it is known, is the pure science upon which clean air and water rules are based.

But IRIS has become a major bottleneck, delaying new federal and state air and water standards amid industry influence and other factors. Critics say the EPA has only itself to blame. Since October, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has declined interview requests to discuss IRIS or loopholes that open the door for potential conflicts of interest. Yet Jackson is pushing reform before she leaves office this week that would address some of the conflicts unearthed in the Center’s review, and cited by environmental activists. And recently the EPA decided to move up its timetable to complete its chromium assessment to later this year. Case study of industry’s muscle The issue of scientists with industry ties serving on special EPA peer review panels goes beyond chromium. One out of every six scientists appointed to such panels since Obama took office had been a primary author of research articles funded by the American Chemistry Council over the past dozen years. In all, 11 of the 68 members appointed to EPA panels assessing chemical health hazards were significant authors on studies funded by the ACC, a review of the council’s research database reveals. That number does not capture all scientists backed by industry, just those with work funded by the ACC. The authors of the hexavalent chromium studies, for example, are not included.

One scientist who has served on several EPA panels and co-written more than a dozen ACC-funded studies said that working with industry does not necessarily suggest a conflict. “Scientists by and large want to get at the truth, so this really becomes more a matter of a perception of a problem than a real problem, in my opinion,” said Frederick J. Miller, an independent consultant who once worked at the Hamner Institutes for Health Sciences, a North Carolina research institute formed in the 1970s by leaders from 11 major chemical companies. “The people that serve on these panels ... know if somebody is trying to make an argument that doesn’t hold water,” said Miller, who began his career in government. However, studies have shown that when industry pays for research, it may influence the outcome. A 1998 analysis  of more than 100 articles published on secondhand smoke reported that 37 percent found no health risk. At least 74 percent of the articles exonerating cigarette smoke were written by scientists with ties to the tobacco industry.

The American Chemistry Council has a stake in the outcome of research. Lobby disclosure forms from 2011 reveal that the ACC lobbied the EPA on its assessments of three highly controversial chemicals: dioxin, formaldehyde and chromium (VI). The group boasts on its Web site that “in 2012, we helped defeat or amend 281 chemical regulation and product ban proposals.” The ACC, whose members such as ExxonMobil, Dow Chemical, Merck and Procter & Gamble are a who’s who of the Fortune 500, is one of the freest-spending lobby groups on Capitol Hill. In 2011, it laid out $12.6 million on lobbying, four times the amount spent by the National Rifle Association. David Fischer, a senior director at the ACC, defended the group’s research program. “We feel we have an obligation to step up and fund studies to assist the agency — whether it’s EPA or others — to answer questions that might be posed about chemicals that we manufacture,” he said. Asked if any of the ACC’s studies had ever shown that a chemical was more toxic than previously thought,

Fischer replied, “I'm not aware of one right at this moment.” The ACC said it was not involved in selecting the peer reviewers studying chromium (VI). “EPA’s peer reviewers were selected by EPA. They were vetted in the normal peer review process from EPA and we from the ACC do not have any direct links to these people,” said Ann Mason, the ACC scientist who commissioned the group’s new studies on chromium. However, few scientists in the world specialize in chromium, a compound used to add color to paints, make stainless steel, add finish to chrome and inhibit rust. During its lawsuits, PG&E hired several of these scientists as expert witnesses; some say the debate over the compound’s toxicity caused lasting splits in the tight-knit scientific world. One of PG&E’s key experts was Steven Patierno, a former professor of pharmacology at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences who had conducted numerous studies on the metal. Patierno, now the deputy director of the Duke Cancer Institute, has been an expert defense witness in seven chromium lawsuits. He hasn’t wavered in his view that drinking low doses of chromium (VI) does not cause cancer. By early 2011, Patierno was selected for the peer review panel critiquing the EPA’s chromium (VI) findings. At a public meeting on May 12, 2011, he revealed a potential conflict of interest. There’s no recording or transcript of the meeting. Nothing in the EPA’s public record reveals the conflict. Two EPA officials who were there say they cannot recall what Patierno said. Patierno himself declined requests for an interview.

Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist at the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council, took notes at the meeting and said that Patierno revealed he was an investigator — though not a principal investigator — on the American Chemistry Council studies. Asked if any of the ACC's studies had ever shown that a chemical was more toxic than previously thought, Fischer replied, "I'm not aware of one right at this moment." The ACC’s Mason disputes that Patierno was involved. But Travis O’Brien, one of the principal investigators on the studies and a former colleague of Patierno’s at George Washington University, told the Center for Public Integrity that Patierno was a consultant on the research. Max Costa, now a professor at New York University’s medical school, knows Patierno well. When Costa taught at the University of Texas Medical School, Patierno worked in his laboratory. The two published research together. Costa said they became rivals when they took opposite sides in the PG&E lawsuit. He argues that Patierno’s opinions are not credible because he works for the chrome industry. “He’s been a paid a large amount of money by them, and he’s totally biased because of that.” Patierno levels the same charge against Costa, attacking his conclusions in a lawsuit as “unsubstantiated” and “severely flawed.” Patierno criticized  the EPA for even citing Costa’s papers among hundreds of others in its report. In his peer review comments,

Patierno said two of Costa’s articles should not be taken seriously because “they were written and published at a time when the senior author was actively engaged as an expert witness for the plaintiffs in high-profile hexavalent chromium lawsuits.” Patierno was an expert witness for PG&E in the same lawsuits. When he was asked in a 2006 lawsuit if he discloses his expert-witness work for industry when submitting articles on chromium (VI), he answered no. Patierno said his articles were based on laboratory studies that were not relevant to his legal work. Costa was originally listed as a candidate for the EPA peer review panel, according to documents obtained by the Center through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Costa says he disclosed his work in the PG&E lawsuit but doesn’t know if that work disqualified him. An EPA official said privately said that Costa’s work as an expert witness may have kept him off the panel. Industry ties and EPA panel Patierno was not the only defense litigation expert who served on the EPA's IRIS panel. Two others were John P. Wise Sr., a toxicology professor at the University of Southern Maine, and Joshua Hamilton, a chief academic and scientific officer at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., which is affiliated with Brown University. Wise, who worked in Patierno's laboratory as a graduate student, said that in 1997 he worked for a consulting firm and was assigned to do research for an industry client in the Hinkley lawsuit — but that he has not accepted industry money in the past 15 years. Wise said he does not believe that "such limited contact so long ago" influenced his opinion.

Hamilton was a defense expert in a PG&E chromium lawsuit that settled in 2006 and worked for the company as a consultant again starting in 2009, according to PG&E. PG&E acknowledged that it hired  Hamilton in May 2011 — the same month the EPA panel met — to consult on the ongoing chromium cleanup in Hinkley. PG&E said it paid him $110,000. Hamilton appeared before a California Regional Water Quality Control Board on June 8, 2011, to speak on behalf of PG&E about its cleanup of Hinkley. The EPA peer review panel issued its final comments one month later, on July 6, 2011. In 2001, Hamilton said he was surprised to get a $100,000 check in the mail before doing any work as an expert witness. Hamilton’s consulting work included criticism of the California EPA’s own scientific assessment of chromium (VI), which was nearly identical to the EPA’s. In an eight-page statement to the water board dated July 9, 2011, Hamilton wrote that the state agency’s findings did not represent “established science.” He described California’s regulations as “overly protective.” The PG&E director in charge of the Hinkley cleanup, Sheryl Bilbrey, said Hamilton’s work should not have affected his objectivity. “PG&E expects all of our experts to give us unbiased advice,” she said. “So we would never ask anyone to change their scientific opinion to fit something that we would want.”

Asked whether it was appropriate for an EPA peer reviewer to be working simultaneously for PG&E, the ACC’s Fischer said, “That sounds like a conflict of interest to me. Generally, the way you get around it is you just — you don’t appoint that particular scientist to that particular panel.” It was not the first time Hamilton had been paid a substantial sum by PG&E. In 2001, Hamilton said he was surprised to get a $100,000 check in the mail before doing any work as an expert witness. According to his deposition, Hamilton talked to PG&E’s lawyers about the check and learned that it was on top of his hourly fee. PG&E ultimately paid Hamilton nearly $300,000 for his work on the lawsuit. “That’s completely outrageous,” said Francesca Grifo, director of scientific integrity at the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists. “I don’t know how anybody could stand up logically and say I got $100,000 but it didn’t affect how I handled this.” Hamilton declined interview requests. EPA farms screening to consultants Working for a chemical company appears to violate the EPA’s guidelines on conflicts of interest. The EPA’s Peer Review Handbook says peer reviewers should appear to be impartial, defined as not having anything that “may cause a reasonable person with knowledge of the relevant facts to question the expert’s ability to carry out official duties without bias or influence.” The handbook offers, as an example of a conflict, a scientist paid to be an expert witness for a chemical company in a class-action lawsuit. Yet, the EPA doesn’t ask scientists if they’ve worked as expert witnesses or have taken money from industry. Instead, it turns that job over to private companies, which handle conflict-of-interest reviews in secret. All of the information the vendors collect, including financial disclosure forms, is “considered private and non-disclosable to EPA or outside entities except as required by law,” the EPA policy says. The contractor examines candidates’ published work, and prospective panelists fill out a questionnaire detailing potential conflicts. Once the panel is picked, the contractor certifies to the EPA that “no unresolved actual or potential conflict of interest issues” remain.

What’s more, the ethics guidelines are not binding on contractors, and the EPA handbook says the agency should not override decisions on conflicts of interest. “EPA should not attempt to make any changes in the contractor’s conclusions as this would compromise the independence of the peer review conducted by the contractor,” the handbook says. The EPA said it set the system up this way to ensure impartiality. But, the Center found, this structure helps shield the very conflicts the agency aims to avoid. A year ago, the Center sought information on the screening of IRIS panelists through a FOIA request. The EPA withheld most documents, including emails between the vendors and agency. Officials at Eastern Research Group Inc., the Massachusetts firm that vetted the peer reviewers on the chromium (VI) panel, did not return emails and phone calls. An official at another company handling peer reviews, Versar Inc., said he was prohibited by EPA from talking. The EPA’s administrator, Jackson, and its chemical-assessment officials declined requests for on-the-record interviews. But an EPA official acknowledged privately that the agency was not fully aware of the chromium (VI) peer reviewers’ ties to PG&E. The official defended the use of private vendors, contending that if the EPA chose peer reviewers, it could pick scientists it knew would be friendly. However, the EPA routinely selects scientists for other advisory panels. Critics said it’s not clear how checking financial disclosure forms would taint the process.

The Peer Review Handbook does note that checking disclosure forms would activate the Federal Advisory Committee Act, a law meant to make panels more open. “It’s bizarre,” Grifo said of the EPA’s secretive screening process. “At its core it’s supposed to increase the public trust in the system. If it looks like the whole system is rigged to begin with, then why should a citizen trust it?” The EPA said it was working to reduce the potential for conflicts. “We are exploring the best ways to provide for public review of contract-managed peer review panels and ensure that contractors are held accountable for their assessment of any conflicts of interest,” the agency said in a statement. The ‘pure science’ bottleneck Some 700 new chemicals hit the market each year, adding to the tens of thousands already in use. Yet the EPA has assessed only 557 chemicals since the IRIS program began in 1985. A typical review takes six to eight years, sometimes much longer. It took 27 years for the agency to issue a partial assessment of dioxin, a byproduct of plastics manufacturing and burning. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded in 2008 that the IRIS program was so bogged down that it was in danger of becoming obsolete. In 2009, EPA Administrator Jackson made bold promises within her first weeks in office to fix the program. She pledged to finish many more assessments and to try to complete each one within two years. Since May 2009, the EPA said it completed 24 IRIS assessments, “double the number” completed in the same time period prior to May 2009. Yet its overall progress remains slow, and in the past two years, the program produced as few assessments as ever. Last year, the EPA planned to complete 40 assessments. It finished three. The reasons for the logjam are complex. But it has become common for industry and its allies inside the federal government to push for delay. “Even a single delay can have far-reaching, time-consuming consequences, in some cases requiring that the assessment process essentially start over,” the GAO reported. Some 700 new chemicals hit the market each year. Yet the EPA has assessed only 557 since the IRIS program began in 1985. In the case of chromium (VI), evidence shows that industry worked closely with the EPA as the agency conducted its assessment. On Oct. 8, 2009, a scientist at a law firm representing chemical companies complained in an email that the EPA was pushing ahead on its assessments without waiting for studies to address “gaps” in the science. “EPA moved Chrom VI up by about two years after ‘we’ entered into a process of planning research with them to address gaps,” wrote Richard Canady, a former scientist at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), who was then working at the private law firm of McKenna, Long & Aldridge. “I’d like to make a case for EPA planning ahead in cooperation with industry.”

Canady’s email was sent to Nancy Beck, a toxicologist at OMB who reviewed the EPA’s findings. Beck referred Canady to an American Chemistry Council official for help in gathering data. A 2009 investigation by a subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee criticized Beck for improperly interfering with IRIS assessments during the George W. Bush administration. Beck now works for the ACC. She did not return a call last week seeking comment; an ACC spokesman said Tuesday he would seek her perspective. In a recent interview, Canady said he could not recall the precise details from his email and declined to reveal clients for which he was working. But Canady said he thought the process of planning research with the EPA “wasn’t that formal.” Instead, industry scientists would call EPA scientists to find out what new data would help them in their chromium (VI) assessment, he said. His 2009 email also said, “Peter made a point to me the other day about how boron and methylene chloride were good examples of working together on developing data ahead of assessments in ways that influenced the outcome.” Canady said this was a reference to Peter Preuss, then the director of the EPA’s National Center for Environmental Assessment, which oversees IRIS. The EPA originally planned to issue its chromium (VI) assessment last summer, giving the ACC time to finish its new studies.

However, under Jackson’s imperative to quicken assessments, the EPA moved up its timeline by six to nine months. When the EPA’s Cogliano rebuffed the ACC’s request for a delay, the trade association turned its attention to the peer review panel. Critics say the industry uses comments on chemicals that are under review to overwhelm the agency. Of the 49 public comments submitted to the EPA on chromium, the American Chemistry Council and its research partners authored 29 of them, totaling 1,661 pages. “There’s a very elaborate process that involves multiple opportunities for industry to pick away and blast away and confuse and overload the staff of IRIS, and the IRIS staff reacts by trying to address each and every one of industry’s concerns,” said law professor Steinzor. “The chemical industry has made IRIS its leading target, one of its leading targets, for spoil in the current age of greed,” Steinzor said Of the 49 public comments submitted to the EPA on chromium before the peer-review panel met, the American Chemistry Council and its research partners authored 29 of them, totaling 1,661 pages. In addition, 10 other comments totaling 137 pages came from industry urging the EPA to wait for the ACC studies. As the EPA stood poised to announce potential new safeguards for chromium (VI), the ACC had hired a scientific consulting firm, ToxStrategies, to manage the $4 million studies of mice and rats given the chemical for 90 days.

The panel met May 12, 2011, at a Hilton hotel near Reagan National Airport. Patierno was highly critical of the EPA’s findings and suggested the agency “absolutely consider the extensive new data being provided.” Hamilton and Wise agreed. In a recent interview, Wise said he wasn’t entirely familiar with ToxStrategies’ findings, which hadn’t yet been published. But he assumed the delay would be short, only a few months. The EPA initially said the delay would take four years. Later, the agency said the assessment would be done this year. Anatoly Zhitkovich, a professor at Brown University who chaired the EPA peer review panel, was upset with the results and wrote his own review published in the journal Chemical Research in Toxicology, according to Costa, a close colleague. Zhitkovich declined an interview request, but his article supported the findings of the EPA. In lobbying for delay, the American Chemistry Council quietly enlisted the help of a small office within the U.S. Small Business Administration. SBA Chief Counsel for Advocacy Winslow Sargeant, an electrical engineer by training, submitted a comment to the EPA on Oct. 5, 2011, challenging its scientific conclusions and urging it to delay its chromium assessment pending completion of the ACC studies. Winslow cited the peer review comments from Hamilton and Wise to support his argument. But emails obtained through FOIA by the advocacy group Center for Effective Government revealed that the ACC helped shape the SBA letter. An ACC lobbyist, Randy Schumacher, sent an email to Sargeant’s office on June 28, 2011, asking for its help. “Administrator Jackson calling upon her to stop the Cr6 risk assessment process to do exactly as EPA’s peer reviewers deemed advisable,” Schumacher wrote. “Since it appears EPA needs to hear from more constituents for it to listen to its own peer review team, would SBA be willing to send a letter to Ms. Jackson to weigh in on this matter?” Later emails from Schumacher suggested editing changes to Sargeant’s letter. The SBA official has not responded to interview requests.

Frustration prompts reform push Now the EPA is in the process of revamping its IRIS program once more. Cogliano has proposed releasing the names of prospective peer reviewers in advance, giving the public an opportunity to explore conflicts. “This will improve transparency in the peer review process,” the EPA said in a statement. The changes could be formally announced this week, as Jackson departs.In 2001, siblings lean against the entrance to one of the houses which were bought and razed by Pacific Gas & Electric after the company was found to have polluted the ground water. David McNew/Getty Images The ACC’s Fischer says he’s in favor of a conflict-of-interest policy that allows industry to participate on peer review panels. “Bias in and of itself should not necessarily disqualify a particular scientist from serving on the panel,” he said. “Industry perspective is a bias but so [is] every other perspective.” The EPA is also weighing whether to set “stopping points” for new research, a deadline after which no additional studies would be considered. Kenneth Olden, a senior EPA official who oversees IRIS, has proposed announcing assessments two years in advance, giving industry time to complete new studies. Such proposals drew criticism at an EPA meeting in November, with an environmental group’s scientist stating bluntly that industry seeks delays because it wants IRIS to fail. His comments drew faint gasps from a conference room filled almost entirely with industry consultants.

“The practice of waiting for one more study to be completed, as has happened repeatedly under IRIS — especially when that study is to be conducted by an entity with a vested financial interest in tilting the outcome — simply must stop,” said the scientist, Richard Denison, with the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund. “Simply put, a decision delayed is health protection denied.” The Center for Public Integrity is a non-profit independent investigative news outlet.For more of its stories go to publicintegrity.org. This story has been clarified to reflect that, as an employee of a consulting firm, John P. Wise Sr. worked for an industry client in the PG&E lawsuit but that he was never told the identity of the client. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/multimedia/epa-corporate/ ===Chemical Industry Uses Wallet To Block Tighter Regulations, Environmental Advocates SayPosted: 10/25/2012 6:57 pm EDT Updated: 10/25/2012 7:51 pm EDTIn an effort to block a ballot measure in California that would require the labeling of genetically modified foods, shape a Senate race in Ohio with potential repercussions for fracking, and influence a host of House contests key to toxic chemical reform -- the chemical industry has been busy wielding its wallet, say environmental advocates.New numbers support that assertion: Tens of millions of dollars continue to feed industry friendly causes and candidates this election season, with federal campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures by the chemical industry more than doubling since 2000. "The more the truth has gotten out about the chemical regulatory system not working; the more the science has shed light on the consequences for American families as they bear the burden of problems linked to environmental exposures such as learning disabilities, childhood cancer and breast cancer;

I think the more it has increased demands for change," said Andy Igrejas, national campaign director for the nonprofit Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families. "And industry has ramped up its spending to block such a change," he added. The chemical and agro-chemical industries have generally argued that stiffer regulations would be overly burdensome to companies and costly to the country. Anne Kolton of the American Chemistry Council, a lobbying group for the chemical industry, said the ACC is "proud" of its efforts to "highlight the good work being done in Washington to grow the economy and create jobs."

Monsanto and other agro-chemical companies have invested more than $20 million -- on top of the food industry's nearly equivalent contribution -- for ads opposing Proposition 37, a California measure that would require labeling of genetically modified foods, or GMOs. Proponents of the bill have raised less than $8 million. Meanwhile, chemical interests have spent some $375 million since 2005 to help elect and try to influence federal leaders, specifically in regards to a pending overhaul of the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 (TSCA), according to a report released this week by Common Cause, a nonprofit, nonpartisan citizen's lobbying organization. "It's been 36 years since they passed TSCA, and people are showing how it really fails to protect people," said James Browning, Common Cause's regional director for state operations and a principal author of the report. "Public health advocates are starting to win the fight, they have so much evidence on their side. Industry is realizing it needs to start spending more to stop it."In July, the Safe Chemicals Act passed out of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

First introduced by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) in 2005, the act would replace the TSCA and essentially reverse the burden of proof on chemical safety. In other words, chemicals would be required to be tested and proven safe before they are placed on store shelves -- something that it not the case today. The bill is now awaiting a vote from the full Senate. The ACC, whose member companies' spending was included in the Common Cause report, has said it is committed to working on a bipartisan bill, but has also expressed concerns with the Safe Chemicals Act. "As one of America's most significant manufacturing industries, we have a significant interest in seeing good policies enacted that will encourage economic growth and job creation including a balanced approach to regulation, a strong domestic energy policy and sound tax and trade policies, and we believe it is important to support leaders in Congress who share those priorities," Kolton said. Overall, Common Cause found that chemical industry contributions in the current election cycle have gone predominantly to Republicans: 78 percent compared to 22 percent for Democrats. President Barack Obama received $217,283, for example, compared to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's $704,337. The report, titled "Toxic Spending," also highlights how the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision opened up a new "avenue of influence" for the chemical industry in the form of so-called Super PACs. C

hemical interests have given $23 million to these groups in the current elections, according to the study. Browning noted that actual spending numbers are likely even higher due to incomplete tracking of ad spending and a surge of undisclosed contributions from nonprofit organizations.This year, chemical interests are targeting a few key races, Browning said, including a heated Senate battle in Ohio. Josh Mandel, the Republican contender, ranks third among recipients of chemical industry campaign contributions, and has expressed plans to open up more land to natural gas drilling. Calls and emails to Mandel's campaign office seeking comment were not returned."Clearly, they see Ohio as pivotal and that race as pivotal," Browning said. A Common Cause report from last year found people on Rep. Fred Upton's (R-Mich.) House Energy & Commerce Committee who voted for the so-called Haliburton loophole -- which essentially exempts the natural gas industry from the Safe Drinking Water Act -- received more than six times as much money from oil and gas companies as people who voted against it. "There's a long history of industry throwing weight around and with it being successful,"

Browning added.Stacy Malkan, media director of Yes on 37, hopes that doesn't end up being the case in California.Efforts to get GMO foods labeled have so far failed at the federal level, and in 19 states. And now the Proposition 37 race, which experts anticipate -- if passed -- could lead to labeling nationwide, has been tightening in recent weeks after what had been a consistent two-fold lead. The latest poll numbers released on Thursday show the measure leading among likely California voters by margin of 44 percent to 42 percent.The No on 37 campaign started rolling out ads on Oct. 1 that pointed out what they argue are shortcomings in the proposed labeling law and its potential to mislead consumers.Malkan, in turn, calls the No on 37 ads "deceptive." And she calls Proposition 37 a "dramatic example" of "today's total full court press to buy elections as well as buy politicians."

TOP 10 CHEMICAL INDUSTRY AD EXPENDITURES, BY RACE, 2012  Data compiled from CMAG/Kantar Media, the FCC, and the FEC. * Data on Tommy Thompson from FEC reporting of spending by the American Chemistry Council (ACC). ** Expenditure on behalf of Sen. Scott Brown was paid for by the "Coalition for American Jobs," an entity affiliated with the American Chemistry Council and the American Petroleum Institute.

TOP 10 RECIPIENTS OF CHEMICAL INDUSTRY CAMPAIGN FUNDS, 2011-2012*  --== http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/25/chemical-industry-campaign-contributions-environmental-regulations_n_2017412.html?utm_campaign=102612&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Alert-green&utm_content=FullStory

In an effort to block a ballot measure in California that would require the labeling of genetically modified foods, shape a Senate race in Ohio with potential repercussions for fracking, and influence a host of House contests key to toxic chemical reform -- the chemical industry has been busy wielding its wallet, say environmental advocates.New numbers support that assertion: Tens of millions of dollars continue to feed industry friendly causes and candidates this election season, with federal campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures by the chemical industry more than doubling since 2000."The more the truth has gotten out about the chemical regulatory system not working; the more the science has shed light on the consequences for American families as they bear the burden of problems linked to environmental exposures such as learning disabilities, childhood cancer and breast cancer; I think the more it has increased demands for change," said Andy Igrejas, national campaign director for the nonprofit Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families. "And industry has ramped up its spending to block such a change,"

he added.The chemical and agro-chemical industries have generally argued that stiffer regulations would be overly burdensome to companies and costly to the country. Anne Kolton of the American Chemistry Council, a lobbying group for the chemical industry, said the ACC is "proud" of its efforts to "highlight the good work being done in Washington to grow the economy and create jobs."Monsanto and other agro-chemical companies have invested more than $20 million -- on top of the food industry's nearly equivalent contribution -- for ads opposing Proposition 37, a California measure that would require labeling of genetically modified foods, or GMOs. Proponents of the bill have raised less than $8 million. Meanwhile, chemical interests have spent some $375 million since 2005 to help elect and try to influence federal leaders, specifically in regards to a pending overhaul of the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 (TSCA), according to a report released this week by Common Cause, a nonprofit, nonpartisan citizen's lobbying organization."It's been 36 years since they passed TSCA, and people are showing how it really fails to protect people," said James Browning, Common Cause's regional director for state operations and a principal author of the report. "Public health advocates are starting to win the fight, they have so much evidence on their side. Industry is realizing it needs to start spending more to stop it."In July, the Safe Chemicals Act passed out of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

First introduced by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) in 2005, the act would replace the TSCA and essentially reverse the burden of proof on chemical safety. In other words, chemicals would be required to be tested and proven safe before they are placed on store shelves -- something that it not the case today. The bill is now awaiting a vote from the full Senate.The ACC, whose member companies' spending was included in the Common Cause report, has said it is committed to working on a bipartisan bill, but has also expressed concerns with the Safe Chemicals Act. "As one of America's most significant manufacturing industries, we have a significant interest in seeing good policies enacted that will encourage economic growth and job creation including a balanced approach to regulation, a strong domestic energy policy and sound tax and trade policies, and we believe it is important to support leaders in Congress who share those priorities," Kolton said.Overall, Common Cause found that chemical industry contributions in the current election cycle have gone predominantly to Republicans: 78 percent compared to 22 percent for Democrats. President Barack Obama received $217,283, for example, compared to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's $704,337.The report, titled "Toxic Spending," also highlights how the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision opened up a new "avenue of influence" for the chemical industry in the form of so-called Super PACs. Chemical interests have given $23 million to these groups in the current elections, according to the study. Browning noted that actual spending numbers are likely even higher due to incomplete tracking of ad spending and a surge of undisclosed contributions from nonprofit organizations.This year, chemical interests are targeting a few key races, Browning said, including a heated Senate battle in Ohio. Josh Mandel, the Republican contender, ranks third among recipients of chemical industry campaign contributions, and has expressed plans to open up more land to natural gas drilling. Calls and emails to Mandel's campaign office seeking comment were not returned.TOP 10 RECIPIENTS OF CHEMICAL INDUSTRY CAMPAIGN FUNDS, 2011-2012*  Data compiled from CMAG/Kantar Media, the FCC, and the FEC. *Through Sept. 30, 2012 "Clearly, they see Ohio as pivotal and that race as pivotal," Browning said.A Common Cause report from last year found people on Rep. Fred Upton's (R-Mich.) House Energy & Commerce Committee who voted for the so-called Haliburton loophole -- which essentially exempts the natural gas industry from the Safe Drinking Water Act -- received more than six times as much money from oil and gas companies as people who voted against it.TOP 10 CHEMICAL INDUSTRY AD EXPENDITURES, BY RACE, 2012  Data compiled from CMAG/Kantar Media, the FCC, and the FEC. * Data on Tommy Thompson from FEC reporting of spending by the American Chemistry Council (ACC). ** Expenditure on behalf of Sen. Scott Brown was paid for by the "Coalition for American Jobs," an entity affiliated with the American Chemistry Council and the American Petroleum Institute. ==Monday, May 28, 2012 Citizens for Fire Safety