Toxin ToSCA
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this is a high level category, includes pesticides, chems, haz waste...
but also refs the law?
trump 2 zeldin mofo epa
7 25 ICN
Last week the Trump administration quietly took a hugely consequential action affecting environmental protections in America: beginning to shutter the EPA Office of Research and Development.
The decision follows a long pressure campaign from industry lobbyists to limit EPA’s ability to assess the health risks of chemicals like formaldehyde, ethylene oxide, arsenic and hexavalent chromium, and mitigate the harms they can cause.
Marianne takes us inside the office, explaining its critical role in protecting the public, the politics at play, and why shutting the office down is such a devastating loss to the country.
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an 11 25
Seven states are one flood away from a toxic sludge site spilling into the community.
Mother Jones reported Friday, "Florida, New Jersey, California, Louisiana, New York, Massachusetts, and Texas account for 80 percent" of the sites. "Most of this risk is already locked in."
More than 5,500 toxic sites across the U.S. could face coastal flooding by 2100, threatening to spill contaminants into surrounding neighborhoods within the lifetimes of Generations Alpha and Beta, new research warns.
Scientists at the University of California found that a wide range of hazardous facilities are vulnerable, including sites handling sewage, toxic waste, oil, gas and other pollutants that are not fully protected from sea level rise and severe flooding.
"After examining 23 coastal states and Puerto Rico, scientists found that flood risk is far from evenly distributed. Florida, New Jersey, California, Louisiana, New York, Massachusetts, and Texas account for nearly 80 percent of the hazardous sites expected to be at risk by 2100," the report said.
The project examined 47,600 coastal facilities in the U.S., finding that about 5,500 are at risk of frequent flooding that could send toxic materials into nearby communities.
Current environmental safeguards do little more than delay the danger. Future generations will be forced either to build stronger containment systems that can withstand flooding or face the consequences.
“Restricting greenhouse gas emissions to the low emissions scenario makes little difference in terms of the number of projected sites at risk in the near term (2050) but would reduce the number of at-risk sites from 5,500 to 5,138 (a reduction of 362 or 7 percent of sites) in the long term," the scientists found.
Read the full study at Nature Communications.
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https://www.ecowatch.com/epa-chemicals-information-lawsuit-2645530774.html
When Congress updated theToxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) in 2016 for the first time in 40 years, public health and environmental advocates hoped it would be a game-changer for protecting Americans from dangerous chemicals, enabling the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to finally ban harmful substances like asbestos.
But under President Donald Trump, the EPA has consistently failed to take advantage of the new law. It has declined to ban asbestos, and has even violated requirements that it keep the public informed about the approval of new chemicals, an investigation by Earthjustice and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) revealed. That's why Earthjustice is representing five environmental groups in a lawsuit filed Wednesday against the EPA.
"Congress reformed TSCA just a few years ago to protect people's health from new chemicals. It said, unequivocally, that the public has a right to know about these chemicals before they are put out on the market," Earthjustice attorney Tosh Sagar said in a press release. "Trump's EPA instead hides health and safety studies and other key information, just so that industry can have it easier. Ignoring TSCA's transparency requirements makes it more likely that dangerous chemicals are reaching our homes and workplaces."
The Earthjustice and EDF investigation, also published Wednesday, reviewed 204 out of around 1,100 chemical applications the EPA had received between August 2016 and April 2019. It also examined all the public notices that the agency issued for around 1,700 new applications through early 2020. It found that the EPA had routinely violated a stipulation of the new TSCA amendment that the public be informed of the approval process for new chemicals so that it could weigh in before the chemical was put on the market.
The agency concealed information in three key ways, the investigation found.
1. It did not inform the public of new applications in a timely manner: The EPA is supposed to notify the public within five days of receiving a new chemical application. However, the investigation found that the average notice was published 87 days after the application was received, even though the EPA has 90 days to approve a chemical. One in six notices were published after the chemical was already approved.
2. The EPA has withheld key safety information:The agency is supposed to publish all applications online, but instead forces the public to request them via a labyrinthine process. Further, it allows companies to redact or withhold health and safety studies as confidential business information (CBI) despite a legal requirement to publicize all health and safety information.
3. The EPA doesn't evaluate CBI claims: The agency is required by law to audit 25 percent of CBI claims to make sure companies are not abusing the designation to withhold important information. It is then supposed to publish its decision. But the EPA has not published any reviews of CBI claims, and has only completed reviews of claims in 27 applications, far below 25 percent of the 1,250 it has completed safety reviews for.
In one case, this secrecy involved a new type of PFAS, a class of chemical already contaminating U.S. drinking water. The EPA's career scientists found that the new substance could cause respiratory illnesses like asthma and alter DNA, leading to cancer. Nevertheless, it was approved in April 2019 and almost all of the documents provided by the company were never shared with the public.
"When it comes to toxic chemicals and Trump's EPA, this secrecy is the norm. It's not just illegal, it puts workers and families across the country at risk," the investigators wrote.
Earthjustice, acting on behalf of EDF, Environmental Health Strategy Center, Center for Environmental Health, Natural Resources Defense Council and Sierra Club, threatened to sue the EPA over the violations in September 2019. The agency promised to improve the application vetting process, but the coalition considered its changes inadequate.
"Unleashing chemicals into the market without proper vetting is like opening Pandora's box," the coalition said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. "EPA must stop hiding key information about the chemicals it is reviewing and put public health above the desires of the chemical industry."
The EPA did not comment on a story in The Hill about the lawsuit, saying it did not weigh in on ongoing litigation.
epa pfas public health chemicals
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Niranjana Krishnan | Department of Entomology
https://www.ent.iastate.edu/people/niranjana-krishnan
2.
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:{:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:https://plantingscience.org/partners looks ok
https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/why-synthetic-chemicals-seem-more-toxic-than-natural-ones/
hmmn
no lnx graf
Why synthetic chemicals seem more toxic than natural ones
By R6, State & Private Forestry, Forest Health Protection - 1955. Fort tri-motor spraying DDT. Western spruce budworm control project. Powder River control unit, OR., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60428907
Written by Aeon August 20, 2019
by Niranjana Krishnan
Many people believe that chemicals, particularly the man-made ones, are highly dangerous. After all, more than 80,000 chemicals have been synthesised for commercial use in the United States, and many have been released into the environment without proper safety testing. Should we be afraid of the synthetic chemicals that permeate our world
While it is not possible to compare the toxicity of all natural and synthetic chemicals, it is worth noting that the five most toxic chemicals on Earth are all naturally found. When it comes to pesticides, some of the newer man-made versions are remarkably safe to humans; and at high doses, these pesticides are as toxic as table salt and aspirin. Rats continually exposed to low doses of these pesticides (ie, doses found in the environment) don’t develop cancer or problems in growth and reproduction. In fact, toxins produced by plants cause cancer at the same rate as synthetic chemicals, and we ingest a lot more of the plant toxins.
I study toxicology: I look at the effects of substances on living organisms. All substances (natural and artificial) are harmful if the exposure is high enough. Even too much water consumed within a very short time can dilute the salts in the blood, and cause brain cells to swell. A number of marathon runners have collapsed and died because of consuming excessive amounts of water with no salt.
Toxicologists believe that nearly every substance is safe in certain amounts. Take the example of botulinum, the most poisonous substance on Earth. Just 50 grammes of the toxin spread evenly worldwide would kill everyone. But, in very minute amounts, it is safely used for cosmetic purposes in Botox. Thus the adage ‘the dose makes the poison’.
Apart from understanding what doses make a substance ‘safe’ or ‘unsafe’, toxicologists also love figuring out how a substance causes a harmful effect. How exactly does smoking cause lung cancer? Once we find a mechanism through which chemicals in smoke cause cancer (and we have), we can be more confident about smoking’s role in lung cancer. Merely showing that smokers have a higher rate of cancer isn’t evidence, since it is easy to find two factors whose patterns correlate. Look at the graph below: it shows that higher rates of divorce in Maine correspond to a higher per-capita consumption of margarine:
Courtesy Tyler Vigen/Spurious Correlations
While we wouldn’t think that this graph proves anything, we are less likely to question correlations that might seem more plausible. For example, the graph below shows that higher exposure to mercury through vaccinations corresponds to higher rates of autism:
Courtesy David Geier and Mark Geier, 2004
Though the theory that chemicals in vaccines might result in autism is now thoroughly disproved, similar examples can be found online for other chemicals. Correlations between increased pesticide use and escalating human health problems prevail, even though there is little or no data to establish a causal link between the two.
Nevertheless, one can argue that, though there is no conclusive evidence presently to show that some chemicals cause health problems, it’s better to be safe than sorry and so restrict the chemical before health problems emerge. Yet while this idea is tempting, it ignores a basic truth: risk exists in nearly everything. Walking outside (we could get mugged), travelling in cars and planes (we could crash), eating food (we could ingest plant oestrogens or the organic pesticide copper sulphate) or drinking water (parts of the US and Bangladesh have high levels of naturally occurring fluoride and arsenic, respectively). We therefore need to understand probability: is the chemical exposure high enough for a high probability of adverse effects? We also need to know the risks of using an alternative chemical – or no chemical at all.
Studies have shown that people vary widely at ranking risks. Below is a snapshot of how the general public and experts ranked risk in 1979 (where 1 is the riskiest, and 30 the least risky).
Courtesy Federal Emergency Management Agency, 2007. Adapted from Slovic et al, 1979
It seems that laypeople rank risks that receive more media attention or have more vivid imageries higher than the more commonplace risks. Today, the public perceives a higher health risk from genetically engineered crops than experts do.
So while it is good to strive for the lowest possible risk, it is important to also consider any benefits, and not disallow things merely because of the risk they pose. The following examples explain this reasoning:
Wind turbines kill birds and bats, dams kill fish, and the manufacture of solar cells exposes workers to dangerous chemicals. But how do those risks compare with the risks of global warming and respiratory illness through continued use of fossil fuels? Do the benefits of replacing fossil fuels outweigh the risks of developing alternative energy sources?
Birth control pills are very effective in preventing unwanted pregnancies and thus lessen our burden on the planet’s resources. But their use leads to increased hormone levels in streams and rivers, and the feminisation of male fish and decreases in fish populations.
The insecticide DDT (now banned in most countries worldwide) caused several bird populations to crash. Yet prior to its ban, when safer alternatives did not exist, it saved millions of human lives by preventing diseases such as malaria and typhus.
Regulators partly decide whether to allow a certain chemical into the marketplace by tallying up its costs and benefits. This can seem crude. For example, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) values a human life at nearly $10 million. Thus, if a pesticide has a one in a 100,000 chance of causing a neurodegenerative disorder in people who apply it, and 1 million agricultural workers could be exposed to it, then the benefit of not registering the pesticide is $100 million (as 10 people will be protected by this decision). Unless the cost of reducing pesticide exposure to the workers exceeds $100 million, it is unlikely to be registered.
The EPA has been analysing the safety of chemical pesticides for many years, and it recently began analysing the safety of the other chemicals it regulates. Nevertheless, there are several uncertainties when it comes to understanding the toxicity and risks of any chemical. Regulators try to deal with it by using margins of safety. This means that if x dose of a chemical is found safe in rats, then only doses that are at least 100- or 1,000-fold lower are considered safe in humans. However, this doesn’t guarantee that we are exposed only to safe levels of chemicals, and toxicologists don’t always look for effects – such as disruption of hormonal functions – that manifest only at low doses. Also, concerns about long-term exposure to a mix of chemicals are valid as this is rarely tested in the lab. (One Danish study found that the average adult’s risk from consuming different pesticides in food is similar to the risk of drinking one glass of wine every three months. However, this is far from a comprehensive analysis.)
Ultimately, though risk and uncertainty exist on all sides, people seem to be averse only to certain kinds of risks. And while we should undoubtedly work to reduce harmful chemical exposure and come up with safer alternatives, we also need to realise that our excessive phobia of chemicals, particularly synthetic ones, can often be unwarranted. Aeon counter – do not remove
This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under Creative Commons.
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wheeler toxic trifecta:
- Suppressed an Inconvenient Formaldehyde Report
Last August, Wheeler disingenuously told a Senate committee that the EPA was holding up the release of a report on the risk of cancer from formaldehyde to confirm its veracity. “I am sure we will release it,” he said, “but I need to make sure that the science in the report is still accurate.” In fact, the report—which concluded that formaldehyde can cause leukemia and nose and throat cancer—was completed by EPA scientists a year before Wheeler testified, according to a Senate investigation, and their conclusion was hardly a surprise. Both the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services National Toxicology Program have already classified formaldehyde as a known human carcinogen.
The EPA’s review process normally takes 60 to 90 days. The formaldehyde report has been in limbo for at least a year and a half, a blatant giveaway to the American Chemistry Council, the U.S. chemical industry’s premier trade association, which has blocked tighter restrictions on formaldehyde for decades.
- Ignored EPA Scientists’ Advice to Ban Asbestos
Instead of heeding the advice of agency scientists and lawyers to follow the example of 55 other countries and ban asbestos completely, the EPA announced in April that it would tighten restrictions on asbestos—not ban it—despite overwhelming scientific evidence of its dangers. Manufacturers will be able to continue to use the substance if they obtain EPA approval Asbestos has not been produced in the United States since 2002, but is still imported for use in a wide range of commercial and consumer products, including auto brake components, roofing, vinyl floor tile, fire-resistant clothing, and cement pipes, sheets and shingles. One of the deadliest known carcinogens, asbestos kills nearly 40,000Americans annually, mainly from lung cancer.
- Weakened the Mercury Emissions Rule
In late December, the EPA proposed to significantly weaken a rule restricting mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants by recalculating its costs and benefits. The Obama EPA, which issued the rule in 2011, estimated it would cost utilities $7.4 billion to $9.6 billion annually to install pollution controls and lead to $37 billion to $90 billionin health benefits by reducing not only mercury, a potent neurotoxin, but also sulfur dioxide and soot, thus preventing 130,000 asthma attacks, 4,700 heart attacks, and as many as 11,000 premature deaths. The Wheeler EPA ignored the “co-benefits” of limiting sulfur dioxide and soot, and flagrantly lowballed the health benefits of curbing mercury alone at only $4 million to $6 million annually.
Most utilities have already complied with the mercury rule at a fraction of the estimated cost, but health advocates fear that this new, industry-friendly accounting method, which makes it appear that the cost to polluters far outweigh the rule’s benefits, will set a precedent for the EPA to sabotage an array of other public health protections.
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history EPA, dioxins etc
https://kpfa.org/episode/against-the-grain-june-24-2019/
The Environmental Protection Agency is tasked with safeguarding the public from toxic exposure. But Jonathan Latham, executive director of the Bioscience Research Project, says that The Poison Papers — an enormous trove of documents — indicate that the EPA and the chemical industry often work hand in hand to mislead us into thinking that toxic chemicals are safe for human use. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
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https://www.alternet.org/scott-pruitts-corruption-bad-his-planetary-sabotage-worse
so corrupt that he spent $1,560 on 12 customized fountain pens? Or that he spent another $43,000 on a soundproof phone booth in violation of government spending laws?
Pruitt’s big spending on the taxpayer dime has earned him well-deserved scrutiny and outrage. But what’s really outrageous is what he’s doing with the EPA.
While Pruitt was getting headlines for having taxpayer-funded aides do his private business, his EPA just gutted an Obama-era law to protect Americans from toxic chemicals. For four decades, the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 did little to require that all new chemicals (or untested old ones) were properly vetted for safety before allowed onto the market. Even the chemical industry said it was flawed.
In 2016, the Republican-led Congress passed an update that would help keep Americans safer from toxic chemicals.
Under Pruitt, the new law won’t apply to any chemicals in the air, ground, or water. So what does it apply to? Only direct contact.
While spending over $1,500 on pens is a disgusting misuse of government resources, the ultimate harm it does to the American public pales in comparison to allowing toxic chemicals into consumer products and our environment.
Gutting protections against toxic chemicals is just one way in which Pruitt has assaulted the environment while in office. He’s also a climate denier and a good friend to the fossil fuel industry.
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ref no lix many see epa3
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/07/us/politics/epa-toxic-chemicals.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fclimate
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/07/us/politics/epa-toxic-chemicals.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fclimate
[The American Chemistry Council said in a statement last week that the E.P.A.’s approach met “the requirements of the law,” adding that it wanted the risk assessments to be “protective and practical.”]
Trump administration, after heavy lobbying by the chemical industry, is scaling back the way the federal government determines health and safety risks associated with the most dangerous chemicals on the market, documents from the Environmental Protection Agency show.
Under a law passed by Congress during the final year of the Obama administration, the E.P.A. was required for the first time to evaluate hundreds of potentially toxic chemicals and determine if they should face new restrictions, or even be removed from the market. The chemicals include many in everyday use, such as dry-cleaning solvents, paint strippers and substances used in health and beauty products like shampoos and cosmetics.
But as it moves forward reviewing the first batch of 10 chemicals, the E.P.A. has in most cases decided to exclude from its calculations any potential exposure caused by the substances’ presence in the air, the ground or water, according to more than 1,500 pages of documents released last week by the agency.
Instead, the agency will focus on possible harm caused by direct contact with a chemical in the workplace or elsewhere. The approach means that the improper disposal of chemicals — leading to the contamination of drinking water, for instance — will often not be a factor in deciding whether to restrict or ban them.
THE APPROACH IS A BIG VICTORY FOR THE CHEMICAL INDUSTRY, WHICH HAS REPEATEDLY PRESSED THE E.P.A. TO NARROW THE SCOPE OF ITS RISK EVALUATIONS. NANCY B. BECK, THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S APPOINTEE TO HELP OVERSEE THE E.P.A.’S TOXIC CHEMICAL UNIT, PREVIOUSLY WORKED AS AN EXECUTIVE AT THE AMERICAN CHEMISTRY COUNCIL, ONE OF THE INDUSTRY’S MAIN LOBBYING GROUPS.
A spokesman for the E.P.A. said that the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and other laws already provided the agency with the authority to regulate chemicals found in the air, rivers and drinking water, so there was no need to revisit them under the 2016 law, which updated the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976.
The agency can “better protect human health and the environment by focusing on those pathways that are likely to represent the greatest areas of concern to E.P.A.,” said the spokesman, Jahan Wilcox.
Image
Nancy B. Beck, who oversees the E.P.A.’s toxic chemical unit, previously worked at one of the industry’s main lobbying groups.
CreditU.S. Senate Committee Channel
But three former agency officials, including a former supervisor of the toxic chemical program, said that the E.P.A.’s approach would result in a flawed analysis of the threat presented by chemicals.
“It is ridiculous,” said Wendy Cleland-Hamnett, who retired last year after nearly four decades at the E.P.A., where she ran the toxic chemical unit during her last year. “You can’t determine if there is an unreasonable risk without doing a comprehensive risk evaluation.”
Senator Tom Udall, Democrat of New Mexico, and Representative Frank Pallone Jr., Democrat of New Jersey, who played leading roles in passing the 2016 law, said the E.P.A. was ignoring its directive for a comprehensive analysis of risks.
“Congress worked hard in bipartisan fashion to reform our nation’s broken chemical safety laws, but Pruitt’s E.P.A. is failing to put the new law to use as intended,” Mr. Udall said in a statement referring to Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A. administrator.
A spokesman for Senator John Barrasso, Republican of Wyoming, who is chairman of the Senate committee that oversees the agency, declined to comment.
Cumulatively, the approach being taken for the 10 chemicals means the E.P.A.’s risk analysis will not take into account an estimated 68 million pounds a year of emissions, according to an analysis by the Environmental Defense Fund, based on agency data.
Dr. Beck declined requests for comment. She had pushed the E.P.A. during the Obama administration to narrow the scope of the risk evaluations, in a fashion similar to the approach under her watch.
Also helping oversee the risk evaluation effort is Erik Baptist, a former senior lawyer at the American Petroleum Institute, another big player in the chemical industry.
Under the approach, the E.P.A. will examine what harm can be caused, for example, to anyone directly exposed to perchloroethylene — a dry-cleaning solvent and metal degreaser designated by the E.P.A. as a likely carcinogen — during manufacturing or when using it in dry cleaning, carpet cleaning or handling certain ink-removal products.
But the agency will not focus on exposures that occur from traces of the chemical found in drinking water in 44 states as a result of improper disposal over decades, the E.P.A. documents say. The decision conflicts with a risk assessment plan detailed by the agency a year ago, which included drinking water. And the change came after the American Chemistry Council argued in February last year that “the E.P.A. has discretion to select the conditions of use that it will consider.”
The agency will also not consider the hazards of perchloroethylene discharged into streams or lakes, landfills or the air from dry-cleaning stores or manufacturing or processing plants, the documents say.
The documents contain similar conclusions about nine of the 10 chemicals under review. One of these is 1,4-dioxane, which can be found in small amounts in antifreeze, deodorants, shampoos and cosmetics and is considered “likely to be carcinogenic to humans.” Another is trichloroethylene, which is used to make a refrigerant chemical and remove grease from metal parts and is associated with cancers of the liver, kidneys and blood.
Other changes identified in the E.P.A. documents narrow the definitions of certain chemicals, including asbestos. Some asbestos-like fibers will not be included in the risk assessments, one agency staff member said, nor will the 8.8 million pounds a year of asbestos deposited in hazardous landfills or the 13.1 million pounds discarded in routine dump sites.
The most likely outcome of the changes will be that the agency finds lower levels of risks associated with many chemicals, and as a result, imposes fewer new restrictions or prohibitions, several current and former agency officials said.
“They don’t want to open Pandora’s box by looking comprehensively at the risk, as they may prove to be significant and then they have to deal with it,” said Robert M. Sussman, a former chemical industry lawyer and E.P.A. official who now works as a consultant to Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, an advocacy group.
Despite the changes, the E.P.A. is still expected to ban the use of methylene chloride as a paint stripper soon — an action first proposed at the end of the Obama administration. The chemical, one of the 10 under review, is a popular ingredient used in dozens of products sold at home improvement stores nationwide, and has been blamed in dozens of deaths.
A collection of more than a dozen groups — representing environmental, public-health and labor organizations — are suing the E.P.A. to challenge earlier changes in the toxic chemical evaluation program. The case is before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco.
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https://www.ecowatch.com/methylene-chloride-epa-health-risks-2553228197.html
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http://www.ecowatch.com/shell-dow-chemical-drinking-water-2355598384.html
Shell, Dow Hid Cancer-Causing Chemical in Pesticides, Contaminating Drinking Water for Millions
For decades, Shell and Dow hid a highly potent cancer-causing chemical in two widely used pesticides, contaminating drinking water for millions of people in California and beyond, according to lawsuits detailed in a new report from the Environmental Working Group (EWG).
The chemical 1,2,3-trichloropropane or TCP, was formerly an unwanted and ineffective byproduct in Dow's Telone and Shell's D-D pesticides. Internal documents uncovered in lawsuits filed by communities in California's San Joaquin Valley show that the companies saved millions of dollars a year by not properly disposing of TCP, a chemical a Dow scientist once called "garbage," as hazardous waste.
vid]
Shell stopped making D-D in 1984 and Dow later took TCP out of Telone, but not before it contaminated the tap water supplies of 94 California utility districts serving 8 million people.
An U.S. Environmental Protection Agency testing program found TCP in tap water supplies for about 4 million people in 13 other states between 2013 and 2015, but the chemical is unregulated at the federal level and in every state except Hawaii.
Regulators in California will meet next week to decide whether to set a legal limit for TCP in tap water. Shell and Dow have paid multi-million dollar settlements to some communities to pay for filtering TCP out of water supplies, but dozens more cases are pending.
Dow and Shell "should have taken it out and disposed of it properly as a toxic waste. But that would have cost them a lot of money, so they left it in and continued to sell these pesticides to farmers throughout California," said Asha Kreiling, an analyst with the Community Water Center, which along with Clean Water Action has pushed the state to set a legal limit.
"This is an outrageous story of how Shell and Dow essentially got farmers who bought the pesticide to pay to help them get rid of a hazardous waste," said Bill Walker, EWG's managing editor and co-author of the report. "How many other hidden examples are there of chemical companies endangering communities through toxic deception?"
TCP was synthesized in the 1930s as one of many byproducts from the manufacture of a chemical used to make plastics. After pineapple growers in Hawaii found that the mixture of byproducts could kill microscopic worms called nematodes, Shell and Dow began marketing slightly different formulations of the mixture and eventually D-D and Telone became the second most heavily used pesticides in California.
But San Francisco attorney Todd Robins, who represents many smaller communities whose water is contaminated with TCP, said the companies knew TCP was useless as a pesticide—in fact, it made the products less effective. Yet both Shell and Dow claimed on the labels that the products were 100 percent active ingredients—false claims that violated federal regulations for registering pesticides. Robins also said the companies knew as early as 1952 that TCP in fumigants did not break down in soil and could migrate into groundwater. Once there, it persists for centuries.
In 2009, California state scientists set an extraordinarily low public health goal for TCP in drinking water of less than 1 part per trillion. Public health goals are not enforceable legal limits but minimal risk levels expected to cause no more than one case of cancer in a million people who drink and shower with the water daily for a lifetime. The only chemical with a lower California public health goal is dioxin, considered one of the most toxic substances known to science.
Staff of the California State Water Resources Control Board have proposed a legal limit of 5 parts per trillion, the lowest level current technology can reliably detect. A public hearing on the proposed standard, which is supported by Community Water Center, Clean Water Action, EWG and other groups, will be held April 19 in Sacramento.
"Shell and Dow put greed for profits ahead of the health of the people who bought and used their products," said Andria Ventura, toxics program manager for Clean Water Action. "We can't reverse the tragic consequences, but setting a drinking water standard that's fully protective of public health can stem the threat going forward."
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http://www.ecowatch.com/lead-mercury-arsenic-autism-kennedy-2181997944.html
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http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/06/congress-voted-update-toxic-substances-control-act
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3 Toxins Found in the Cord Blood of Every One of the 10 Newborns TestedNational media outlets, public health officials and Congress have all focused recently on lead contamination in drinking water. The tainted water in Flint, Michigan, Newark, New Jersey and many other communities around the country poses a serious, potentially lifelong public health threat to millions.
Most of us encounter chemicals that can cause brain damage, cancer and other serious health problems in a place critical to human development—the mother’s womb. Most of us encounter chemicals that can cause brain damage, cancer and other serious health problems in a place critical to human development—the mother’s womb. But industrial pollution in people happens long before they take their first sip of water. Most of us encounter chemicals that can cause brain damage, cancer and other serious health problems in a place critical to human development—the mother’s womb.
In 2009, Environmental Working Group (EWG) conducted a pioneering study testing the umbilical cord blood of 10 babies for toxic chemicals. In all, the tests found more than 230 industrial pollutants across the 10 samples. Among those that were in the cord blood of every one of the 10 newborns were lead, mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). 4/16
http://www.alternet.org/books/heres-how-chemical-companies-decide-whats-toxic-not-epa-or-fda
an excerpt from the new book Nation on the Take by Wendell Potter& Nick Penniman (Bloomsbury Press, 2016):
Arsenic, like formaldehyde, can cause health and developmental problems and at high levels is linked to certain cancers. Columbia University professor Joseph Graziano jokes, darkly, that arsenic makes lead look like a vitamin. That’s because, as he told the Center for Public Integrity’s David Heath, it “sweeps across the body and impact[s] everything that’s going on, every organ system.” It’s in weed killers marketed to fight your lawn’s crabgrass, and, in many places, it’s in the water we drink.
A 2008 draft assessment by the EPA estimated that arsenic was seventeen times more potent than previously thought. In assessing the impact of arsenic on women in particular, the agency estimated that if a hundred thousand women were to consume the legal limit of arsenic currently permitted, 730 would get bladder or lung cancer.
After seeing the draft assessment, the producers of arsenic-based pesticides that hired Charlie Grizzle to lobby for them, Drexel Chemical Co. and Luxembourg-Pamol, began to take action, as did mining companies like Rio Tinto, which also would have been affected by the regulation. As the Center for Public Integrity’s David Heath reported, a group of lobbyists, including Grizzle, set up a meeting with Representative Mike Simpson, the Republican from Idaho, who by 2015 had received a total of $8,000 in campaign donations from Grizzle, according to data compiled and analyzed by the Sunlight Foundation and the Center for Responsive Politics.
All it took to send the EPA’s draft assessment to the National Academy of Sciences for a review was for a congressman to slip one paragraph into in a 221-page spending bill. When Heath asked Simpson about the paragraph, he said he worried about small communities not being able to meet drinking water standards.
Such stealth maneuvers are not uncommon in Congress. A senator, for example, cananonymously put a hold on legislation, completely blocking it. Committee members can insert language written by lobbyists directly into a large spending bill before anyone has adequate time to review it. As Chellie Pingree, a Democrat from Maine, bemoaned to Center for Public Integrity reporter David Heath in June 2014: “It’s happening more and more in this Congress that we see less and less of what goes on behind the scenes, that members aren’t informed until the last minute. So things like this, major policy changes like this, can happen somewhat in the dark of the night with very little information to the public.”
When confronted by a reporter, Simpson said he didn’t know that the paragraph inserted into the spending bill kept a weed killer containing arsenic on the market, and he said he had “no idea” that Grizzle had donated to his campaigns.
Delays continued in subsequent years as industry-funded scientists presented their views to the Academy, sometimes without disclosing their financial ties. (The Center for Public Integrity reported that one such scientist suggested that an arsenic dose even higher than the current drinking water standard doesn’t cause cancer.) The result: in 2015, seven years after the EPA’s draft assessment that arsenic is considerably more dangerous than previously thought, many public health experts said the federal government was continuing to allow too much arsenic in our water and in products like weed killers.
“Nobody’s Looking Out for Our Welfare”
“We have a broken Toxic Substance Control Act,” says Tom Neltner. That’s the big problem that “federal health officials, prominent academics and even many leaders of the chemical industry” agree on, the Atlantic’s senior health care editor, Dr. James Hamblin, wrote in 2014.
The obstacles for public health are (1) the vast majority of the eighty thousand industrial chemicals available for use are not regulated or even tested by the government, and (2) companies are not even required to submit most of them for testing.
“What most Americans don’t realize is nobody’s looking out for their welfare,” Mount Sinai’s Philip Landrigan told us. “The great fear is always that there might be other chemicals out there that have never been tested but to which children are exposed.”
In addition, the EPA (like the FDA) has to meet a very high standard before it can ban a toxin. The EPA has banned or limited only five. Weak laws even made it difficult to ban asbestos.
There were signs in 2015 that the chemical safety laws might be strengthened when legislation to update the laws for the first time in thirty-nine years received bipartisan support in the Senate. It would, among other things, require more frequent testing at the federal level and make it easier for the government to pull products off the shelves.
Sponsored by industry favorite David Vitter and New Mexico Democrat Tom Udall, who in the past has supported increased environmental protection, the bill even received kudos of sorts from some environmental advocacy groups, including the Environmental Defense Fund, which view the legislation as an improvement over the broken status quo. Other green groups maintained it was much too weak. Senator Barbara Boxerwas pushing a separate, more stringent bill that allowed for testing of more chemicals each year.
Vitter’s spokesman wrote that the “legislation provides common-sense reforms that are necessary to update the United States’ forty year old chemical regulatory program. Senator Vitter has worked with colleagues across this aisle, stakeholders from all sectors, and the EPA to draft this legislation that will drastically increase EPA’s ability to ensure the safety of chemicals being used in the United States.” It soon became apparent, however, that the bill was being vetted—and possibly even written, at least in part—by industry lobbyists. Using metadata on a Microsoft Word document circulated by Udall, a reporter for Hearst Newspapers found that the document originated at the American Chemistry Council. Senator Boxer said she felt certain the industry wrote it, citing a Senate information technology staffer who investigated the issue.
Udall, who the New York Times suggested had formed an “unlikely alliance” with the chemical industry, maintained that the document originated in his office. One of his aides told Hearst that “it was shared with a number of stakeholders including at least one other senator’s office.One of those stakeholders was the ACC.” But the council did not deny authoring that draft of the bill. “There’s no way for anyone to tell,” a council spokesperson said. Others, including Udall’s office, said anyone could change some metadata. A spokesperson for Udall said the senator has been engaged with all groups on all sides of the issue.
Regardless of who wrote the bill’s language, the end product was more than palatable to the chemical industry. The American Chemistry Council called the bill the “culmination of a multi-year effort” to secure “compromise, common-sense” legislation that it characterized as “a balanced, science-driven solution that reassured the public that our products are safe and that keeps our economy growing.”
The ten biggest chemical companies spent $154 million lobbying on the bill over 2013 and 2014, the watchdog group MapLight found. In contrast, public interest, environmental, and medical groups together spent less than $18 million. The environmental groups spent $6.6 million.
Those chemical companies also contributed almost more than $4 million in campaign contributions to several candidates’ campaigns in the 2014 election as the sponsors were shepherding the bill through Congress, MapLight found. TheACC also donated $150,000 to a super PAC supporting Vitter’s gubernatorial bid in Louisiana.
The ACC also spent $4 million plus on TV and radio advertising in support of the reelection of Udall and the industry’s other allies in Congress, the Timesreported. The ads portrayed Udall as a man who brings “both sides together to get results.” According to the Times, Udall “emphatically rejects” that he was doing the industry’s bidding: “We can’t do something that is pie in the sky; we have to deal with reality,” he said.
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http://ecowatch.com/2016/03/15/robert-kennedy-jr-monsanto-rider/
The New York Times reported last month that Congressional Republicans have clandestinely inserted a provision into the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) reauthorization bill that will give Monsanto permanent immunity from liability for injuries caused by its toxic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).The long awaited and grievously needed bill is now in the Conference Committee for reconciliation with a companion Senate bill. The so-called “Monsanto Rider” would shield the chemical colossus from thousands of lawsuits by cities, towns, school districts and individuals, who have been injured by exposure to PCBs.
PCBs are known human carcinogens and potent endocrine disruptors, which can interfere with physical, intellectual and sexual development in children. PCBs persist in the environment and bio accumulate in animals and humans. According to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), children exposed to PCBs can suffer damage to their immune, reproductive, nervous and endocrine systems. Two recent publications from U.S. EPA and the National Institute Environmental Health Science Children’s Center at UC Davis report that PCBs can disrupt early brain development, by hijacking the signals that promote normal neuron branching which increase the risk of brain damage, including autism. Between 1935 and 1977, Monsanto was the exclusive manufacturer of PCBs in the U.S. Congress banned the manufacturing of PCBs in 1979 over concerns about its potential to cause severe health and environmental injury.
I’ve been sparring over PCBs since the start of my 32-year career as an environmental lawyer. For more than three decades I have been litigating and campaigning against General Electric (GE) to force the clean-up of the Hudson River. PCBs manufactured by Monsanto and dumped by GE have contaminated 200 miles of the Hudson, which is the country’s largest superfund site. GE’s long awaited Hudson River clean-up is now ongoing, but the Hudson is not America’s only PCB contaminated waterway.
Monsanto’s PCBs have poisoned 80,000 river miles elsewhere in our nation from Washington state’s Duwamish River to Connecticut’s Housatonic. Seattle and six other cities are currently in litigation with Monsanto to force the company to clean up local rivers and bays. The GOP’s TSCA’s shield provision would dismiss all those lawsuits. Congress would have the public, not the polluters pay to clean up Monsanto’s monumental mess.
Of even greater concern is the burgeoning issue of PCBs in our public schools.
Monsanto marketed PCB-based caulking to schools and other municipal buildings throughout the U.S beginning in 1950, touting the chemical’s ability to contract and expand with changing temperatures. Studies suggest that any school built or renovated between 1950 and 1977 may contain PCBs. As the scientific evidence about PCB hazards to human health accumulated in the early 1970’s, and regulatory agencies and Congress began moving toward a ban, Monsanto amplified its aggressive marketing of plasticizer PCBs for use in caulk that was applied throughout America’s public schools. Despite Monsanto’s own internal conclusion in 1969 that PCBs were becoming “global environmental contaminants,” Monsanto increased its production of PCBs which peaked in 1970 at 85 million pounds.
The National Center for Education Statistics estimates that 45 percent of all schools in the U.S. (approximately 45,000) were built during this era. About 27 to 54 percent of all these schools—12,000 to 25,000 nationwide—may contain PCBs with little variation among U.S. regions. The costs of mitigation and remediation ranges from $750,000 to $3.1 million per building. The total costs to school districts across the nation could be upwards of $80 billion. As the exclusive manufacturer of PCBs in the U.S., Monsanto is responsible for these damages. I am representing school districts across the country who are suing Monsanto to pay the costs of removing contaminated caulking and PCB laden light bulb ballasts.
TSCA section 15 U.S.C. 2605(e), which was enacted in 1977, requires that every school district with PCBs in caulking and lighting ballasts greater than 50 parts per million, immediately remove these contaminants to safeguard school children’s health. However, in 2009, the EPA implemented an informal policy allowing school districts to delay remediation until such time as there were major renovations or demolition of the contaminated structure. The EPA told the school districts that it would not enforce that law if the school district chose to wait.
While this unpromulgated and illegal EPA policy seemed like a concession to financially pressed school districts, it was actually a monumental gift to Monsanto. Most schools, low on cash flow, chose to delay the expensive and logistically challenging remediation projects indefinitely, despite the danger to children. When delays stretch past the five year statute of limitations (which begins running when the school district becomes aware—or should have been aware—of the contamination), Monsanto is off the hook. Those $80 billion in Monsanto’s costs are then transferred to local school districts. As predicted, school districts given the option to delay, mostly did just that despite the awful consequences to future taxpayers.
It’s important to understand that if a single school district in a state files a class action lawsuit against Monsanto to recover remediation costs, the statute of limitations is tolled for every district in that state. In most states, no district has filed a class action lawsuit. However, one courageous, pioneering district in Massachusetts chose to file, and that suit had the effect of tolling the statute for every school in that state—creating a deep pool of potential liability for Monsanto. GOP’s new shield provision is designed to abolish Monsanto’s liability as a favor to the company, which has donated $39 million to politicians over 30 years.
Documents uncovered during our litigation have confirmed Monsanto’s sickeningly corrupt corporate culture. Instead of being a good corporate citizen, Monsanto’s decision making matrix puts greed before public health and welfare.
As early as the 1930’s and 1940’s, Monsanto was aware that prolonged occupational exposure to PCBs might cause liver damage in humans. A Monsanto memorandum dated Sept. 20, 1955, stated:
“We know Aroclors [PCBs] are toxic but the actual limit has not been precisely defined.”
In late 1968, Monsanto learned that Japanese citizens were becoming ill from eating rice oil contaminated with Japanese manufactured PCBs. The company responded with a draft Oct. 2, 1969 directive stressing a preeminent focus on its bottom line:
“The objective of the [PCB] committee was to recommend action that will: 1. Protect continued sales and profits of Aroclors; 2. Permit continued development of new uses and sales, and; 3. Protect the image of the Organic Division and the Corporation as members of the business community …”
An internal draft document dated Oct. 2, 1969, illustrates the moral bankruptcy of the company:
“The committee believes there is little probability that any action that can be taken [that] will prevent the growing incrimination of specific [PCBs] (the higher chlorinated—e.g. Aroclors 1254 and 1260) as nearly global environmental contaminants leading to contamination of human food (particularly fish), the killing of some marine species (shrimp), and the possible extinction of several species of fish-eating birds. There are, however, a number of actions which must be undertaken in order to prolong the manufacture, sale and use of these particular Aroclors as well as to protect the continued use of other members of the Aroclor series.”
A document dated Jan. 26, 1970, The PCB-Pollution Problem, describes a Jan. 21 and 22, 1970 meeting between representatives of GE and Monsanto.This document appears to make a commitment by Monsanto science and safety division to fraudulently massage scientific data to make their dangerous product appear safe. The document states (emphasis added):
“In essence, results reported by Mr. Wheeler on chronic animal toxicity tests and animal reproducibility studies underway are not as favorable as we had hoped or anticipated. Particularly alarming is evidence of effect on hatchability and production of thin egg shells regards white leghorn chickens. The studies involved Aroclor 1242, 1254 and 1260. Some of the studies will be repeated to arrive at better conclusions.”
The GOP is currently working to rewrite TSCA to assure that no jury will ever see these or the many other damning documents in our possession.
If Monsanto gets its way, the American people will pay a high price for corporate greed and political corruption.
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http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20141219/one-stop-science-shop-has-become-favorite-industry%E2%80%94and-texas
http://www.ic.ucsc.edu/college8core/c8wiki/index.php/Chemicals
http://ecowatch.com/2016/02/19/congress-reforms-tsca/
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Adding to the concern is the fact that the law hasn’t been significantly updated since it was enacted, during which time some 22,000 new chemicals have entered American commerce, with around 700 new ones rolled out each year. Many of these chemicals—most of which did not previously exist in nature—have been widely dispersed throughout the environment, into the air, soil and water where some will persist for decades or even centuries.
The figures are staggering. Every year, around 4 billion pounds of toxic chemicals are released by American industries. In 2011 alone, 16 new chemicals accounted for nearly 1 million pounds. There is far too little testing of these substances: Only a fraction of the nearly 3,000 high-production-volume (HPV) chemicals—chemicals that have an annual production run of at least one million pounds—have been studied for their potential toxicity. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the agency has “only been able to require testing on a little more than 200 existing chemicals” out of the 62,000 that have been introduced since the TSCA’s enactment. The EPA has banned just five.
It has been a long time in coming, but after several years of negotiations, two bills seeking to overhaul the TSCA have finally been passed in both houses of Congress. And while one might assume a federal effort to improve the TSCA would receive widespread popular support (a nationwide poll conducted in 2012 found that nearly 74 percent of Americans believe the threat of chemical exposure to people’s health is serious), the legislation has been met with fierce opposition—and not from the chemical industry.
State authorities weigh in on #TSCA reform legislation moving through U.S. Congress https://t.co/MpW3VYLtJW pic.twitter.com/EEG8kHCPdP
— EDF Health (@EDFHealth) February 9, 2016
For decades, regulating chemicals in the U.S. has been a “too little, too late” exercise in futility. Now that Washington is on the verge of a major overhaul, chemical policy reform has become a pitched battleground. Several stakeholders have been vying for leverage, from federal lawmakers and state attorneys general, to chemical industry lobbyists and community activists, to public and environmental health activists. How did something so basic as keeping people and animals safe from dangerous substances become such a highly politicized arena?
One Word: Plastics
Since World War II, some 80,000 new chemicals have been invented. But it wasn’t until the early 1970s when the President’s Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), formed in 1969 under the Nixon administration, proposed federal legislation to regulate American commerce in chemical substances.So why did it take so long for the government to address the potential health and environmental effects of chemicals? It’s a familiar and tragic narrative: Public health regularly takes a back seat to corporate interests. Time and time again, major toxic disasters occur, reminding us just how susceptible humans, animals and the environment are to toxins produced by industrial activity. Look at Love Canal in Niagara Falls in the 1950s, Times Beach, Missouri in the 1970s or the Summitville mine in Colorado in the 1980s. More recently, there was the Exide lead contamination in Los Angeles. Today, the Flint water crisis unfolds in Michigan.
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Two years after Train’s announcement—and after significant negotiation between the government and industry—the TSCA was finally signed into law by President Ford on Oct. 11, 1976, authorizing the EPA to test and regulate new and existing chemicals. In a statement accompanying the signing of the bill, Ford said, “I believe this legislation may be one of the most important pieces of environmental legislation that has been enacted by the Congress.” He may have been right, but important does not equal effective.
Fixing “Fundamental Weaknesses”
A large part of the problem with the TSCA is its fundamentally Sisyphean nature. In 1994, former EPA Assistant Administrator Lynn Goldman testified to Congress, saying, “Our available tools for gathering testing data about these chemicals are cumbersome.” Later, she explained that under the provisions of the TSCA, “It’s almost as if … we have to, first, prove that chemicals are risky before we can have the testing done to show whether or not the chemicals are risky.” Since the TSCA was enacted, some 62,000 chemicals have never been tested by the EPA because they were grandfathered in and remain on the market.
In 2009, Michael Wilson and Megan Schwarzman, environmental health scientists at UC Berkeley, published a damning analysis of U.S. chemical policy, identifying “fundamental weaknesses” in the way the government protects Americans from toxic substances—weaknesses that not only leave the public unprotected, but hamstring the development of a chemical marketplace that is less toxic and more sustainable. “These policies have largely failed to adequately protect public health or the environment or motivate investment in or scientific exploration of cleaner chemical technologies,” they wrote in the paper, which was published in Environmental Health Perspectives, a peer-reviewed journal. “On this trajectory,” they warned, “the United States will face growing health, environmental and economic problems related to chemical exposures and pollution.”
Two bills, a House and Senate bill, which passed their respective chambers last year, represent Congress’ first serious attempt to “reauthorize and modernize” the TSCA. The Senate bill, S. 697 (the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act), has been hailed as the result of bipartisan compromise on Capitol Hill led by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), who co-sponsored a bill in May 2013. A month later, Lautenberg died. Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) picked up the reins and worked with Vitter—an ally of the chemical companies—to improve the bill, which eventually secured enough support in the Senate to be filibuster-proof. Now dubbed the “Udall-Vitter chemical safety bill,” it passed on Dec. 17 by unanimous consent.
New York Times columnist Joe Nocera sees a rare quality in the Udall-Vitter bill: “In this era of polarized politics,” he writes, “it is something of a miracle.” He said Udall told him that the bill stood as “an example of good, old-fashioned legislating.” Nocera also relayed the opinion of Dominique Browning, a co-founder of the grassroots green group known as Moms Clean Air Force:
“Browning, an old friend of mine, describes herself as an environmental pragmatist. She concluded that whatever the flaws in the bill, it was a vast improvement over the status quo—a status quo in which the Environmental Protection Agency can’t even regulate formaldehyde. She and her brain trust decided that their 570,000-member group would work to improve the bill instead of oppose it. This is also the position taken by the ever-pragmatic Fred Krupp of the Environmental Defense Fund, with which Moms Clean Air Force is affiliated.”
The House bill, H.R. 2576 (TSCA Modernization Act), was introduced inMay 2015 by Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL-15)and passed in June. The next step is for the bills to be assessed in a conference committee to reconcile the two versions. (Richard Denison, lead senior scientist at the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund has published an excellent side-by-side comparison of how the two bills address 12 of TSCA’s key limitations).
As the first major overhaul of the 40-year-old TSCA, the bills have several laudable goals and fix glaring omissions in the old law. For example, the TSCA gives no special consideration to segments of the population that may be more susceptible to toxins, such as infants, children, pregnant women, workers and the elderly. This is a striking oversight. Less than 20 percent of HPV chemicals have been studied for their ability to impact child development. The Senate bill addresses this omission, expressly requiring protections for these vulnerable groups. Furthermore, the TSCA gives the EPA the authority, but regrettably no mandate, to restrict chemicals deemed to present an “unreasonable risk.” The new legislation closes this breach by requiring restrictions on such substances.
Another target of reform is the “safety standard.” Under the TSCA, a substance of unreasonable risk requires the EPA to conduct a cost-benefit analysis, an unwieldy requirement that is ultimately not necessary—if the bottom line is protecting public health. Both bills address this by prohibiting the EPA from considering costs and other non-risk factors in making safety determinations, eliminating an onerous requirement of the TSCA that Denison characterized as a “paralyzing regulatory hurdle.”
The final bill will likely meet one of the threshold principles for the Obama administration: that the safety standard is a “health only” standard and not a “cost-benefit” standard. In their analysis, Wilson and Schwarzman note three key “gaps” caused by the weaknesses in the TSCA:
- Data gap: “Producers are not required to investigate and disclose sufficient information on chemicals’ hazard traits to government, businesses that use chemicals or the public.”
- Safety gap: “Government lacks the legal tools it needs to efficiently identify, prioritize and take action to mitigate the potential health and environmental effects of hazardous chemicals.”
- Technology gap: “Industry and government have invested only marginally in green chemistry research, development and education.”
The bills address these gaps to varying degrees. Regarding the data gap, the new legislation mandates a greater level of transparency, requiring an upfront justification from companies for all or most new claims. Regarding the safety gap, the bills, as stated earlier, prohibit the EPA from considering costs in risk evaluations. Regarding the technology gap, the Senate bill mandates that, no later than two years after the bill’s enactment, an Interagency Working Group—comprised of representative from several agencies, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture, EPA, National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation—must submit “a summary of federally funded sustainable chemistry research, development, demonstration, technology transfer, commercialization, education and training activities.”
Whether or not these changes survive the final combined version of the bill remains to be seen.