TCE/ perchloride

an 12 24

the Biden administration's Environmental Protection Agency on Monday announced a permanent ban on a pair of carcinogenic chemicals widely used in U.S. industries, including dry cleaning services and automative work.

According to the Washington Post:

The announcement includes the complete ban of trichloroethylene—also known as TCE—a substance found in common consumer and manufacturing products including degreasing agents, furniture care and auto repair products. In addition, the agency banned all consumer uses and many commercial uses of Perc—also known as tetrachloroethylene and PCE — an industrial solvent long used in applications such as dry cleaning and auto repair.

Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, a senior attorney at Earthjustice, applauded the move but suggested to the Post that it should have come sooner.

"Both of these chemicals have caused too much harm for too long, despite the existence of safer alternatives," Kalmuss-Katz.

The EPA's decision, reports the New York Times, was "long sought by environmental and health advocates, even as they braced for what could be a wave of deregulation by the incoming Trump administration."

The Timesreports:

TCE is known to cause liver cancer, kidney cancer and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and to damage the nervous and immune systems. It has been found in drinking water nationwide and was the subject of a 1995 book that became a movie, “A Civil Action,” starring John Travolta. The E.P.A. is banning all uses of the chemical under the Toxic Substances Control Act, which was overhauled in 2016 to give the agency greater authority to regulate harmful chemicals.

Though deemed "less harmful" than TCE, the Times notes how Perc has been shown to "cause liver, kidney, brain and testicular cancer," and can also damage the functioning of kidneys, the liver, and people's immune systems.

Environmentalists celebrated last year when Biden's EPA proposed the ban on TCE, as Common Dreamsreported.

Responding to the news at the time, Scott Faber, senior vice president for government affairs at the Environmental Working Group (EWG), said the EPA, by putting the ban on the table, was "once again putting the health of workers and consumers first."

While President-elect Donald Trump ran on a having an environmental agenda that would foster the "cleanest air" and the "cleanest water," the late approval of EPA's ban on TCE and Perc in Biden's term means the rule will be subject to the Congressional Review Act (CRA), meaning the Republican-control Senate could reverse the measure.

In his remarks to the Times, Kalmuss-Katz of Earthjustice said that if Trump and Senate Republicans try to roll back the ban, they will be certain to "encounter serious opposition from communities across the country that have been devastated by TCE, in both blue and red states."

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https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-epa-2647067465.html

toxic 10 epa rollbacks ewg

From the beginning, the Trump administration has aggressively slashed environmental regulations. A New York Times analysis identified 100 environmental protections that have been reversed or are in the process of getting rolled back. The administration's record on chemical safety has been especially hazardous for the health of Americans, especially children.

One year into President Trump's term, EWG detailed how the Trump administration has stacked the Environmental Protection Agency with industry lawyers and lobbyists, undermined worker safety and cooked the books on chemical safety assessments. Midway through his second year, we reported how the EPA reversed a ban on a brain-damaging pesticide, delayed chemical bans and killed a rule to protect kids from toxic PCBs in schools. Last year, we reported that the EPA had rescinded safety rules at chemical plants, rubber-stamped untested new chemicals and silenced researchers.

As Trump's first term nears its end, things are even worse. Here are 10 more ways the Trump administration has continued to make life more toxic for Americans.

1. Failed to Aggressively Regulate Toxic ‘Forever Chemicals’

The toxic fluorinated chemicals known as PFAS contaminate more than 2,200 sites across the nation. Because they never break down in the environment, PFAS are often called "forever chemicals." They build up in our bodies and are linked to cancer, reproductive and developmental harms and reduced effectiveness of vaccines. Even though the EPA has known about the risks from PFAS chemicals since at least 1998, they remain virtually unregulated.

In February 2019, the EPA released a toothless PFAS "action plan" that lacked deadlines for action and failed to address the use of PFAS in everyday products, contamination from PFAS air emissions or disposal of PFAS waste, among other concerns. A year and a half later, key goals from the plan, including regulating PFAS under the Superfund law and setting drinking water standards, remain unfulfilled.

When Congress stepped in and sought to designate PFOA and PFOS – the two most notorious and well-studied PFAS – as "hazardous substances" and to set deadlines for agency action, Trump threatened a veto. Trump's EPA also weakened a rule designed to regulate PFAS in consumer products.

2. Allowed a Rocket Fuel Chemical to Stay in Drinking Water

Perchlorate is a component of rocket fuel that also frequently contaminates drinking water sources. Perchlorate can interfere with thyroid function, which can also harm childhood brain development.

Almost a decade ago, the EPA determined that these harms warranted regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The agency then dragged its feet for years. In 2016, the Natural Resources Defense Council sued to force the EPA to finally set a legal limit for perchlorate in drinking water. In a court-approved consent decree, the EPA agreed to propose a standard by October 2018 and finalize it by 2019. However, the EPA sought extensions and failed to meet these deadlines.

The EPA finally proposed a drinking water standard in June 2019 but also suggested that it might not regulate perchlorate after all. A year later,the EPA withdrew its decision to regulate perchlorate in drinking water.

3. Allowed Scores of New Chemicals, Including New Toxic PFAS, Onto the Market Without Adequate Oversight

In 2016, Congress substantially changed the way new chemicals are approved under the Toxic Substances Control Act, or TSCA.

Under the old law, chemicals were frequently approved by default, often without any health and safety information. As a result, unsafe chemicals were allowed to be used for years or decades before the health and environmental hazards came to light. Inadequate oversight of new chemicals can also lead to regrettable substitution – when chemicals are finally found to be unsafe, they are often replaced by unstudied chemicals that may be just as or even more toxic.

The 2016 update was supposed to fix the new chemicals program by requiring the EPA to make an affirmative safety finding on new chemicals and restrict use if industry failed to provide sufficient safety data. Nonetheless, the Trump EPA has approved scores of new chemicals in a process that lacks transparency and contravenes the 2016 law.The EPA has also ignored known health concerns, limited its consideration of worker risks and denied requests for public files in the new chemicals program.

The EPA has also exploited loopholes in the new law to quickly approve new chemicals, including toxic PFAS. A recent investigation found that the EPA has been quietly approving new PFAS chemicals, through a provision known as the low volume exemption in the new chemicals program. As a result, the EPA is greenlighting new PFAS chemicals on an expedited basis, without public scrutiny. One PFAS, used in ski wax, was approved despite a finding that the chemical could "waterproof the lungs," resulting in severe health impacts.

Since the law was updated in 2016, the EPA has reviewed more than 3,000 new chemicals submissions. More than 1,000 of these chemicals have been approved through the low volume exemption, and since 2016, manufacturers have begun producing at least 900 new chemicals, many without adequate safety data. Environmental groups have sued the EPA over its failures to protect the public and the environment from risks from new chemicals.

4. Failed to Protect Workers From a Deadly Paint-Stripping Chemical

Methylene chloride is a highly toxic chemical used in paint strippers that is responsible for more than 60 deaths since 1980. In the final days of the Obama administration, the EPA proposed a ban on "methylene chloride for consumer and most types of commercial paint and coating removal."

After significant pressure from families who lost loved ones due to methylene chloride exposure, the Trump EPA eventually issued a final rule in 2019. However, the EPA narrowed the rule so that it would apply only to consumeruses of methylene chloride, not commercial uses. That means workers are not protected, even though a Center for Public Integrity investigation found that most deaths from methylene chloride take place at work.

A separate EPA evaluation of methylene chloride found that manufacturing, disposal and several other uses of methylene chloride pose no "unreasonable risk." Environmental groups have filed lawsuits challenging the rule and the recent evaluation.

5. Cooked the Books on the “Civil Action” Chemical

Trichloroethylene is a chemical solvent made infamous by the book and movie ." The EPA considers it to be a known carcinogen, and it is one of the primary contaminants that sickened scores of veterans who served at Camp Lejeune, in North Carolina.

As with methylene chloride, in the final days of the Obama administration, the EPA proposed banning three uses of TCE: spot cleaning, aerosol degreasing and vapor degreasing. In December 2017, the Trump EPA shelved these proposed bans, claiming that it would study those uses in a separate ongoing risk evaluation of TCE.

However, the EPA dramatically rewrote the accepted science on TCE in the draft risk evaluation released in February. As EWG warned in 2018, the solvents industry aggressively lobbied the EPA to ignore a key 2003 study finding that TCE causes heart deformities in developing fetuses. TCE's connection with fetal heart defects was an important basis for the Obama EPA's decision to ban three uses of TCE. An independent review of the EPA's science found that "prenatal exposure to TCE can cause human cardiac defects" and that the study "remains a valid choice" for assessing risk.

The lobbyists succeeded. The EPA's draft risk evaluation questioned the study's design and minimized its significance. An investigation by Reveal News compared the draft risk evaluation with a leaked earlier draft. It found that the earlier draft had relied extensively on the 2003 study and used it as a benchmark for the risk calculations. Reveal also reported that then-EPA chemicals safety chief Nancy Beck – "the scariest Trump appointee you've never heard of" – ordered that the risk evaluation be rewritten to downplay the risks of TCE. With the EPA giving significantly less weight to risks from fetal heart deformities, it's unlikely the agency will finalize the proposed bans.

6. Pressured EPA Scientists to Drop Evaluations of Toxic Chemicals – Including Formaldehyde

The Trump EPA is undermining the work of independent scientists within the Integrated Risk Information System program, known as IRIS. The program's work is supposed to be impartial and non-political. Its scientific assessments are intended to support the work of other EPA program offices and regional offices. IRIS is a frequent target of chemical industry attacks because its independent safety assessments often don't align with industry objectives.

In 2018, the Trump EPA tried to defund the IRIS program. EPA leadership also pressured IRIS to drop critical health assessments. In March 2019, a Government Accountability Office report disclosed that EPA leadership directed agency offices to limit the number of chemicals they wanted IRIS to review, and cut in half the number of IRIS's ongoing or upcoming assessments.

One of the halted assessments was IRIS's decades-long review of formaldehyde, a widely used chemical and known human carcinogen. This is surprising because former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt indicated to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in January 2018 that the report was complete and ready for release. However, answering questions for the record following a 2019 Senate hearing, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said formaldehyde was "not a top priority."

Instead of releasing the IRIS study on formaldehyde to the public, the EPA has instead decided that the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention – under the leadership of Nancy Beck – should conduct its own assessment of formaldehyde. As with TCE, this action will give the agency an opportunity to distort the science and minimize risks. Because these reviews take years, it will also significantly delay any EPA regulatory action on formaldehyde.

7. Rolled Back Clean Water Protections

Industrial chemical pollutants are often discharged into drinking water supplies. But the Trump administration has made it a priority to roll back theClean Water Rule, which more clearly defined which kinds of bodies of water are subject to the Clean Water Act. EWG's analysis found that the Clean Water Rule, if implemented as proposed by the Obama administration, would have protected drinking water sources for more than 117 million Americans.

The EPA's own science advisors have opposed the rollback of the Clean Water Rule, but the Trump administration repealed it in 2019, proposed its own rule in January and finalized it in April. The new rule covers far fewer bodies of water and would leave 234,000 miles of small streams unprotected. EWG estimates that at least 72 million Americans draw at least half their drinking water from small streams.

Because of the repeal, those bodies of water will no longer be subject to pollution limits. Protection for small and seasonal streams and wetlands is important because they often flow into larger bodies of water, including sources of drinking water. Polluted drinking water sources strain municipal water utilities tasked with filtering out contaminants regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act, and risk exposing the public to more contaminants that aren't regulated under the act.

8. Cooked the Books on Asbestos

Asbestos is a highly toxic, naturally occurring chemical linked to a particularly deadly form of cancer called mesothelioma.An estimated 40,000 Americans die every year from asbestos-related diseases. Although the toxicity of asbestos is well understood, the EPA has never actually banned most uses. The EPA attempted a ban in 1989, but most of the rule was overturned by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1991.

After Congress reformed TSCA in 2016, the EPA announced that asbestos would be one of the first 10 chemicals reviewed under the new law. Many hoped that this time, the EPA would finally ban asbestos.

Instead, when the EPA released its draft risk evaluation in May, it found that several uses of asbestos, including import of asbestos and asbestos-containing products and distribution of asbestos-containing products, did not pose an unreasonable risk. The EPA made its risk determinations by ignoring exposure from "legacy" uses of asbestos, such as old insulation and building tiles. Although in November the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the EPA to fix this error, it has yet to do so.

Instead of banning asbestos, in April 2019 the EPA published a rule requiring notice and approval before manufacturers could resume using it in some applications the agency considered abandoned. However, leaked documents show that more than a dozen EPA staffers urged an outright ban on asbestos instead.

9. Proposed a Loophole for Toxic Air Pollution

In July 2019, the Trump EPA proposed to reverse a longstanding policy requiring large power plants, refineries and other industrial polluters to always meet certain strict controls, even after reducing emissions. The new rule creates a loophole in the Clean Air Act regulations that would allow large industrial facilities to reclassify themselves, from "major sources" of air pollution to "area sources."

That change would allow them to opt out of strict pollution control standards, called "maximum achievable control technology," and substantially increase their emissions of dangerous air pollutants. EPA's own data shows that more than 3,900 large facilities that emit pollutants like mercury and :{benzene:(style="background-color:#ffcc66;"):}: could take advantage of this loophole. The Environmental Defense Fund estimates the loophole could increase toxic air emissions by as much as 480 percent, or almost 50 million pounds per year.

This rollback is especially alarming in the midst of the global coronavirus pandemic. Studies have found that people who live in areas with high levels of air pollution are at greater risk for severe cases of COVID-19.

10. Continuing Its Quest to Censor Science

In 2018, the EPA proposed a disastrous rule significantly limiting the kinds of science the agency can rely on to justify environmental regulations. The rule would have prohibited the agency from using studies that don't make their underlying data publicly available or whose results can't be replicated. That change would prevent the EPA from including in its future risk assessments most human health studies, because personal medical data must remain confidential. The rule would undermine studies that are foundational to clean air regulations.

The proposal sparked enormous opposition from scientists, academics and environmental health advocates. More than 600,000 public comments were submitted to the agency, the vast majority in opposition. In September 2019, the EPA dropped the proposal from its regulatory agenda.

But the Trump EPA is at it again. In March, the agency issued a supplemental proposal that is actually worse than the original proposal. The 2018 proposal applied to all "dose response" studies, but the new proposal applies to all studies. The new proposal also applies retroactively, which means the EPA could use it to gut existing regulations.

As these actions – and dozens of others – show, the Trump EPA has aggressively worked to erode and eliminate vital environmental and public health protections. The public needs an EPA that will prioritize people and planet over polluters and profit.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trumps-epa-moves-jettison-any-regulation-of-a-chemical-linked-to-child-brain-damage-report/

no lnx

trump’s EPA moves jettison any regulation of a chemical linked to child brain damage: report

[ June 3, 2019: Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler speaks at the National Press Club.

Written by Julia Conley / Common Dreams May 15, 2020

Environmental campaigners vowed to fight President Donald Trump’s EPA Thursday after the agency said it would propose that the rocket-fuel chemical perchlorate does not need to be regulated, despite its links to cognitive damage in fetal and child development.

According to the New York Times, the EPA plans to tell the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that it is “not in the public interest” to regulate the chemical at all, a year after the agency recommended the allowable amount in drinking water be limited to 56 parts per billion (ppb).

The 2019 proposal was already 10 to 50 times higher than what water safety experts recommend, the Times reported.

The new recommendation defies a court order, the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) said, which was issued in 2018 after the group sued over the Obama administration’s inaction on regulating perchlorate.

“EPA’s cynical decision to defy a court order and the law, and to ignore the science that, as the American Academy of Pediatrics has said, dictates a strong perchlorate standard to protect vulnerable kids, is a deeply disturbing violation of the agency’s mission,” Erik Olson of the NRDC told The Hill.

“We will fight this,” the organization added on Twitter.

NRDC ????

@NRDC

BREAKING: @EPAAWheeler & Trump’s @EPA are choosing NOT to regulate #perchlorate, a dangerous chemical linked to fetal & infant brain damage and found in the tap water of millions of Americans. This decision ignores science and the law. We will fight this. https://on.nrdc.org/2WyYvgV

Andrew Wheeler, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, on Capitol Hill in March.

E.P.A. Opts Against Limits on Water Contaminant Tied to Fetal Damage

A new E.P.A. policy on perchlorate, which is used in rocket fuel, would revoke a 2011 finding that the chemical should be regulated.

nytimes.com

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9:56 AM - May 14, 2020

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The Obama administration proposed limiting perchlorate, which can interfere with the thyroid gland and hormone production necessary for development, to 15 ppb in 2011. The EPA revealed that same year that between five million and 16 million people in at least 26 states were exposed to toxic levels of perchlorate. People who live near military facilities where the chemical is used in rocket fuel are especially at risk.

The Department of Defense and military contractors including Northrup Grumman and Lockheed Martin, which have worked closely with the Trump administration, have spent years fighting regulation of the substance.

When former President Barack Obama’s EPA still had not released official regulations on the chemical by 2016, the NRDC filed a lawsuit, resulting in the court order requiring the agency to announce limits by June 2020. The order left the responsibility to regulate perchlorate in the hands of President Donald Trump and EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler.

Some states have taken matters into their own hands during the delay, limiting perchlorate in drinking water to as low as 2 ppb. The action by states is being used by Trump’s EPA to argue that the chemical now poses little health risk.

The agency’s new draft policy states that monitoring and limiting perchlorate “does not present a meaningful opportunity for health risk reduction for persons served by public water systems.”

Food and Water Watch called the EPA’s refusal to regulate the chemical “yet another abdication of duty by those that are entrusted with protecting Americans from needless and preventable harm.”

“It’s also yet another example of Trump and his cronies prioritizing corporate profit above all else—even the health and safety of children,” the group’s media relations director, Seth Gladstone, told Common Dreams. “Shameful does not even begin to describe this president and this administration.”

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/this-decision-is-grave-heres-how-trumps-white-house-gave-the-green-light-to-a-dangerous-chemical-linked-to-fetal-heart-defects/

no lnx

‘This decision is grave’: Here’s how Trump’s White House gave the green light to a dangerous chemical linked to fetal heart defects

President Donald J. Trump listens to a reporter’s question after his announcement of the proposed changes to National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulations Thursday, Jan. 9, 2020, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Written by Alex Henderson March 2, 2020

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), founded half a century ago in 1970, has existed under nine different presidents including Donald Trump. One of the people who has been encouraging the EPA to weaken its environmental standards is John DeSesso, who has a long history of lobbying on behalf of chemical companies. And science reporter Elizabeth Shogren, in an article for Reveal News, describes DeSesso’s campaign to persuade the EPA that trichloroethylene or TCE — a toxic chemical linked to fetal heart defects — is perfectly safe.

DeSesso, Shogren reports, met with “a dozen EPA scientists and officials” in the hope of convincing them that TCE is not dangerous. According to Shogren, DeSesso has “primarily earned his living” as a “contract scientist for chemical companies and their trade associations, promoting their positions on toxic chemicals from arsenic to Roundup. As cancer clusters, immune disorders and fetal abnormalities mounted in communities contaminated by TCE, DeSesso was paid to cast doubt on the research establishing TCE’s toxic effects on the human body.”

In making his case for TCE to the EPA, Shogren notes, DeSesso set out to “undercut” a 2003 study that was led by scientist Paula Johnson for the University of Arizona and was “a landmark in establishing that TCE exposure at trace levels was highly toxic to developing embryos.” John’s study, according to Shogren, “had been pivotal in past EPA evaluations of TCE’s risks.”

In February, the EPA released an evaluation of the effects of TCE — one that, Shogren warns, “appears to show the influence of DeSesso and his chemical company sponsors.”

“Dismissing the findings of the Johnson study and decades of scientific research, the published evaluation rejects fetal heart malformations as a benchmark for unsafe exposure levels to TCE,” Shogren observes.

Jennifer McPartland, a senior scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund, told Reveal News, “This decision is grave. It not only underestimates the lifelong risks of the chemical, especially to the developing fetus — it also presents yet another example of this administration bowing to polluters’ interests over public health.”

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https://www.ecowatch.com/perchlorate-in-food-nrdc-2641162805.html

https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/a-distorted-reading-of-the-science-the-epa-wants-minimal-limits-on-poison-in-drinking-water/

no lnx

'A distorted reading of the science’: The EPA wants minimal limits on poison in drinking water

written by Sarah Okeson / DC Report June 26, 2019

The Trump EPA calculated recommended limits of a dangerous chemical sometimes found in drinking water that can harm babies’ brain development that were more than 9 times higher than those imposed by a few states by fudging a key number in the calculation.

The Trump EPA recommended a limit for perchlorate, which can harm infant brain development, of 56 micrograms per liter, far above the limit of 6 that California imposed and 2 that Massachusetts set, more than a decade ago.

“I guess they think it’s just fine to have children have IQ loss,” said Betsy Southerland, a retired EPA official who oversaw science and technology issues in the EPA Office of Water.

Perchlorate, which a GAO study found in the water, soil or sediment of 45 states, is particularly dangerous to babies because it can harm infant brain development if their mothers are exposed to it in food or water while pregnant. Babies can also ingest perchlorate in their mothers’ breast milk or in formula.

Scientists account for uncertainty in calculating such limits with what is known as the “uncertainty factor” to protect the most vulnerable such as infants. Our nation’s public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used a factor of 10 for perchlorate. The Trump EPA cut that by 2/3s to 3.

“I don’t think it’s grounded in the science,” said Tom Neltner, the chemicals policy director for the Environmental Defense Fund. “I think it’s a distorted reading of the science.”

EPA spokesman Ken Labbe did not have a response for DCReport.org about how the limits were calculated.

Massachusetts virtually eliminated perchlorate from its public drinking water supply with its limit.Testing between 2001 and 2003 found perchlorate levels of 4 micrograms per liter or higher in water systems nationwide serving more than 16.6 million people. Bleach, which water systems use to disinfect water, can degrade into perchlorate. The chemical is also in rocket fuel.

The American Water Works Association, which has urged that perchlorate not be regulated, paid for a study that found faults with a more rigorous model that the Obama administration would have used to set limits for perchlorate. The Trump EPA cited that study in recommending the laxer limits.

Neltner said the Trump EPA cherry-picked which studies to use in setting the recommended limit. The Environmental Defense Fund had recommended a limit of 4 micrograms per liter.

“You really get one chance to build a brain,” Neltner said.

The Trump EPA could also impose limits of 18 micrograms or 90 micrograms per liter or decide against regulating perchlorate. The federal advisory limit is 15 micrograms. EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler will have the final say.

The proposed regulation is the first new standard the EPA is putting forward for an unregulated contaminant in drinking water in more than 23 years.

Cleaning up perchlorate contamination can cost millions. The EPA reached a $1.1 billion settlement in 2014 to clean up a former chemical manufacturing site in Henderson, Nev. The chemical contaminated Lake Mead.

Pollution From Air Force Keeps Causing Cancer in Tucson, Residents Say

Twenty-seven years ago, 1,600 residents of Tucson, Arizona's south side settled an $84.5 million dollar lawsuit with Hughes Aircraft (now Raytheon Missile Systems Co.), claiming the Air Force contractor had been dumping the industrial solvent trichloroethylene (TCE) into the water table for 29 years since 1952, causing cancers and other ailments.

https://www.desmogblog.com/koch-industries-inc-lobbying-activities

The Mercatus Center

The Mercatus Center is a conservative think tank located at George Mason University that regularly lobbies in the federal government. Koch Industries has funded the Mercatus Center since the 1980s.[8]

Koch and the Bush Administration

During George W. Bush's second presidential term, his administration tried several times to appoint individuals who were “pro-industry” to important environmental positions. However, the Senate blocked the president's continued efforts. Included in the president's nominations were Alex Beehler and Susan Dudley, both of whom have connections to Koch Industries.

Susan Dudley was the director of Regulatory Studies at the Mercatus Center. Dudley opposes federal regulation. She lobbied against the Environmental Protection Agency's attempts to reduce smog, produce cleaner gasoline, and remove arsenics from drinking water. President Bush nominated Dudley to be the Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. The person working in this position can interfere, without scrutiny, in the dealings of agencies such as the EPA. This position can also be used as a conduit for industries to avoid federal health and environmental standards.[9]

Bush also nominated Alex A. Beehler to be the Inspector General of the EPA.The Inspector General oversees EPA management and conducts audits. Beehle's environemental highlights include: lobbying for military activities to be exempt from environmental regulations, and trying to influence the EPA's decision on creating a health standard forperchlorate, a rocket fuel component. Perchlorate can impair fetal brain development and has contaminated water in 25 U.S. states. At Koch Industries, Beehler worked as the director of environmental and regulatory affairs. He also served as vice president for environmental projects at the Charles G.Koch Foundation.[9], [10]

While the senate was not in session, George W. Bush by-passed the Senate and appointed Susan Dudley to be the Director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. She served as Director from 2007 to 2008.

Resources...

https://www.ecowatch.com/epa-banned-chemicals-2518954095.html

Trump EPA Delays Deadly Chemical Bans Indefinitely

The Trump administration last week proposed to indefinitely delay proposed bans of high-risk uses of three toxic chemicals: Methylene chloride and N-Methylpyrrolidone, or NMP, in paint strippers and trichloroethylene, or TCE, in degreasing.

The proposed chemical bans and restrictions were stripped from the administration's "Unified Agenda"—and are among hundreds of deregulatory actions that put the health and safety of Americans at risk by weakening protections.

Methylene chloride, an acutely toxic likely carcinogen that is also toxic to the brain and liver, has been linkedto more than 50 deaths. CBS recently featured the tragic story of Kevin Hartley, a 21-year-old who died while using it to strip a bathtub.

"This latest action is one more move by this EPA to undermine implementation of the bipartisan reforms to TSCA enacted last year," said Dr. Richard Denison, lead senior scientist at Environmental Defense Fund. "Among those reforms, Congress specifically authorized EPA to take action on these chemicals to address high-risk uses. Instead, EPA is once again kowtowing to the chemical industry."

"EPA's callous decision to continue to allow the use of methylene chloride in paint strippers will lead to more needless deaths of Americans who are simply refinishing a door or renovating a bathroom," said Scott Faber, senior vice president at Environmental Working Group. "Once again, this administration would rather pander to chemical industry lobbyists than save American lives."

EPA has found that TCE is "carcinogenic to humans by all routes of exposure" and causes developmental and reproductive harms. NMP is also a reproductive toxicant.

EPA under the last administration had proposed banning TCE in vapor degreasing, aerosol degreasing and spot cleaning. EPA had also proposed to ban methylene chloride, and was considering either a ban or restrictions on NMP, in paint strippers.

All three bans were proposed in December 2016 or January 2017, and were the first bans proposed under the Toxic Substances Control Act in more than 25 years. They were set to be finalized within months.

But Trump has now removed all of them from his "Unified Agenda," released last week, and moved the proposed rules to "long-term action" after pressure from chemical companies.

More information can be found here:

TCE Rule #1 covering aerosol degreasing and spot cleaners (moved to long-term action in Spring 2017): https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eAgendaViewRule?pubId=201710&RIN;=2070-AK03

TCE Rule #2: covering vapor degreasing https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eAgendaViewRule?pubId=201710&RIN;=2070-AK11

NMP/MC: covering paint and coating removers https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eAgendaViewRule?pubId=201710&RIN;=2070-AK07

The administration's decision to indefinitely postpone the bans comes just months after EPA reversed a scheduled ban of the pesticide chlorpyrifos, which has been linked to cancer and infertility, over the recommendations of EPA scientists.

TCE/ perchloride

1. Failed to Aggressively Regulate Toxic ‘Forever Chemicals’

2. Allowed a Rocket Fuel Chemical to Stay in Drinking Water

3. Allowed Scores of New Chemicals, Including New Toxic PFAS, Onto the Market Without Adequate Oversight

4. Failed to Protect Workers From a Deadly Paint-Stripping Chemical

5. Cooked the Books on the “Civil Action” Chemical

6. Pressured EPA Scientists to Drop Evaluations of Toxic Chemicals – Including Formaldehyde

7. Rolled Back Clean Water Protections

8. Cooked the Books on Asbestos

9. Proposed a Loophole for Toxic Air Pollution

10. Continuing Its Quest to Censor Science

Pollution From Air Force Keeps Causing Cancer in Tucson, Residents Say

The Mercatus Center

Koch and the Bush Administration

Resources...

Trump EPA Delays Deadly Chemical Bans Indefinitely

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