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ACC PM 15/11/17
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(ACC Mentioned) Amid Pipe Wars, Researchers Wary of Plastic Pipes Leaching Chemicals
Nov 14, 2017 | Environmental Working Group
By Tasha Stoiber
Over the next decade, U.S. cities and towns will spend an estimated $300 billion to replace aging water and sewer pipes. This massive upgrade of the nation's water infrastructure, added to heightened concerns about lead and other toxic chemicals leaching from pipes, has set off what The New York Times calls the pipe wars, as makers of metal pipes face off against the plastics industry over which materials are safest. -
(ACC Mentioned) America Recycles Day 2017: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know
Nov 15, 2017 | Heavy.com
By Beth Heyn
November 15 is America Recycles Day, and this year is the biggest one yet. America Recycles Day is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the holiday this year. -
(ACC Mentioned) New EPA Advisory Committees' Chairmen Have History Of Agency Criticism
Nov 14, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
The new chairmen of two influential EPA science advisory committees have a history of criticizing the agency's scientific analyses in ways fundamental to how EPA evaluates and seeks to support regulations to manage environmental risks, ranging from risk assessment approaches generally to specific air pollutants and chemicals. -
(ACC Mentioned) Some Pollution Is Good For Kids’ Lungs, And Other Beliefs Held By Trump Health Officials
Nov 15, 2017 | Quartz
By Zoë Schlanger
When the US government is deciding which products and pollutants to limit or ban, it doesn’t just depend on science, no matter how clearly researchers are able to demonstrate harm. -
Pending EPA Nominees To Face At Least Two-Week Wait For Senate Votes
Nov 15, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Doug Obey
... The dynamic points to further delay for several of President Donald Trump's EPA nominees, including: agency enforcement chief nominee Susan Bodine -- who is not facing major Democratic objections -- and EPA toxics chief nominee Michael Dourson, who has attracted strident opposition from Democrats as well as lingering reservations from some Republican senators. -
(ACC Mentioned) Trump’s Pick For Chemical Safety And Pollution Prevention Deemed Problematic By Anchorage Nonprofit
Nov 15, 2017 | Alaska Public Radio Network
By Lori Townsend
A nominee for a top position at the EPA is drawing both praise and criticism, including concerns from a nonprofit in Anchorage that works to raise awareness about the health affects of hazardous chemicals. -
North Carolina Newspaper Opposes EPA Toxics Office Nominee
Nov 14, 2017 | Inside EPA
A North Carolina newspaper is adding to the heat on Sens. Richard Burr (R-NC) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) as they weigh whether to support President Donald Trump's nominee to lead EPA's toxics office, with an editorial calling on readers to lobby Burr and Tillis against Trump's pick of Michael Dourson. -
Apple Comes Top In US Retailer Chemical Ranking
Nov 15, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Tammy Lovell
IT giant Apple has come top in a ‘report card’, ranking 30 US retailers on their actions to eliminate chemicals in consumer products. -
Amazon Plays Catch-Up in Push to Police Chemicals in Products
Nov 15, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Lauren Coleman-Lochner
Amazon.com Inc. is developing a plan to regulate the chemicals used by suppliers, but it still lags Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Target Corp. and other retailers in the push for greener products. -
Monsanto, U.S. Farm Groups Sue California Over Glyphosate Warnings
Nov 15, 2017 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
By Tom Polansek
Monsanto Co and U.S. farm groups sued California on Wednesday to stop the state from requiring cancer warnings on products containing the widely used weed killer glyphosate, which the company sells to farmers to apply to its genetically engineered crops. -
Defense Bill Backs Health Study of Chemicals in Drinking Water
Nov 15, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The House on Nov. 14 approved a defense spending blueprint that would support a $7 million national study of people exposed to a group of chemicals widely used to make many consumer and military products. -
(ACC Mentioned) Documents Show Undiscosed EPA Health Concerns On Fracking Chemicals
Nov 15, 2017 | WUNC
By Scott Tong
We're about a decade into an oil and gas revolution known shorthand as fracking. It relies on shooting high-pressure water mixed with chemicals down into layers of rock to crack the stone and release oil and gas. -
U.S. to Become Largest LNG Exporter by Mid-2020s, Says IEA
Nov 14, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Carolyn Davis
Booming U.S. natural gas and oil production have set the country on track to become the leading global gas exporter by the mid-2020s and a net oil exporter soon after, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said Tuesday. -
Safety Board Drops Interior Department From Oil Rig Oversight Push
Nov 15, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sam Pearson
An Interior Department unit that regulates offshore oil platforms is the wrong entity to put in place new regulations for whistleblower protections and corporate governance, the Chemical Safety Board said Nov. 14. -
Safety Took A Back Seat At Amtrak, Feds Say. Then Workers Died
Nov 14, 2017 | Philly.com
By Jason Laughlin
Federal authorities lambasted Amtrak Tuesday, blaming a failed culture that put punctuality ahead of safety for the deaths of two workers in Chester last year. -
CATF Cites Oil & Gas Emission Equity Harms To Fight EPA Rule Repeal
Nov 15, 2017 | Inside EPA
The Clean Air Task Force (CATF) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in a new report say airborne pollution from oil and gas development are disproportionately impacting African-American communities, findings CATF hopes will help fight Trump administration efforts to undo the Obama EPA's first-time limits on the greenhouse gas methane from new oil and gas drilling. -
Tested EPA Air Chief to Advance Trump Rollbacks
Nov 15, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Abby Smith
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt may have just received the most important tool to implement his rollback agenda: the EPA's new air chief Bill Wehrum. -
Microsoft Sets New Carbon Target to Help Meet Paris Climate Deal
Nov 15, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jessica Shankleman
Microsoft Corp. joined a growing number of companies pledging to curb their emissions in line with the international efforts to keep global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius. -
Halting Weak Climate Rules for Poorer Nations Top U.S. Priority
Nov 15, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Dean Scott
Resisting efforts by China and other developing nations to carve out separate, less stringent rules for reporting and verifying their greenhouse gas emissions under the 2015 Paris Agreement is the priority for the U.S. at the Bonn climate talks, a White House official said Nov. 14. -
Upheaval in Bonn as U.S. Reshuffles Climate Diplomats
Nov 15, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Dean Scott
State Department diplomat Tom Shannon, long slated to take the helm of the U.S. delegation at the United Nations climate summit in Bonn, won't be coming due to a family emergency, the State Department said Nov. 14, adding a new complication to talks intended to begin implementing the Paris climate pact. -
Senate Dems Return From Bonn, Say America's 'Still In'
Nov 15, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder
As global leaders continue to meet in Bonn, Germany, for the U.N. Climate Change Conference, Democrats in Congress presented a united front during a rally today against President Trump and his decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris accord. -
Trump Deputy Vows Admin Will Keep Working On Climate
Nov 15, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Christa Marshall
White House officials will continue to "play our part" on climate change and work on related science reports, presidential adviser Michael Kratsios said this week. -
Democrats, Environmentalists Vow Ongoing Climate Push
Nov 15, 2017 | Inside EPA
Environmental advocates and their Democratic allies on Capitol Hill are using the ongoing United Nations climate change talks to continue to push back against the notion that current regulatory rollbacks from EPA and other agencies will permanently end climate mitigation efforts in the United States.
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(ACC Mentioned) Amid Pipe Wars, Researchers Wary of Plastic Pipes Leaching Chemicals
Nov 14, 2017 | Environmental Working Group
By Tasha Stoiber
Over the next decade, U.S. cities and towns will spend an estimated $300 billion to replace aging water and sewer pipes. This massive upgrade of the nation's water infrastructure, added to heightened concerns about lead and other toxic chemicals leaching from pipes, has set off what The New York Times calls the pipe wars, as makers of metal pipes face off against the plastics industry over which materials are safest.
The American Chemistry Council, which represents the plastics industry, is lobbying heavily to require local governments to consider plastic when choosing materials for new pipes. If you're repairing or replacing the pipes in your home, you face the same choice, which often comes down to copper pipes or various kinds of plastic pipes.
Plastic is cheaper, which is why Bluefield Research says up to 80 percent of municipal investment in water infrastructure could go to plastic pipes. But not enough is known about their possible health hazards, and a growing number of studies suggest that some plastic pipes leach harmful chemicals and accumulate heavy metals like lead.
Dr. Andrew Whelton, an assistant professor at the Purdue University Lyles School of Civil Engineering and Division of Environmental and Ecological Engineering, has been researching the safety of plastic pipes since 2014. He has focused on a type of polyethylene called PEX in particular. This light, flexible tubing made from petroleum-derived chemicals is easy to install, and is about five times cheaper than copper pipes. PEX is widely used in new "green" buildings because it is energy efficient, and it is also popular for replacing corroded metal pipes in homes.
In one of the first U.S. studies to look at numerous brands of PEX pipes and their effects on water quality, Whelton's research team tested six brands produced by different manufacturing methods. They found that each type caused odors exceeding the Environmental Protection Agency's guidelines, and leached chemicals such as toluene, which is neurotoxic, and MTBE, a carcinogen that's been banned as a gasoline additive, but is a byproduct produced during PEX pipe manufacture.
Next, researchers tested water in homes where plastic drinking water pipes had been installed, comparing different brands and types of PEX, PVC, polypropylene and high-density polyethylene. They found that PEX pipes released more odors and leached more chemicals compared to polypropylene.
To date, more than 150 contaminants have been found in water that flowed through PEX pipes in these and other studies. Since each of the more than 70 brands of PEX pipes can leach different chemicals, and there are no enforceable federal regulations, it's difficult for consumers to weigh the health risks.
"We have seen significant amounts of chemicals leaching from new PEX pipes across brands and differences even within the same brand of pipe purchased from different stores," Whelton told EWG. He said the pipe materials are not tested once they are installed to see the whole range of chemicals that could leach into water and that most of the substances released into the water have not been identified. Even if the chemicals that leach are not known to be toxic, they could fuel the growth of bacteria in the pipes or cause bad odors, he added.
Whelton said homeowners who have already installed PEX pipes should flush them to reduce the amount of chemicals that could leach into water – the longer the better. In some pipes, researchers have seen significant leaching even after 30 days of use.
“Manufacturers need to do a better job cleaning their products before they provide them to you," Whelton said. "All drinking water testing data [for PEX and other pipe materials] should be made public, too.”
Here are EWG's recommendations for healthier home plumbing:We recommend copper for most plumbing projects. It’s a long-lasting material that can also be easily recycled. If your water has a pH value of less than 7, it’s a good idea to install a system to balance the water’s acidity to prevent corrosion. However, if there is a history in your area of failed and leaking copper pipes in household plumbing caused by corrosive water chemistries, installing copper may not be the best alternative.Compared to other plastics, polypropylene piping is a better choice, although many brands are not widely available. This type of plastic may leach fewer chemicals and produce less odor. It's recyclable, and can be used for hot and cold water.
For more tips for choosing better building materials, including piping, see EWG’s Healthy Living: Home Guide.
https://www.ewg.org/enviroblog/2017/11/amid-pipe-wars-researchers-wary-plastic-pipes-leaching-chemicals#.WgwMl1uCyUk
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(ACC Mentioned) America Recycles Day 2017: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know
Nov 15, 2017 | Heavy.com
By Beth Heyn
November 15 is America Recycles Day, and this year is the biggest one yet. America Recycles Day is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the holiday this year. While the days and weeks leading up to November 15 are also part of the celebration since that’s when some of the events take place, the actual America Recycles Day is on Wednesday, November 15 this year.
The initiative is sponsored by the American Chemistry Council, H&M, Indorama Ventures, Keurig Green Mountain, Northrup Grumman and Waste Management.
According to a 2014 study by the Environmental Protection Agency, only about 34 percent of recyclable goods in America were recycled in 2013. While that’s the most recent study conducted by the EPA, Pew Research conducted research in 2016 and found that while over 90 percent of Americans have recycling available to them, the percentage of recyclable waste that is recycled was still well under 50 percent on average.
Here’s what you need to know about America Recycles Day:
1. The Day Was First Celebrated in 1997
Because America Recycles Day was first celebrated in 1997, it is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. The day is made to educate people about the importance of recycling to the well-being of both the economy and the environment. Recycling programs have changed a lot since 1997 and the event has changed along with the times.
On most past America Recycles Day, a presidential proclamation is made. Last year, President Obama called upon the people of the United States to observe the day with appropriate programs and activities, also encouraging all American people to continue reducing, reusing and recycling efforts throughout the year.
One of the main goals of America Recycles day is to help motivate occasional recyclers to become everyday recyclers.
2. It’s the Only Nationally Recognized Recycling Day
While there are many different recycling days in communities and counties, America Recycles Day is the only one that is recognized at a national level. On a smaller scale, it is relatively easy for people to find recycling programs and education near their hometown.
This year for the 2nd year, America Recycles Day is also encouraging people to “Be Recycled” in every sense of the word. The event encourages individuals to commit to learn about recycling in their communities, consistently and correctly recycle and to buy more products made from recycled content.
Participants in America Recycles Day and the Be Recycled movement are encouraged to spread the word by educating their families, friends and coworkers about recycling in the community.
3. It’s Not the Same as World Recycling Day
America Recycles Day is celebrated on a different day than World Recycling Day, or Global Recycling Day. While America’s day is celebrated in November, World Recycling Day is celebrated in mid-March. Global Recycling Day is a relatively new initiative. The first official Global Recycling Day will be celebrated on March 18, 2018.
Global Recycling Day is made to promote action on recycling around the world. It is organized by the Bureau of International Recycling, which has been around for 70 years. The company claims that recyclables should be recognized by people as the 7th most important natural resource. They’re hoping that the day will raise awareness of recycling and enhance perception that recycling will create a clean and sustainable environment.
An unrelated holiday dubbed International Recycling Day was organized on May 17, 2017, but that event didn’t gain much traction. The Bureau of International Recycling will be promoting their event through the early months of 2018, hoping to gain much more fanfare and participation.
4. The Program is Sponsored by Keep America BeautifulView image on Twitter
America Recycles Day is sponsored by the Keep America Beautiful organization. The organization shares a mission to educate and inspire people to improve their community environment every day. They sponsor a variety of national programs and initiatives with over 600 community-based affiliates and over 5 million volunteers organization wide.
In order to improve recycling, the organization is focusing on 3 clear factors. The factors are convenience, communication and cause. They plan to get people to understand the benefits of recycling and educate people on why they should care about recycling:
By educating and engaging individuals to recycle more of the right things the right way-at home, at work and on the go-we can help make recycling more economically viable, creating jobs and providing recyclables to manufacture new products and packaging, while continuing to reap greater environmental and community benefits.
5. There Are Events All Over the Country
With over 2,000 events registered for the year, it’s simple to find an event to celebrate America Recycles Day almost anywhere in the United States. The events take place at different times throughout the day and month, so if you’re looking for an event to attend, check the America Recycles Day Event map here. You can search by location and date, so the map is simple to navigate.
Some events on America Recycles Day are events where people can go to recycle old electronics for free. The events are to bring awareness to the importance of recycling electronics instead of throwing them away. Electronics that should be recycled instead of thrown away include computers, office equipment and cell phones. Other events take place at schools where educators are working to teach children and young adults about the benefits of recycling.
There are also events that focus on recycling plastic bags. These events are called Plastic Bag Campaigns or Plastic Bag Collections and there are more than 10 of these events around the country in honor of America Recycles Day.
https://heavy.com/news/2017/11/america-recycles-day-2017-facts-ideas-participate/
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(ACC Mentioned) New EPA Advisory Committees' Chairmen Have History Of Agency Criticism
Nov 14, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
The new chairmen of two influential EPA science advisory committees have a history of criticizing the agency's scientific analyses in ways fundamental to how EPA evaluates and seeks to support regulations to manage environmental risks, ranging from risk assessment approaches generally to specific air pollutants and chemicals.
However, the newly announced chairman of a third scientific advisory panel, who served as EPA research chief during the George W. Bush administration, does not appear to have provided such critical testimony.
Both Michael Honeycutt, the newly named chairman of EPA's Science Advisory Board (SAB), and Tony Cox, the newly named chairman of EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC), have testified before various congressional committees strongly criticizing EPA's scientific approaches.
Honeycutt has long been a skeptic of EPA's influential risk analysis program, the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) program, whose risk estimates are often the basis for agency decisionmaking. Honeycutt believes that these values are often too stringent and expensive, driving costly risk management activities.
As one example, Honeycutt testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee's environment subpanel in October 2011 that because of concerns with the IRIS program, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, where he heads the toxicology division, has decided to undertake its own risk analyses rather than be reliant on EPA's.
In written responses to questions from Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL), the chairman of the environment subpanel, Honeycutt argued that among his concerns with IRIS assessments, are that "they are getting away from science-based assessments and going more towards precautionary policy-based assessments (e.g. when science demonstrates that a chemical is not as toxic as they think it should be, they ignore the science in favor of a policy decision); and . . . they don't do common-sense groundtruthing of their values (e.g., their unsafe levels for essential elements like copper are lower than what is recommended by the [Food and Drug Administration (FDA)]."
Honeycutt describes such values as "'chicken little' toxicity values for chemicals -- values that are below background levels or that (like copper) deem FDA recommendations as being unsafe -- make the public either jaded or unnecessarily scared."
Further harm comes in the costs of EPA's overly conservative assessments, Honeycutt added. "When a regulatory decision is made using a toxicity value that is extremely conservative, impacts are felt across the board. Not only does a company have to modify their process to accommodate use of a different chemical, which is expensive in itself, the cost is then transferred onto the public."
As an example, Honeycutt pointed to arsenic, where EPA's existing drinking water standard of 10 parts per billion (ppb) "is set at an 'unacceptable' excess cancer risk level, according to the current IRIS toxicity values. However, arsenic is a naturally occurring constituent in soil and water and can naturally be present in water at levels above the [standard] of 10 ppb, as is the case in different parts of the US, such as West Texas. As a result, public water systems may have to institute costly measures to treat the water in order to comply with federal regulations or pay costly fines for violating regulations."
Cox's Testimony
Cox, a risk analysis consultant, has also testified before Congress opposing EPA actions. For example, he spoke in February 2014 before a House science committee panel in favor of an early version of the House GOP's "secret science" bill, which seeks to require EPA to base its regulations only on research where the raw data is publicly available on the Internet -- a challenge for EPA in terms of copyright protections and individual-level medical data.
EPA staff's analysis of the latest version of the bill, H.R. 1430 -- which passed the House on a party line vote last spring but has yet to see action in the Senate -- stated that if trade secret information could not be used in Toxic Substances Control Act evaluations, "these chemical programs would grind to a halt, greatly hindering manufacturers' and industries' abilities to get their chemicals approved for use in commerce."
Cox also testified in June 2015 against EPA's then-proposed ozone rule and anticipated effects on manufacturing before a House Energy and Commerce Committee panel.
Cox stated "there is overwhelming evidence that EPA's predictions of public health benefits from the Proposed Ozone Rule are unwarranted and exaggerated. They are unwarranted because EPA's conclusions about the causal impacts of ozone reductions on public health are not derived from objective science or statistical analyses of causation. Instead, EPA's conclusions rely on unreliable subjective judgments of selected experts; on models that they concede are inaccurate and have large but unquantified uncertainties; and on mistakenly treating association or correlation as causality."
Further, Cox argued, "We also know from extensive real-world experience that EPA's benefits estimates are exaggerated. Ozone levels have already fallen in recent decades by far more than the proposed amounts in many locations in the United States. Yet analysis of public health records shows that these large reductions in ozone levels have caused no detectable public health benefits."
Like Honeycutt, Cox also urges EPA risk assessors to perform some sort of "reality check" on their risk estimates. Speaking before one of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's panels in June 2012 over risk mitigation actions on climate change and air pollution, Cox said that "[r]eal-world data typically contradict the assumptions and conclusions of models that predict that reducing emissions will cause significant health benefits."
Honeycutt and other IRIS critics, including Nancy Beck, formerly of the American Chemistry Council and now EPA's top appointee in the toxics office, urged EPA's IRIS program to undertake such analyses in 2013. They suggested that EPA assessors should compare their risk estimates with mode of action information to contemplate its plausibility, compare cancer risk values to the relevant cancer incidences reported by the National Cancer Institute and compare the risk values generally to ambient and endogenous levels of the agents. The critics hope such an approach will soften EPA risk values because it will force the agency to reject conservative assessment practices that are inconsistent with disease incidence.
EPA Science
Paul Gilman, who served as EPA research chief in the Bush administration and is the new chairman of the agency's Board of Scientific Counselors (BOSC), has also testified before Congress since leaving the agency, speaking to a Senate Environment and Public Works subcommittee in May 2008 about the use of science in environmental regulating.
Gilman, who is the chief sustainability officer for waste-to-energy giant Covanta, praised EPA for continuing to conduct its own research, for strengthening peer review through its SAB, and increasing the transparency of its analyses. He also raised concerns about the plateaued level of funding for EPA research, and urged federal agencies to quantify uncertainties in their analyses.
Gilman also noted that contention over environmental regulation is often debated as a dispute over the quality of the underlying science. "But that is a debate in which every scientist inside the agency should be willing to engage. It is unlikely that there will ever be unanimous consensus on a scientific issue underlying any given policy. The greater the potential consequences of selecting a given policy option -- in economic terms or terms of quality of life or the environment -- the more lively the debate over the science will be. The scientific bottom line is rarely easy to perceive. It is rarely 'black or white.' In the end we rely heavily on scientific judgment for the scientific portion of the information used by policy-makers."
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/new-epa-advisory-committees-chairmen-have-history-agency-criticism
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Nov 15, 2017 | Quartz
By Zoë Schlanger
When the US government is deciding which products and pollutants to limit or ban, it doesn’t just depend on science, no matter how clearly researchers are able to demonstrate harm. In most cases, officials from various federal health-related offices decide what science to listen to, which benefits outweigh which costs, and whether (and how) to conduct testing at all. For example, the decision to regulate a toxic substance in drinking water comes down to the “sole judgement” of the person running the Environmental Protection Agency.
In other words, what the US officially considers dangerous depends in large part on who is in charge. And the people charged with protecting public health under the Trump administration hold some unorthodox views. For example: Arsenic? Not so bad. Polluted air? Kids’ lungs are the better for it. Pesticides? Children are less sensitive to them than adults. Breathing industrial particles? “People are designed to deal with dust.”
Here are a few of the new deciders:Michael Honeycutt
Position: Head of the EPA’s Science Advisory Board, a body of experts that provides objective scientific advice to the agency.
Past job: Chief toxicologist at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, where he led the department’s fightagainst Barack Obama’s stricter ozone pollution rules(Scott Pruitt’s EPA has since delayed those rules for a year). He also helped relax Texas’ state rules on pollution, particularly hexavalent chromium and arsenic, both known carcinogens.
In his own words: On ozone, Honeycutt said in 2014 “I haven’t seen the data that says lowering ozone will produce a health benefit. In fact, I’ve seen data that shows it might have a negative health benefit.” He also suggested the EPA’s ozone rules are unnecessary because “Americans likely spend at least 90% of their time indoors.” (Ozone exposure is widely regarded as a contributor to early death, asthma, heart disease, and low birth weight, among other health effects.)
On mercury, Honeycutt said the EPA is “overstating” the risks of exposure, given that the Japanese eat more fish than Americans and seem to be doing well. He wrote that “unwarranted concerns” could be preventing people from eating seafood, “which itself could lead to adverse health effects.” (Mercury is an IQ-lowering neurotoxin and a danger to developing fetuses.)Michael Dourson
Position: (Nominated) head of the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. His nomination passed a Senate subcommittee and will need a full Senate voteto advance.
Past job: Ran the consulting company Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment (TERA), which was hired by groups like Dow Chemical, CropLife America, the American Chemistry Council, the American Petroleum Institute, and Koch Industries to study the effects of chemicals. He is a friend of Honeycutt, whose Texas Commission on Environmental Quality hired TERA to review the state’s chemical evaluations.
TERA’s assessments in all these casess typically failed to recognize hazards widely acknowledged by mainstream scientists who aren’t being paid by the chemical industry, the Intercept reports.
In his own words: As the Intercept notes, Dourson once argued that children aren’t more sensitive to toxic substances than adults, and might even be less sensitive. That idea is far outside of the established scientific consensus. In 2002, he authored a paper (pdf) paid for by the American Chemistry Council and CropLife America arguing that children over six months are no more sensitive to chemicals than adults, and may be less sensitive in some cases.
“Taken together, information on the relative sensitivities of children and adults… suggests that the use of additional uncertainty factors to limit environmental chemical exposures is unlikely to provide significantly greater protection to children over 6 months of age,” the paper includes.Robert Phalen
Position: Member of EPA’s Science Advisory Board.
Past job: Professor of medicine at the University of California, Irvine.
In his own words: “Modern air is a little too clean for optimum health,” he told the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2012. Clean air is “not good for the children, whose lungs need a few irritants to learn how to ward them off.”
When E&E News asked Phalen about those comments after his appointment to the EPA board this month, he doubled down: “Importantly,” he said, “as particulate air pollution levels have declined in the US, asthma rates have increased.”
Phalen has suggested studies showing children raised on farms and near animals have less asthma prove his point. However, the studies he is likely referencing actually say it is children’s exposure to a more diverse set of microbes that gives them more robust immune systemsand lower asthma rates, not their exposure to more particulate air pollution. (Editor’s note: In many cases, growing up on a farm farther from traffic and industrial sites probably means those kids also breathe less pollution than other children, not more.)
Phalen has also advocated for smoking. He “smokes two to four pipes a week,” according to a 2013 Orange County Register article.At the time, he told the paper that a no-smoking policy at UC Irvine was a poor choice, and “social activism.”
“Intellectuals like Einstein insisted on having their photos taken smoking a pipe,” he said.William Wehrum
Position: Head of EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation.
Past job: Lobbyist and lawyer for fossil-fuel firms, including the American Petroleum Institute (API) and American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers.
In his own words: Wehrum has represented clients who fought several Obama-era health rules, including one to reduce how much silica dust construction workers could legally be exposed to. As ThinkProgressreports, during oral arguments (mp3), Wehrum told the court: “People are designed to deal with dust. People are in dusty environments all the time and it doesn’t kill them.” (Under Trump, the Department of Labor has delayed the silica dust rule.)
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Pending EPA Nominees To Face At Least Two-Week Wait For Senate Votes
Nov 15, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Doug Obey
Several nominees for top political slots at EPA that have been long awaiting Senate confirmation likely must wait at least an additional two weeks, with the chamber not planning to take up any additional agency candidates until the week of Nov. 27 at the earliest, Capitol Hill sources say.
“It would be after Thanksgiving before we do any other [EPA] nominees,” a Senate GOP aide tells Inside EPA, referencing five pending nominations for other agencies and judicial vacancies that the source says will take up the rest of this week. The Senate then is in recess the following week for Thanksgiving.
Potentially complicating matters is an ongoing Republican effort to pass a major tax code overhaul, with leadership hoping to finish that legislation by early December. Also, a stopgap measure to fund the government in the first part of fiscal year 2018 expires Dec. 8.
The dynamic points to further delay for several of President Donald Trump's EPA nominees, including: agency enforcement chief nominee Susan Bodine -- who is not facing major Democratic objections -- and EPA toxics chief nominee Michael Dourson, who has attracted strident opposition from Democrats as well as lingering reservations from some Republican senators.
Other EPA nominees who have cleared the Senate environment committee but have not received floor time include former Florida environment official Matthew Leopold to be the agency's general counsel, and David Ross, a former Wisconsin regulator tapped to lead EPA's water office.
Awaiting committee confirmation votes is former GOP environment committee staffer Andrew Wheeler to be EPA's deputy administrator, as well as former Texas environment official Kathleen Hartnett White to be chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
To date, the only political appointees at EPA who have been confirmed by the Senate are Administrator Scott Pruitt and air chief William Wehrum, who received relatively speedy confirmation last week in part because of the major air and climate regulatory overhauls that the administration is developing.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) told Inside EPA Nov. 14 that Democrats are unlikely to mount a fierce resistance to Bodine, giving her “high marks” for her responses to lawmakers' questions.
“I will say that [she] gave a complete and thoughtful and thorough response to our questions . . . which is quite welcome from an EPA that usually either refuses to answer questions entirely or gives us nonsensically terse responses,” Whitehouse said.
And Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), the ranking member on the environment committee, similarly suggested that while some Democrats will oppose Leopold and Ross, Democrats are far more unified in their opposition to Dourson.
“We will do our dead level best to make sure he never is confirmed for the position at EPA,” Carper told Inside EPANov. 14.
'Deeply Concerning'
Carper also expressed concerns about White, citing her “deeply concerning performance” in her Nov. 8 nomination hearing, in which she tried to distance herself from prior controversial statements including accusations that those concerned about global warming are pagans and communists. Any committee action on White appears likely to be after Thanksgiving, he said.
It is far from clear whether Democrats have the votes to block either Dourson or White on the floor.
However, Inside EPA and other news outlets have reported that Sens. Richard Burr (R-NC) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) are hedging on whether to back Dourson, and there are also indications that Burr, in exchange for supporting Dourson, may be seeking to extract assurances of action by EPA on a risk review of perfluorinated substances.
Environment committee Chairman John Barrasso (R-WY) in a Nov. 14 interview noted that Dourson is “one of a long list” of about 100 nominees from various agencies who have cleared Senate committees but are awaiting floor action. On a timeline for votes on Dourson, he said, “I don't have an answer.” --
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/pending-epa-nominees-face-least-two-week-wait-senate-votes
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Nov 15, 2017 | Alaska Public Radio Network
By Lori Townsend
A nominee for a top position at the EPA is drawing both praise and criticism, including concerns from a nonprofit in Anchorage that works to raise awareness about the health affects of hazardous chemicals.
Michael Dourson, the industry scientist Trump nominated to head EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention was passed out of a confirmation hearing in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in October.
Rep. Steve Chabot, a Republican from Dourson’s home state of Ohio, introduced the nominee and outlined his credentials.
“Dr. Dourson’s excellence in his field of expertise has been recognized time and time again,” Chabot said. “Over the years, he has received four bronze medals from the EPA.”
Dourson told the committee he’s committed to doing the job right.
“If confirmed as the Assistant Administrator of the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, I will dedicate my mind, body, and spirit to the work of this office, to working with its dedicated staff, to the protection of the American public, including its most vulnerable, and its environment from exposure to pesticides and otherwise unregulated chemicals,” Dourson said.
But Democrat Tom Carper of Delaware put up a poster of 10 chemicals Dourson was paid by industry to study. According to Carper, in all 10 cases, Dourson found the chemicals were safe at much higher doses than the government allowed. Dourson rejected the implication but declined to say he’d recuse himself if a chemical he’d been paid to study went before the EPA for review.
“Senator, I can give you as many or more examples of situations where the science that we brought forward as a team actually lowered the safe dose or risk position for various sponsors,” Dourson said. “If confirmed, I will rely on the guidance of EPA ethics officials to determine any issues for which I am to be recused.”
The issue of Dourson’s confirmation hits close to home for the executive director of Alaska Community Action on Toxics. Pam Miller, the executive director of Alaska Community Action on Toxics, says Dourson is a chemical industry scientist for hire.
“He’s worked for many industries such as Dow Agrosciences, the Koch industries, a number of chemical industry associations like the American Chemistry Council,” Miller said. “And his firm has been paid by, I think, more than three dozen corporations or trade associations. He’s even worked for the tobacco industry to justify the safety of secondhand smoke.”
Michael Dourson has not yet been scheduled for a vote by the full Senate.
Alaska Public Media’s Liz Ruskin contributed to this report. Listen to the above audio to hear more from Pam Miller of the Alaska Community Action on Toxics.
https://www.alaskapublic.org/2017/11/14/trumps-pick-for-chemical-safety-and-pollution-prevention-deemed-problematic-by-anchorage-nonprofit/
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North Carolina Newspaper Opposes EPA Toxics Office Nominee
Nov 14, 2017 | Inside EPA
A North Carolina newspaper is adding to the heat on Sens. Richard Burr (R-NC) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) as they weigh whether to support President Donald Trump's nominee to lead EPA's toxics office, with an editorial calling on readers to lobby Burr and Tillis against Trump's pick of Michael Dourson.
“When Dourson’s nomination comes before the full Senate (and it shortly will), Burr and Tillis should demand that the president name someone else. If you are ever going to contact your U.S. senator’s office about a national issue, this is it,” the Wilmington StarNews' editorial board writes in a Nov. 12 editorial titled “EPA nominee should scare us all.”
The paper even provides Burr's and Tillis' phone numbers.
“This isn’t about political ideology or whether you support or don’t support President Trump. This is about nothing less than the very basic safety of our drinking water,” the editorial adds.
The paper points to recent local concerns with the discovery of a perfluorinated substance (PFC) known as GenX that has entered the Cape Fear River from a Chemours facility in Fayetteville, NC -- an issue that Burr asked EPA to review in an Oct. 31 letter to Administrator Pruitt. Burr also asked EPA to make a determination on whether to assess PFCs as part of its Toxic Substances Control Act risk evaluation program.
The timing of the letter may suggest a commitment on addressing Burr's concerns could help secure his support for the nominee. With a narrow majority and Democrats presenting a united front against Dourson, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) can only afford to lose two GOP senators. McConnell has telegraphed there may be trouble with the Dourson nomination, after he advanced the Nov. 8 vote on another controversial EPA nominee, William Wehrum, the new head of EPA's air office -- but did not file for cloture on Dourson's nomination.
North Carolina's Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) “has cited Chemours with violating the conditions of its wastewater discharge permit because the company failed to report an Oct. 6 chemical spill at its Fayetteville Works facility,” according to a Nov. 14 statement from DEQ.
Dourson, a former EPA toxicologist who left the agency in the 1990s to form his own non-profit risk assessment consulting group, has been stridently opposed by Democrats, environmentalists and public health advocates for his work with many companies on environmental contaminants. These critics argue that Dourson often proposed risk estimates for chemicals that were significantly lower than values that EPA or state agencies proposed.
Relevant to North Carolina, Dourson worked on other PFC chemicals for DuPont before the company spun off the legacy chemicals to the new company Chemours. Dourson also worked on trichloroethylene, a cleaning solvent chemical that contaminated the drinking water supply of Camp Lejeune, a large Marine Corps base in the state.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/north-carolina-newspaper-opposes-epa-toxics-office-nominee
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Apple Comes Top In US Retailer Chemical Ranking
Nov 15, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Tammy Lovell
IT giant Apple has come top in a ‘report card’, ranking 30 US retailers on their actions to eliminate chemicals in consumer products.
The report, Who’s Minding the Store? A Report Card on Retailer Actions to Eliminate Toxic Chemicals, is the second by the Mind the Store coalition of NGOs.
It found that two thirds of rated companies remained serious laggards with 40% receiving D and 30% F grades (see table below). It also reveals that Amazon, which came bottom of last year's report, Walgreens and Staples are developing chemicals policies and that Walgreens and Staples plan to launch theirs in 2018.
Last year's report covered 11 major retailers but was expanded this year to include a further 19.
Points were awarded for criteria such as chemical policy, transparency, chemical footprint and continuous improvement. They are based on publicly available and self-reported information on retailers' practices. The average grade for the 30 retailers assessed this year is D+, the same as in 2016.
Improving grades
The 11 retailers that were included in last year’s report, have raised their grade from an average of D+ to C. Seven of these announced significant improvements over the last year:
· Walmart Stores (Walmart and Sam’s Club) improved from B+ to A-;
· Target improved its grade from B to B+;
· CVS Health improved from a C to a B+;
· Best Buy rose from a C- to a B;
· The Home Depot rose in grading from a D+ to a C+;
· Costco improved the most from an F to a C-; and
· Albertsons Companies improved its grade from an F to a C-.
Mind the Store campaign director, Mike Schade, said: "We are thrilled that major retailers like Walmart, CVS Health and Target are driving a race to the top, to eliminate dangerous chemicals that threaten our families’ health. At the same time, far too many are lagging behind, failing to meet the rising consumer demand for healthy products."
Reducing toxic chemicals
The report says that retailers are driving toxic chemicals out of the market, but "more effort is needed to avoid regrettable substitutes as alternatives."
Over the past three years, at least a dozen retailers achieved serious reductions, or elimination, of dangerous chemicals far ahead of any government-imposed restrictions. These include:
· Apple – eliminated use of chlorinated organic solvents, N-methylpyrrolidone (NMP) and toluene in the final assembly of its products;
· Walmart Stores – since 2014, suppliers slashed high priority chemicals by 96% to Walmart and 49% to Sam’s Club, and more than halved priority chemicals for Walmart by 68% (all percentage reductions are by weight);
· CVS Health – removed parabens, phthalates, and major formaldehyde donors from nearly 600 beauty and personal care products across several store brands;
· IKEA – banned all per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) chemicals from textiles;
· Whole Food Markets – eliminated formaldehyde-releasing compounds and oxybenzone from body care products, and phased out BPA in 70% of store-brand cans;
· The Home Depot – will eliminate alkylphenol ethoxylates (APEs), including NPEs, in paints by 2019, and prohibited other chemicals of high concern in many products;
· Albertsons – phased out BPA in more than 80% of store-branded can linings and in thermal receipt paper;
· Rite Aid – suppliers eliminated triclosan, formaldehyde, diethyl phthalate and dibutyl phthalate from its formulated products; and
· Kroger – converted 90% of its store-branded canned foods to non-BPA liners.
The report adds that evaluating safer alternatives remains a challenge for big retailers. Very few, it says, provide specific guidance to suppliers to ensure the safety of the alternatives in relation to targeted chemicals of high concern. And most fail to disclose which alternatives are present in reformulated products.
This may contribute to 'regrettable substitution’, in which the alternative chemistries raise additional or new health and environmental concerns.
The scores are:
1/ Apple: A (103 points)
6/ Target: B+ (79)
11/ Rite Aid: D+ (36.5)
16/ Dollar Tree: D (27)
21/ Macy’s: D- (16)
26/ Kohl’s: F (0)
2/ Walmart: A- (87.5)
7/ Best Buy: B (71)
12/ Buy Buy Baby: D+ (35)
17/ Kroger: D- (22.5)
22/ Toys ‘R’ Us: F (5)
27/ Dollar General: F (0)
3/ Ikea: B+ (83.5)
8/ Home Depot: C+ (61.5)
13/ Staples: D (30.5)
18/ Walgreens: D- (21.5)
23/ Sally Beauty: F (0)
28/ TJX Companies: F (0)
4/ CVS Health: B+ (83.5)
9/ Costco: C- (43)
14/ Amazon: D (30.25)
19/ Lowe’s: D- (20)
24/ Office Depot: F (0)
29/ Ace Hardware: F (0)
5/ Whole Foods Market: B+(82.25)
10/ Albertsons: C- (39.25)
15/ Sephora: D (27.75)
20/ Ultra Beauty: D- (18.5)
25/ Trader Joe’s: F (0)
30/ Ahold Delhaize: F (0)
https://chemicalwatch.com/61047/apple-comes-top-in-us-retailer-chemical-ranking
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Amazon Plays Catch-Up in Push to Police Chemicals in Products
Nov 15, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Lauren Coleman-Lochner
Amazon.com Inc. is developing a plan to regulate the chemicals used by suppliers, but it still lags Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Target Corp. and other retailers in the push for greener products.
That's the assessment of Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families—a Washington-based coalition that runs a program called Mind the Store. Though Amazon is now developing chemicals procedures, the e-commerce giant fared badly in Mind the Store's ranking, which tracks how well companies reduce the toxic chemicals in the products they sell and disclose their presence.
As Amazon's share of retail sales grows, its corporate stewardship is coming under greater scrutiny. That's raised pressure to evaluate its products—especially as rivals take a stand on the issue.
“Companies are seeing there's a market advantage to demonstrating that they're increasing the transparency of products and taking meaningful action to getting the worst of the worst chemicals out,” said Mike Schade, co-author of the report and Mind the Store's campaign director.
For now, Amazon's efforts to police the ingredients in its products are limited. It shuns certain “chemicals of concern” in some of its private-brand products, such as its Elements baby wipes, according to the report. Ty Rogers, a spokesman for the Seattle-based company, declined to comment.
Corporate Grades
Apple Inc. received an A grade, putting it in the top spot among 30 retailers ranked for their chemical-disclosure policies by the Mind the Store campaign. It was followed by Wal-Mart (A-), while CVS Health Corp., Ikea, Whole Foods and Target earned B-pluses. Amazon, meanwhile, got a D and a rank of 14th, still better than last year's failing grade. Toys “R” Us Inc., Trader Joe's and Dollar General Corp. were among the nine retailers with an F.
Wal-Mart and Target have introduced and expanded programs to significantly reduce the presence certain chemicals in their products, acknowledging consumer demand for greener products and more information about what they buy. Other retailers are also responding, Schade said.
“We've seen a tremendous amount of progress among the retailers we ranked last year,” Schade said in a phone interview. Seven retailers have added or expanded chemical policies in the past year, he said.
Work in Progress
Two-thirds of those surveyed, however, aren't implementing such programs. Amazon doesn't have a public safer chemicals policy, according to the report, but the company is “in the process of developing and evaluating a chemicals policy.”
The report scored companies on a 135-point scale that examined 14 metrics, including whether they got full ingredient disclosure from suppliers and have policies to cut the presence of so-called chemicals of high concern to minimal levels. Schade co-wrote the report with Mike Belliveau, executive director of the Environmental Health Strategy Center, with contributions from other groups.
The report commended Apple for requiring that suppliers provide safety assessments of materials swapped in to replace chemicals of concern. CVS, meanwhile, eliminated substances including parabens and phthlates from almost 600 private-label beauty and personal-care products, while Albertsons removed BPA from more than 80 percent of its own-brand canned foods. Sephora and other retailers, meanwhile, have developed or are developing lists of substances banned from their private-label products.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=123813222&vname=dennotallissues&fn=123813222&jd=123813222
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Monsanto, U.S. Farm Groups Sue California Over Glyphosate Warnings
Nov 15, 2017 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
By Tom Polansek
CHICAGO — Monsanto Co and U.S. farm groups sued California on Wednesday to stop the state from requiring cancer warnings on products containing the widely used weed killer glyphosate, which the company sells to farmers to apply to its genetically engineered crops.
The government of the most populous U.S. state added glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto's herbicide Roundup, to its list of cancer-causing chemicals in July and will require that products containing glyphosate carry warnings by July 2018.
California acted after the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) concluded in 2015 that glyphosate was "probably carcinogenic".
For more than 40 years, farmers have applied glyphosate to crops, most recently as they have cultivated genetically modified corn and soybeans. Roundup and Monsanto's glyphosate-resistant seeds would be less attractive to customers if California requires warnings on products containing the chemical.
In the lawsuit, filed in federal court in California, Monsanto and groups representing corn, soy and wheat farmers reject that glyphosate causes cancer. They say the state's requirement for warnings would force sellers of products containing the chemical to spread false information.Continue reading the main story
"Such warnings would equate to compelled false speech, directly violate the First Amendment, and generate unwarranted public concern and confusion," Scott Partridge, Monsanto's vice president of global strategy, said in a statement.
California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA), which is named in the lawsuit, said it generally does not comment on pending litigation.
The controversy is an additional headache for Monsanto as it faces a crisis around a new version of an herbicide based on another chemical known as dicamba that was linked to widespread U.S. crop damage this summer. The company, which is being acquired by Bayer AG for $63.5 billion, developed the product as a replacement for glyphosate following an increase of weeds resistant to the chemical.
Monsanto has already suffered damage to its investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in glyphosate products since California added the chemical to its list of products known to cause cancer, according to the lawsuit.
U.S. farmers apply glyphosate to fields to kill weeds before planting corn fed to livestock, spray it on genetically engineered soybeans while they are growing and sometimes on wheat before it is harvested. The crops are then shipped across the country in food products.
"Everything that we grow is probably going to have to be labeled," said Blake Hurst, president of the Missouri Farm Bureau, a plaintiff in the lawsuit.
Certain goods that meet a standard for containing low amounts of glyphosate, known as a No Significant Risk Level (NSRL), may be able to be sold without warnings under a proposal California is considering, said Sam Delson, a state spokesman.
"We do not anticipate that food products would cause exposures that exceed the proposed NSRL," he said. "However, we cannot say that with certainty at this point and businesses make the determination."
A large, long-term study on glyphosate use by U.S. agricultural workers, published last week as part of a project known as the Agricultural Health Study (AHS), found no firm link between exposure to the chemical and cancer.
Reuters reported in June that an influential scientist was aware of new AHS research data while he was chairing a panel of experts reviewing evidence on glyphosate for IARC in 2015. He did not tell the panel about it because the data had not been published, and IARC's review did not take it into account.
A 2007 study by OEHHA also concluded the chemical was unlikely to cause cancer.
Still, flour mills have started asking farmers to test wheat for glyphosate in anticipation of California's requirement, said Gordon Stoner, president of the National Association of Wheat Growers, another plaintiff.
Such tests add costs for farmers and could push up food prices or unnecessarily scare consumers away from buying products that contain crops grown with glyphosate, he said.
The case is National Association of Wheat Growers et al v. Lauren Zeise, director of the OEHHA, et al, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of California, No. 17-at-01224.
(Reporting by Tom Polansek; Editing by Tom Brown)
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2017/11/15/business/15reuters-usa-pesticides-monsanto.html?_r=0
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Defense Bill Backs Health Study of Chemicals in Drinking Water
Nov 15, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The House on Nov. 14 approved a defense spending blueprint that would support a $7 million national study of people exposed to a group of chemicals widely used to make many consumer and military products.
The chemicals used to make products heat-, oil-, and stick-resistant have found their way into the drinking water of more than 6 million Americans, according to a commentary published hours before the vote by 39 physicians, researchers, and environmental organization scientists. The article, published in the Environmental Health journal, describes strategies to evaluate whether exposure to these chemicals is harming people.
The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) has been laying the groundwork to conduct a national study if it is funded, Lynn Wilder, a senior scientist with the agency told Bloomberg Environment at a recent international exposure science meeting.
ATSDR is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which a Defense Department spokesman said should conduct the health study. It is examining the feasibility of studying children and adults living near Pease International Tradeport in Portsmouth, N.H.
The Pease area's drinking water was contaminated with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), particularly perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorohexane sulfonate (PFHxS) from aqueous film-forming foam that was used in firefighting exercises at the former Pease Air Force Base.
Senate Next
The House, on a 356–70 vote, approved a version of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2018, H.R. 2810, negotiated by a bipartisan House-Senate conference committee.
The bill now heads to the Senate, which may take up the measure before Nov. 17. The provision for the PFAS study was part of the defense authorization legislation before the House-Senate conference took place.
The bill's provisions that address perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), PFOS and the broader group of PFAS chemicals to which they belong, are a small part of the $700 billion spending plan for defense activities. The plan would authorize program funding levels for fiscal year 2018 that started Oct. 1. House and Senate appropriators will set final spending levels later.
As part of that $700 billion, the bill would authorize $70 million so the Navy and Air Force could clean up sites contaminated with the two most studied chemicals within this group of substances: PFOA and PFOS.
States Concerned
ATSDR already is working at more than a dozen Air Force, Navy, NASA, Marine Corps, and National Guard and other civilian sites contaminated with PFAS chemicals in at least 14 states and Guam.
To help states learn from each other and about the complex nature of the broad group of chemicals, the Interstate Technology and Regulatory Council—a program within the Environmental Council of the States—released the first three of what will be a total of six fact sheets on PFAS.
The per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances have special physical and chemical properties that repel oil and water and resist heat. Companies such as 3M, Chemours, Angus Fire, and W. L. Gore & Associates GmbH make or use those chemicals to manufacture insulated wires, textiles, paper products, and cookware and to formulate some firefighting foams.
Some PFAS persist in the environment and become concentrated inside the bodies of organisms, and are “very resistant to destructive treatment technologies” and expensive to remove using existing technologies, the interstate council said.
That persistence is complicated by the tendency of some of them to remain for many years in the bodies of people and wildlife.
In animal studies, some PFAS compounds disrupt hormone function, impair the immune system, and cause other problems including developmental disruption in rodent offspring exposed in the womb, according to information from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
Data from some studies involving exposed people has shown some PFAS also may harm human health, but those results have been inconsistent, according to ATSDR.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=123813208&vname=dennotallissues&fn=123813208&jd=123813208
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(ACC Mentioned) Documents Show Undiscosed EPA Health Concerns On Fracking Chemicals
Nov 15, 2017 | WUNC
By Scott Tong
We're about a decade into an oil and gas revolution known shorthand as fracking. It relies on shooting high-pressure water mixed with chemicals down into layers of rock to crack the stone and release oil and gas. Pretty much since the fracking boom began, people who live near these wells have worried about chemicals getting into their water and making them sick.
A new set of documents, obtained from the Environmental Protection Agency by the Partnership for Policy Integrity and shared with Marketplace, shows that the agency has previously undisclosed health concerns that some fracking chemicals might cause things like liver poisoning and tumors.
Bryan Latkanich makes his home in the rural hills of Pennsylvania, smack in the middle of the largest natural gas region of the country known as the Marcellus Shale.
Latkanich sold Chevron the right to drill on his property seven years ago. But he thinks fracking chemicals polluted his water well and made his family sick.
Four years ago, when his son, Ryan, 7, was in the bathtub, Latkanich said, “His mother screams upstairs like bloody murder. Something is wrong with Ryan! And he came out with rashes that were beyond poison ivy or oak.”
Latkanich thinks fracking chemicals that were shot down the gas well and came back up were stored in a pit on his property that wasn’t lined (as it was supposed to be) to prevent leaking. Latkanich brought out pictures that he says show this. He said maybe the liner was pulled out.
The state of Pennsylvania found that Chevron illegally dumped frack water on his property.
Since the bath that led to his son’s rash, Latkanich said the boy has been diagnosed with asthma and suffered incontinence, “defecating himself almost on a daily basis from just the use of this water, apparently.”
Latkanich himself has been diagnosed with neuropathy, a kind of nerve damage that causes him joint pain.
“My son came to me last week and he says, 'Dad, you cry in your sleep,’” he said.
The family started buying bottled water to use for everything.
Latkanich has struggled to get answers to his medical problems. The state tested his water and declared it safe. Local hospital tests on Ryan found nothing wrong. But other tests by universities on the family’s water found high levels of bromide, chloride, manganese, uranium — all compounds associated with fracking chemicals.
You hear a lot of health complaints like these — and confusion about them — in communities near the oil and gas fields of America.
Pennsylvania residents alone filed 9,000 complaints about drilling pollution and well problems from 2004 to 2016. That's one complaint for every well drilled. Federal scientists have concluded that oil and gas production can pollute water in several ways.
Though it's hard to prove cause and effect between a chemical and illness, Western Pennsylvania pediatrician Edward Ketyer fears a crisis in the making.
“A lot of the harmful effects occur many years after the exposure,” he said. “A good example would be asbestos. Many years later shown to cause mesothelioma. By the time the association is made, it's too late for many, many people.”
Several published studies have found less-direct medial correlations. In Colorado, the closer you live to a well, the higher your cancer risk. In Pennsylvania, the greater the chance of low birth-weight babies. Ketyer said children are particularly at risk.
“They play in the dirt, they play in streams. They don't necessarily wash their hands before they eat,” he said. “I mean, they come in pretty close contact to the dark and dirty around us.”
All these concerns raise the question: Where are the regulators?
The EPA approves new chemicals, and it turns out the agency greenlit more than 40 drilling and fracking chemicals with known risks from 2003 to 2014.
What risks? Agency documents list poisoning of the brain, lungs and liver; tumors; poor development in infants and fetuses.
Those are the findings from hundreds of new documents released under the Freedom of Information Act to the environmental group Partnership for Policy Integrity.
“It's troubling to read these documents and see EPA say, 'We think this chemical could be neurotoxic and this other chemical could have developmental toxicity,' and then approve these chemicals for use with very light regulation, if any,” said Dusty Horwitt, an investigator with the group.
The documents analyzed include chemical manufacturers’ applications for government approval and the EPA health risk assessments. The EPA *can go back and ask companies to do chemical safety tests. But for all the drilling and fracking chemicals approved, it requested testing less than 10 percent of the time, according to Horwitt's analysis of the documents.
So who is testing for safety?
Horwitt said in many cases, no one is.
“The companies tell EPA that they don't have health testing information on the chemicals on a regular basis,” he said. “EPA regularly does not ask for health testing data. The EPA and the public are, to a large degree, operating in the dark.”
Congress's watchdog arm, the Government Accountability Office, has also repeatedly found that the EPA does not have enough data to check chemical risks thoroughly.
The EPA did not respond to questions about its approval of fracking chemicals, despite the agency's knowledge of the risks.
The American Chemistry Council, an industry group, responded to Marketplace's questions about fracking chemical oversight, noting that Congress last year passed stricter rules for the EPA to approve new chemicals.
Yet those old chemicals are still out there, in and around Bryan Latkanich's house in Pennsylvania.
"Everybody presumes that the government is there to protect you,” he said. "If they were here to protect you, they wouldn't let this go on at all.”
It's not just the pollution he believes is all around. He has a separate beef with the system: He's not allowed to know what the exact chemicals are that he may have been exposed to.
http://wunc.org/post/documents-show-undiscosed-epa-health-concerns-fracking-chemicals#stream/0
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U.S. to Become Largest LNG Exporter by Mid-2020s, Says IEA
Nov 14, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Carolyn Davis
Booming U.S. natural gas and oil production have set the country on track to become the leading global gas exporter by the mid-2020s and a net oil exporter soon after, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said Tuesday.
The global energy watchdog in its flagship publication, World Energy Outlook-2017 (WEO-2017), envisions a large-scale energy shift underway as U.S. energy resources have eclipsed all other countries.
The resilience of U.S. unconventional natural gas and oil from shale and tight resources has cemented the country’s position as the biggest producer in the world, even at lower prices.
“The U.S. becomes the undisputed leader for oil and gas production for decades, which represents a major upheaval for international market dynamics,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol.
The unconventional oil and gas revolution has continued in the United States, “thanks to the remarkable ability of producers to unlock new resources in a cost-effective way,” researchers said.
By the mid-2020s, the United States should become the world's largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporter and become a net oil exporter by the late 2020s.
These shifts alone would have a major impact on oil and gas markets, “challenging incumbent suppliers and provoking a major reorientation of global trade flows, with consumers in Asia accounting for more than 70% of global oil and gas imports by 2040,” researchers said.
U.S. LNG also is accelerating a major structural shift toward more flexible and globalized gas markets, IEA said, mirroring projections by the U.S. Energy Information Administration and other forecasts, including by BP plc and ExxonMobil Corp.
The ability of U.S. producers to unlock cost effectively not only gas but oil resources is expected to push combined output “to a level 50% higher than any other country has ever managed,” IEA researchers said.
“In our projections, the 8 million b/d rise in U.S. tight oil output from 2010 to 2025 would match the highest sustained period of oil output growth by a single country in the history of oil markets. A 630 billion cubic meter increase in U.S. shale gas production over the 15 years from 2008 would comfortably exceed the previous record for gas.”
The gains in output would fuel major investments in North American petrochemicals and other energy-intensive industries, IEA is forecasting. It is also reordering international trade flows and challenging incumbent suppliers and business models.
The United States is forecast to account for 80% of the increase in global oil supply to 2025, which would maintain near-term downward pressure on prices. U.S. tight oil is projected to plateau in the late 2020s, and as production overall declines in countries that are not members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, global markets may become “increasingly reliant on the Middle East” to balance supply.
Global natural gas use is projected to rise by 45% to 2040, becoming the second-largest fuel in the global mix after oil. With more limited room to expand in the power sector, industrial demand becomes the largest area for gas growth.
“In resource-rich regions, such as the Middle East, the case for expanding gas use is relatively straightforward, especially when it can substitute for oil,” said researchers. “In the United States, plentiful supplies maintain a strong share of gas-fired power in electricity generation through to 2040, even without national policies limiting the use of coal.”
However, around 80% of the projected growth in gas demand is forecast for developing economies, led by China, India and other Asian countries, where much of the gas needs to be imported, which makes transportation costs significant, and where infrastructure is often not yet in place.Meanwhile, the competitive landscape for global gas may be formidable in the years ahead, as renewables in some countries “become a cheaper form of new power generation than gas by the mid-2020s, pushing gas-fired plants toward a balancing rather than a baseload role,” according to IEA projections.
“Efficiency policies also play a part in constraining gas use: while the electricity generated from gas grows by more than half to 2040, related gas use rises by only one-third, due to more reliance on highly efficient plants.”
Still, the new gas order is emerging, with U.S. LNG accelerating the shift toward a more flexible, liquid global market.
“Ensuring that gas remains affordable and secure, beyond the current period of ample supply and lower prices, is critical for its long-term prospects,” researchers said. “LNG accounts for almost 90% of the projected growth in long-distance gas trade to 2040: with few exceptions, most notably the route that opens up between Russia and China, major new pipelines struggle in a world that prizes the optionality of LNG.”
Gas supply also is expected to become more diverse, with the number of liquefaction sites worldwide expected to double to 2040. The main additions are seen in the United States and Australia, followed by Russia, Qatar, Mozambique and Canada.
“Price formation is based increasingly on competition between various sources of gas, rather than indexation to oil,” said researchers. “With destination flexibility, hub-based pricing and spot availability, U.S. LNG acts as a catalyst for many of the anticipated changes in the wider gas market.”
The new gas order may bring dividends for gas security, “although there is the risk of a hard landing for gas markets in the 2020s if uncertainty over the pace or direction of change deters new investments.”
In the longer term, a larger and more liquid LNG market is expected to compensate for reduced flexibility elsewhere in the energy system, such as in some countries as coal-fired generation is retired.“We estimate that, in 2040, it would take around 10 days for major importing regions to raise their gas import levels by 10%, a week less than it might take today in Europe, Japan and Korea.”
Renewables aren’t slowing down either as costs continue to plummet. The share of electricity in the energy mix also is growing, while and China's new economic strategy takes it on a “cleaner” growth mode, with implications for global energy markets.
“These shifts come at a time when traditional distinctions between energy producers and consumers are being blurred and a new group of major developing countries, led by India, moves toward center stage,” said IEA researchers. “How these developments play out and interact is the story of this outlook, with particular attention paid to their implications for natural gas, this year’s fuel focus.”
Over the next 25 years, the world's growing energy needs are to be met first by natural gas and renewables, with fast-declining costs turning solar power into the cheapest source of new electricity generation.
Global energy demand is forecast to be 30% higher by 2040, but it still will be half as much as it would have been without efficiency improvements, according to the forecast. And coal? The “boom years for coal are over,” researchers said.
Solar photovoltaic (PV) is set to lead global capacity additions, pushed by deployment in China and India, while in the European Union, wind becomes the leading source of electricity soon after 2030.
"Solar is forging ahead in global power markets as it becomes the cheapest source of electricity generation in many places, including China and India," said Birol. Electric vehicles (EV) “are in the fast lane as a result of government support and declining battery costs, but it is far too early to write the obituary of oil, as growth for trucks, aviation, petrochemicals, shipping and aviation keep pushing demand higher.”
The world’s consumers are not yet ready to say goodbye to the era of oil, IEA said.
“Powerful impetus from other sectors is enough to keep oil demand on a rising trajectory to 105 million b/d by 2040: oil use to produce petrochemicals is the largest source of growth, closely followed by rising consumption for trucks (fuel-efficiency policies cover 80% of global car sales today, but only 50% of global truck sales), for aviation and for shipping.”
The WEO-2017 includes a special focus on China, where economic and energy policy changes underway are forecast to have a profound impact on the country's energy mix, continuing to shape global trends. A new phase in the country's development results in an economy that is less reliant on heavy industry and coal.
At the same time, a bigger emphasis on energy technologies, in large part to address poor air quality, is catapulting China to a position as a world leader in wind, solar, nuclear and EVs and the source of more than one-quarter of projected growth in natural gas consumption.
Other countries also are seen continuing to push overall global demand higher, with India accounting for almost one-third of global growth to 2040.
Still it is “too early to write the obituary of oil,” researchers said. Global oil demand continues to grow to 2040, although at a steadily decreasing pace, while fuel efficiency and rising electrification bring a peak in oil used for passenger vehicles, even with a doubling of the car fleet to two billion vehicles.
“But other sectors -- namely petrochemicals, trucks, aviation and shipping -- drive up oil demand to 105 million b/d by 2040.”
Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have flattened in recent years, but global energy-related emissions are seen increasing slightly by 2040, but at a slower pace than in IEA’s 2016 projections.
“Still, this is far from enough to avoid severe impacts of climate change,” researchers said.
The WEO-2017 does not offer a forecast of what the energy system will look like but instead presents various projections to 2040 based on different policy assumptions. The main case, “New Policies Scenario,” models current and announced energy policies, including those in the Paris Agreement, which was reached by nearly 200 countries to reduce CO2 emissions.
This year, IEA also introduces the Sustainable Development Scenario, which offers an integrated way to achieve a range of goals: climate stabilization, cleaner air and universal access to modern energy.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/112448-us-to-become-largest-lng-exporter-by-mid-2020s-says-iea
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Safety Board Drops Interior Department From Oil Rig Oversight Push
Nov 15, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sam Pearson
An Interior Department unit that regulates offshore oil platforms is the wrong entity to put in place new regulations for whistleblower protections and corporate governance, the Chemical Safety Board said Nov. 14.
By a 3-1 vote, the board decided to reclassify two safety recommendations issued last year that tried to boost oversight of offshore oil rigs.
The board cannot write new regulations, but issues nonbinding safety recommendations to responsible companies and other federal, state, and local government agencies. Board members who supported closing the recommendations said the agency's decision did not mean it no longer felt the protections were needed.
The decision was “a technical one based on facts and analysis and should be interpreted narrowly as such,” board member Kristen Kulinowski said.
Kulinowski supported the change along with CSB Chairperson Vanessa Sutherland and board member Manuel Ehrlich.
The board's consideration of the issue raised questions among some advocates concerned about how they would push for the changes.
Board member Rick Engler, who opposed the decision, said the recommendations should have been clarified instead of rescinded. None of the board's findings on the factors causing the Deepwater Horizon blowout were wrong, Engler said.
Michael Wright, health and safety director of the United Steelworkers union, said in an email to Bloomberg Environment Nov. 14 he was encouraged that all board members “expressed their strong support for worker participation and whistleblower protection.”
Still, Wright said, “the question is what comes next?”
Origins of Proposals
The board made the two recommendations to the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) in its report on the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill less than two years ago.
The CSB said BSEE should develop guidance for corporations to set risk-management strategies and issue new regulations. The regulations would establish worker-elected safety representatives that can issue stop-work orders when unsafe conditions are identified.
BSEE could also host a forum each year to encourage interaction between workers, management, and regulators and protect affected workers from retaliation by employers, the CSB suggested.
The plan could create new compliance requirements for offshore oil operators if BSEE, or another agency, adopted CSB's proposal, which some industry officials warned could be counterproductive.
Nicolette Nye, a spokeswoman for the National Ocean Industries Association, said in a statement to Bloomberg Environment that some of the safety proposals are already in use by companies on a voluntary basis. The plan “appears to be repetitive and would add another layer of bureaucracy, which may hinder a decision to stop work when necessary,” Nye said. That organization represents nearly 300 companies working on offshore energy development.
At the meeting Nov. 14, the board members supporting the change said the issue of which agency should be responsible was unclear. They cited a Democratic-supported bill, the Offshore Oil and Gas Worker Whistleblower Protection Act, as evidence the Labor Department, not BSEE, was more suitable to handle whistleblower protections in the sector. That legislation empowers DOL, not BSEE.
Even so, the bill's author, Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Calif.), opposed closing the recommendations. He said in a letter to the CSB Nov. 14 they should instead edit the report to recommend that Congress give BSEE the legal authority it needs. Doing so would “send a strong signal to workers on the Outer Continental Shelf that the Board cares deeply about their safety,” DeSaulnier wrote.
BSEE Pushed Back
BSEE staff previously told the CSB the recommendations were better suited for another agency, BSEE spokesman Greg Julian told Bloomberg Environment.
According to emails provided to Bloomberg Environment, BSEE staff pushed back on the recommendations in June. Doug Morris, BSEE's chief of the office of offshore regulatory programs, told CSB Director of Recommendations Charles Barbee that “action in the immediate future, given other priorities within the Bureau, is unlikely at this time.”
Morris wrote that the recommendations would be better directed to industry groups like the American Petroleum Institute or the International Association of Drilling Contractors, which could develop voluntary standards.
Barbee joined the CSB in August 2016, after the recommendations were issued. He was formerly the chief of the environmental enforcement division at BSEE.
Long Investigation
The report, which took the CSB six years to complete, was released in four volumes. The recommendation that BSEE put regulations in place encouraging worker involvement in safety matters was released April 17, 2016, in Volume 4.
The board recommended that BSEE set rules to create worker-elected safety representatives and safety committees; allow these panels to issue enforceable stop-work orders if they see unsafe conditions; and host an annual forum for labor, management, and government regulators to discuss safety and accident prevention.
At the time, the recommendation called for “an adaptable oversight approach that continuously strives to reduce risk, proactive tools to evaluate and monitor safety performance, and meaningful worker participation,” Sutherland said in a statement.
“Ultimately, this will require a culture shift for everyone,” Sutherland said.
With evidence the Coast Guard, BSEE and DOL may all have at least some authority to implement these kind of proposals, Sutherland said Nov. 14, CSB shouldn't insist only BSEE can.
Rather, Sutherland said in written comments, the board could take “low effort/high impact” steps such as writing to Congress or relevant agencies, offering the CSB's views as future legislation is developed.
This could entail issuing a safety alert or bulletin or surveying industry groups about worker participation to spur the creation of industry guidelines instead of new laws or regulations.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=123813212&vname=dennotallissues&fn=123813212&jd=123813212
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Safety Took A Back Seat At Amtrak, Feds Say. Then Workers Died
Nov 14, 2017 | Philly.com
By Jason Laughlin
WASHINGTON — Federal authorities lambasted Amtrak Tuesday, blaming a failed culture that put punctuality ahead of safety for the deaths of two workers in Chester last year.
“Despite the emphasis on rules compliance, investigators did not find a culture of compliance at all. Rather, they found a culture of fear, on one hand, and normalization of deviance from the rules on the other,” Robert Sumwalt, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said at a hearing reviewing the investigation of the crash.
On April 3, 2016, Amtrak train 89 struck a backhoe on an adjacent track while traveling 99 mph. Two veteran Amtrak employees — the backhoe operator, Joe Carter, and a supervisor, Peter Adamovich — were killed. Thirty-nine passengers were injured on the train of eight passenger cars, a cafe car, and a baggage car traveling from New York City to Savannah, Ga. It carried seven crew members and 337 passengers.
NTSB investigators found 20 separate safety lapses that contributed to the crash. Amtrak had proper safety procedures in place, they said, but workers weren’t following them and there was little effective oversight.
“I don’t ever recall seeing an accident with 20 different prevention factors,” said Earl Weener, a member of the NTSB board. “It’s generally more like three or four.”
At Tuesday’s hearing, the federal agency singled out Amtrak, but also the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) and rail worker unions for contributing to conditions that made the fatal derailment possible.
Amtrak responded through a memo issued to workers that detailed nine initiatives begun since the crash to improve safety.
“Our customers expect us to operate safely, and our jobs and lives depend on it,” said the statement issued jointly by Amtrak’s two chief executives, Wick Moorman and Richard Anderson. “We can and will do better.”
The Chester crash also highlighted the limits of Positive Train Control, an automatic braking system designed to prevent crashes on the rails. That system would have prevented a 2015 Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia that killed eight. It is now in place on all Amtrak-owned track on the Northeast Corridor, but in the Chester crash, human error undermined the system’s effectiveness. That prompted some members of the NTSB board to recommend more technology be deployed on the railroads to make PTC more effective.
“We need to take proactive steps to make sure railway workers stop dying,” said T. Bella Dinh-Zarr, an NTSB board member.
The derailment happened about 7:50 a.m., shortly after a shift change on a rail cleaning project. The NTSB singled out both the night foreman, William Robinson, and the day foreman, John Yager, for failing to ensure trains wouldn’t travel on tracks where workers would be present. Even though there were still workers on the tracks, Robinson canceled safety protections, known as foul time, when he ended his shift, the NTSB found. Yager, meanwhile, never contacted a dispatcher to restore those protections when he began his shift. The day foreman also failed to give workers a proper safety briefing before they began work, as is required.
The dispatcher, meanwhile, had been told by the night foreman that the day foreman would be requesting foul time, but the dispatcher never followed up when he didn’t hear from Yager. The dispatcher, Michael Franklin, was making personal phone calls in the minutes before the derailment, investigators found.
Robinson was fired this year. Amtrak could not say what the status of Yager and Franklin are with the company.
“The large takeaway is that the system is broken culturally and structurally,” said Tom Kline, who is representing Carter’s family in ongoing litigation against Amtrak in connection with the crash. “They finally said there’s something really wrong that really needs to be fixed.”
“To a large degree it’s a vindication of my client and the unfair way he has been managed,” said Mark Schwartz, who is representing Robinson.
The mistakes happened in the context of larger systemic failures, the NTSB found. It had become a standard shortcut for foremen to cancel and resume foul times while maintenance equipment was still on the tracks, which violated proper procedure, Sumwalt said.
Amtrak failed to issue foremen shunts, a device required by Amtrak’s own procedures that alter the electrical current running through tracks to alert a dispatcher to the presence of workers on the rails.
The two men killed in the crash, as well as the train’s engineer, all had drugs in their system. That didn’t appear to contribute to the crash, NTSB officials said, but was further evidence of major failures in Amtrak’s oversight.
Amtrak workers operated under a safety program so punitive they at times looked the other way at safety failures rather than report problems, according to the NTSB review.
Amtrak’s managers, meanwhile, made no effort to ensure shunts were being used by work crews, had no rules preventing dispatchers from making personal phone calls while on the job, and had no procedures to ensure trains slowed when they approached areas where workers were present.
“They emphasized on-time performance over safety,” said Dr. Nick Hoepf, one of the investigators.
The NTSB recommended Amtrak improve oversight for dispatchers and work crews on the tracks and ensure shunting devices are being used. It also recommended Amtrak impose speed restrictions on trains passing through areas where workers are on the tracks.
Since the 2016 crash, Amtrak bought shunts for workers. In the memo sent to workers Tuesday, Amtrak described making changes to its manual for workers on the rails, revising safety training courses and expanding drug and alcohol testing to include rail workers, who previously weren’t included in Amtrak’s random testing. The national rail carrier also has restructured its safety, compliance, and training programs into one department to improve coordination; hired a new vice president to run that department; and increased communication with workers on safety issues.
Some of the issues cited by the NTSB haven’t changed, though. Unions along the Northeast Corridor opted out of two safety programs through contract negotiations, NTSB officials said, and an adversarial relationship between labor leaders and management continues. A more cooperative relationship between workers and management was among the NTSB recommendations.
“I think it’s inexcusable for either of these parties, or any of these parties, to have allowed safety to become a labor management contract negotiating issue,” Sumwalt said.
Jed Dodd, who leads the union that represents rail-repair workers in Pennsylvania, agreed that Amtrak had a failed safety culture. He said the most recent initiatives, which included workers watching each other for safety failures and a process for reporting close calls due to safety failures, put all the onus on workers.
“It’s always the employee’s fault,” he said.
The NTSB also called out the FRA, recommending it require railroads to submit safety programs, specifically making devices like shunts mandatory for workers on the railroad. The FRA would review the NTSB recommendations, a spokesman said.
Amid the pointed criticism of Amtrak during the nearly four-hour hearing, board member Dinh-Zarr focused on the failures this crash revealed about PTC. Because the dispatcher had not logged foul time, and because shunts were not in place, the PTC system could not detect the presence of workers on the track.
Dinh-Zarr prompted an additional recommendation for the FRA that pieces of equipment used for maintenance, like the backhoe involved in this crash, be outfitted with technology that would identify those vehicles to a PTC system as obstacles on a track. All passenger railroads are federally mandated to have PTC installed by the end of 2018.
“It could have been prevented,” Dinh-Zarr said. “Two people are dead today because of human circumvention of the PTC system.”
http://www.philly.com/philly/business/transportation/ntsb-report-amtrak-derailment-april-2016-chester-pennsylvania-20171114.html
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CATF Cites Oil & Gas Emission Equity Harms To Fight EPA Rule Repeal
Nov 15, 2017 | Inside EPA
The Clean Air Task Force (CATF) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in a new report say airborne pollution from oil and gas development are disproportionately impacting African-American communities, findings CATF hopes will help fight Trump administration efforts to undo the Obama EPA's first-time limits on the greenhouse gas methane from new oil and gas drilling.
The Nov. 14 report, “Fumes Across the Fenceline,” documents that oil and gas production, processing, transmission and storage facilities are within one-half mile of more than 1 million African-Americans, exposing them to an elevated cancer risk due to toxic emissions exposure.
It also finds that these facilities routinely violate EPA standards for ozone in many of these communities, causing more than 138,000 asthma attacks among school children and more than 100,000 missed school days.
Across the country, oil refineries are being built in 91 counties near where more than 6.7 African Americans live, causing a disproportionate risk. Environmentalists have long warned about the adverse impact that environmental justice minority and low-income communities living at the fence-line of industrial facilities face from air pollution.
CATF says it hopes to use the findings to further legal efforts under way to stop the Trump administration from repealing methane controls at oil and gas plants. While the Obama-era methane rule is currently still in effect, EPA is looking to stay the regulation while it reconsiders it.
“The oil and gas industry dumps 9 million tons of methane and toxic pollutants like benzene into our air each year,” the report says. It adds that the industry is now the largest source of the potent greenhouse gas methane -- “just one harmful air pollutant” from the industry, which is booming due to hydraulic fracturing technology.
Pollutants from these facilities “threaten the health of African American communities living near oil and gas facilities and in areas far from oil and gas production. The life-threatening burdens placed on communities of color near oil and gas facilities are the result of systemic oppression perpetuated by the traditional energy industry, which exposes communities to health, economic, and social hazards.”
Kathy Egland of the NAACP said in a statement that energy companies deny responsibility for the disproportionate impact yet the study disputes claims that toxic facilities were built first and communities developed around them. Instead, she says the study shows that the facilities are often built in transitional neighborhoods, where demographics then shift from wealthier white residents to lower income people of color “who do not have the means to live elsewhere.”
The largest African American populations living with higher cancer risk are in Texas and Louisiana, with close to 900,000 residents at risk in those states. It also finds that Texas, Ohio and California, followed by Louisiana, Pennsylvania and Oklahoma have the largest share of African Americans living within a half-mile “threat zone.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/catf-cites-oil-gas-emission-equity-harms-fight-epa-rule-repeal
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Tested EPA Air Chief to Advance Trump Rollbacks
Nov 15, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Abby Smith
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt may have just received the most important tool to implement his rollback agenda: the EPA's new air chief Bill Wehrum.
The Senate confirmed Wehrum to head the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Air and Radiation in a largely party-line vote Nov. 9, sending the agency its second confirmed political appointee after Pruitt. Wehrum was sworn in Nov. 13.
Wehrum—who served in the Bush EPA's air office from 2001 to 2007, the latter two years as the acting air chief—brings with him agency expertise that Pruitt's team of outsiders has so far been lacking. And both allies and critics of Wehrum say that prior agency experience will be critical to help turn the Trump administration's deregulatory plans into reality.
The Trump EPA has hit the pause button on Obama-era climate and air regulations the administration has promised to roll back or rewrite. But that strategy hasn't been foolproof.
For example, in July the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit slapped down the EPA's attempts to administratively delay Obama-era limits on methane emissions from new oil and gas wells, forcing the agency to implement the rule.
Former Bush administration officials who worked closely with Wehrum, however, say he can bring a more measured approach to the agency's rollbacks that could overcome court challenges.
“In a lot of cases, they don't need to repeal an entire rule to make important regulatory reforms. They just need to go in with a scalpel and make careful, targeted, changes to current programs,” Jeff Holmstead, who served as the EPA's air chief from 2001 to 2005, told Bloomberg Environment. “With Bill, they'll have a thoughtful surgeon wielding the scalpel—someone who can make the changes in a way that will take care of the problem and also stand up in court.”
‘Doing Damage’
But others who worked with Wehrum say his experience means he's a greater threat to the agency than Pruitt, who made his name as Oklahoma attorney general suing the Obama EPA.
“I don't think I know of anybody who is more capable and inclined of doing damage than Bill,” said Bruce Buckheit, former director of the EPA's air enforcement division who dealt closely with Wehrum during the Bush administration's first term.
“Bill is a quiet fellow, personable, smart, an engineer and a lawyer. But he is really committed to undoing this stuff,” Buckheit told Bloomberg Environment.
However, Wehrum's extensive experience—both in the agency and as an attorney for a decade with Hunton & Williams LLP—could also work against him.
Environmentalists and Democratic lawmakers argue Wehrum's prior work representing utility and petroleum trade groups in lawsuits against EPA, proves a clear conflict of interest should he rewrite those regulations.
That argument is ripe for use in legal challenges against Trump rollbacks, John Walke, clean air director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Bloomberg Environment. His group compiled a list of nearly three dozen cases in which Wehrum represented industry challenges to EPA rules.
A ‘Mastermind’ In the Weeds
A chemical engineer by training, Wehrum has a familiarity with the details of policymaking.
Jessica Furey, who served in the EPA's policy office and co-founded the Whitman Strategies Group, told Bloomberg Environment she remembers going up to Wehrum's office “with piles of papers. He was writing regulations,” which she said was unusual for an official at his level.
“That really is a big insight into what he was doing at EPA,” Furey said. “He really cared about the details.”
Wehrum's technical expertise impressed Holmstead, and he recruited Wehrum—both to his law firm, which at the time was Latham and Watkins LLP, and then to the EPA's air office after Holmstead was appointed chief.
During the Bush administration, Wehrum worked heavily on efforts to reform the EPA's air pollution permitting program known as New Source Review, which is technical and complex. New Source Review requires industrial facilities—including coal-fired power plants and refineries—to install modern pollution controls when renovating or building new facilities that significantly increase air emissions.
Buckheit said Wehrum helped to “mastermind” Bush administration efforts to relax the permitting rules.
The EPA's air enforcement division had found “massive noncompliance” with the program, but Buckheit said Bush officials didn't want to pursue strict enforcement of New Source Review. A compromise was reached, he said, in which existing enforcement cases could go forward, but investigations of further violations were brought to a halt.
Humpty-Dumpty
Changes to the New Source Review spearheaded by Wehrum had mixed success in the courts. But former Bush officials say Wehrum's experience will nonetheless benefit the Trump EPA, which plans to revisit New Source Review.
Pruitt in September announced he would form an agency task force on the issue, and the permitting program topped the EPA's list of burdensome regulations it outlined for review in an Oct. 25 report.
“Bill's knowledge and his experience with the court's review of those prior efforts will be of immense value to him and to EPA,” said Tom Lorenzen, an attorney with Crowell and Moring LLP who served in the Justice Department's environment division from 1997 to 2013.
But Walke said any Trump EPA rollbacks of New Source Review “will be constrained by adverse case law Mr. Wehrum helped create.”
For example, the D.C. Circuit in 2006 strongly rejected an attempt from the Bush EPA to expand the instances in which a facility could be exempt from New Source Review requirements. Judges ruled the Bush-era regulation, advanced by Wehrum, was contrary to the Clean Air Act.
“Only in a Humpty Dumpty world would Congress be required to use superfluous words while an agency could ignore an expansive word that Congress did use,” the D.C. Circuit's opinion in New York v. EPA read. “We decline to adopt such a world-view.”
Career Staff at the Table
Despite differing views, Walke agreed with former Bush officials that Wehrum's arrival at the EPA could help to smooth tensions between Pruitt's political team and the agency's career staff.
“We have heard that career staff welcome the knowledge and professionalism of Wehrum as a needed balm to the wounds caused by the hostility emanating from Pruitt's inner circle,” Walke said, citing conversations with several career staffers, including those who are not fans of Wehrum's rollback efforts.
Wehrum “recognizes those career staff are necessary and valuable to advance the administration's policies,” a notion Pruitt's team has not yet “fully embraced.”
Holmstead recalled Wehrum as a compromise builder who would sit “around a conference table with EPA engineers and lawyers and enforcement folks who didn't see eye-to-eye on a particular issue” and generate “a solution that everyone could support.”
Improving relations with career staff could be contingent, though, on how much running room Pruitt gives Wehrum.
“Whether Bill is allowed to work unfettered with career staff, I don't know,” Furey said, noting Pruitt's team appears less inclined to seek technical, scientific, and economic expertise from career staff than prior administrations of both parties.
But Furey added, “Bill's a smart guy. He'll figure it out.”
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=123813207&vname=dennotallissues&fn=123813207&jd=123813207
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Microsoft Sets New Carbon Target to Help Meet Paris Climate Deal
Nov 15, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jessica Shankleman
Microsoft Corp. joined a growing number of companies pledging to curb their emissions in line with the international efforts to keep global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius.
The world's biggest software company by revenue set a new target to cut carbon dioxide by 75 percent between 2013 and 2030, which is scientifically aligned with the landmark Paris Agreement, according to a blog posting Nov. 14 by Microsoft President Brad Smith.
The announcement was made during the United Nations annual climate conference, where a group of businesses and U.S. state leaders have voiced support for the Paris deal despite President Donald Trump's plan to withdraw. Microsoft's new target builds on previous goals to increase its use of renewable energy and set an internal carbon price.
“As we continue to build a global cloud platform, we increasingly turn to renewable energy because it's a clean energy source and it gives us better long-term financial predictability,” said Smith in the blog.
About 300 major companies are planning to set science-based climate targets targets over the next two years, according to the non-profit group CDP.
“Getting on track to meet America's targets under the Paris Agreement without federal support will require a new groundswell of commitments from businesses, cities and states at the scale Microsoft aspires to and beyond,’’ said Lou Leonard, World Wildlife Fund's senior vice president of climate change and energy, in an email.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=123813220&vname=dennotallissues&fn=123813220&jd=123813220
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Halting Weak Climate Rules for Poorer Nations Top U.S. Priority
Nov 15, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Dean Scott
Resisting efforts by China and other developing nations to carve out separate, less stringent rules for reporting and verifying their greenhouse gas emissions under the 2015 Paris Agreement is the priority for the U.S. at the Bonn climate talks, a White House official said Nov. 14.
“We want to make sure we do what we can to avoid bifurcation” that would make one set of rules for industrialized nations and others for China, India, and other big developing nation emitters, said David Banks, the White House energy and international environment adviser, who spoke to a group of reporters on the sidelines of the United Nations climate summit.
How much leverage the U.S. has on those issues at the summit in Bonn is a question mark, however: The State Department announced Nov. 14 that the head of its delegation and undersecretary of state for political affairs, Tom Shannon, is not coming to Bonn due to a family emergency.Veteran U.S. climate negotiator Trigg Talley also departed the summit earlier in the day due to a family medical emergency, according to several U.S. delegation sources. Taking the helm of the U.S. delegation is Judith Garber, acting assistant secretary of state for oceans and international affairs.
In addition, President Donald Trump announced in June that he is pulling the U.S. out of the Paris deal; the U.S. remains at the table in climate talks only because the pact imposed a four-year waiting period for withdrawal.
Moving Paris Guidance
Banks, who was speaking to reporters before the delegation announcement, said U.S. negotiators’ priority for the summit that is slated to end Nov. 17 is to “move the Paris guidance"—the rulebook being drafted during the next year to implement the climate pact—"in the right direction” and away from efforts toward separate rules, Banks said.
The Obama administration—as well as European and other developed nations—fought and won that debate in 2015 talks toward the Paris deal. The countries settled on a single set of rules for all countries, with some leeway for island nations and the world's poorest economies.
Two years later, the Trump administration is now at the table in the somewhat awkward position of parroting Obama, who said it was time to end differentiation, given China today emits twice the emissions of the U.S.
The different tracks were first included in the 1992 U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change but also the Kyoto Protocol. President George W. Bush cited the separate treatment in essentially withdrawing the U.S. from the Kyoto deal in 2001.
‘Major Flaw’
The different tracks are “a major flaw in the framework convention, and we certainly don't want to see it in the Paris Agreement,” Banks said. “I would say that's probably the number one priority” for State Department negotiators in the final days of talks that end Friday.
U.S. negotiators have talked with China and Fiji; a third session scheduled with Canada was postponed, a U.S. delegation member told Bloomberg Environment.
The dispute also has seeped into other subjects being debated in various negotiating tracks at the Bonn talks, a largely procedural summit of more than 190 nations that is to advance implementation rules that will get their finishing touches in late 2018.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=123813206&vname=dennotallissues&fn=123813206&jd=123813206
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Upheaval in Bonn as U.S. Reshuffles Climate Diplomats
Nov 15, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Dean Scott
State Department diplomat Tom Shannon, long slated to take the helm of the U.S. delegation at the United Nations climate summit in Bonn, won't be coming due to a family emergency, the State Department said Nov. 14, adding a new complication to talks intended to begin implementing the Paris climate pact.
Ordinarily, that job of top U.S. negotiator at the U.N. summit would fall to Trigg Talley, a longtime State Department climate negotiator tasked with leading U.S. climate diplomats until Shannon's arrival to take the reins in Bonn for the final three days of the Nov. 6–17 summit. But Talley departed the German city early Nov. 14 for his own family emergency, according to several members of the U.S. delegation.
Shannon will be replaced by Judith Garber, the acting assistant secretary of state for oceans, environment, and science, the State Department said. Garber is a longtime career diplomat and was tapped in September to lead the U.S. delegation to Geneva for the first conference of the parties to the global treaty to limit mercury use, formally known as the Minamata Convention on Mercury.
Signs of Division
The announcement came amid signs of division between career State Department negotiators, who are largely focused on procedures to implement the Paris climate pact, and Trump administration political appointees sent to the Bonn summit, who are arguing that fossil fuels can play a role in helping to meet global climate goals.
One obvious result of the reshuffling is the substitution of a lower level State Department official in Garber—who is in an acting capacity—for Shannon, the third-ranking diplomat at the State Department. It's also unclear which U.S. representative will address a high-level plenary at the Bonn talks Nov. 15, where world leaders and environment ministers are to speak and where Shannon was slated to deliver remarks on behalf of the U.S.
The moves come at a tricky time in the negotiations, which are already complicated by President Trump's announcement in June that he will pull the U.S. out of the 2015 Paris climate deal, according to Alden Meyer, who tracks the talks for the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The two-week summit is coming down to its final three days, Meyer said, with focus on key “politically charged issues” such as climate finance, loss and damage suffered by poorer nations more vulnerable to climate change, and any additional actions countries might take before 2020 to curb their emissions.
“This is a whole level of complexity she's stepping into to lead the U.S.” as the talks come down to the wire, Meyer said of Garber, the new delegation head.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=123813205&vname=dennotallissues&fn=123813205&jd=123813205
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Senate Dems Return From Bonn, Say America's 'Still In'
Nov 15, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder
As global leaders continue to meet in Bonn, Germany, for the U.N. Climate Change Conference, Democrats in Congress presented a united front during a rally today against President Trump and his decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris accord.
Sens. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) were part of a small congressional delegation that went to the conference "to let the world know that the Trump administration is not only isolated in the world on this subject but he is isolated from the rest of America," Whitehouse said.
Schatz said the trip went better than he expected. He said they were "well-received" but noted that U.S. allies have "great anxiety."
"Whatever the president may say about climate, he cannot stop clean energy," Schatz said. "He's a powerful man, but he's not a monarch."
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told Trump to take a look at a defense authorization bill moving through Congress that calls on the Department of Defense to assess the impact of climate change on global military installations (E&E Daily, Nov. 13).
Others lawmakers and activists also pointed to the National Defense Authorization Act as a sign of climate change action under a Republican-controlled Washington, D.C.
Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.) said the legislation includes for the first time the acknowledgement that climate change is real and that it must be dealt with.
"Even our military acknowledges the threat that climate change poses to our country's national security," said Kildee during the Capitol Hill rally.
Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) echoed those statements, saying, "It's clear today that the U.S. military is way ahead of this administration."
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who also attended the Bonn talks, said the delegation told other countries that the American people are "still in" the Paris Agreement.
"The planet is running a fever, and there are no emergency rooms for planets," Markey said.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) took the opportunity to criticize her state's governor. She said that despite comments by Gov. Rick Scott (R) and Trump, Floridians still respect the need to address global warming.
She pointed to a survey that found the majority of Floridians believe hurricane intensity was tied to climate change.
"And yet we have a governor like our home state governor and a president who believes that climate change is not real," Wasserman Schultz said.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2017/11/14/stories/1060066511
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Trump Deputy Vows Admin Will Keep Working On Climate
Nov 15, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Christa Marshall
White House officials will continue to "play our part" on climate change and work on related science reports, presidential adviser Michael Kratsios said this week.
Currently deputy assistant to the president and the deputy U.S. chief technology officer, Kratsios was asked about the Trump administration's climate stance during a half-hour public interview at the Internet Association conference that was posted online today.
"The climate science issue is one that is covered by a whole host of agencies and offices throughout the federal government," Kratsios said.
"We continue to do that work and play our part among the 13 agencies, which are part of the [U.S. Global Change Research Program]," he added, referring to the release this month of the latest version of the National Climate Assessment.
That report found that humans are having an unprecedented impact on the climate by burning fossil fuels (E&E News PM, Nov. 3).
One focus of the Office of Science and Technology Policy is creating an environment "where the next great technologies for the energy sector can be developed here in the U.S.," including for renewables, said Kratsios, a former top aide to White House adviser Peter Thiel.
He said "yes" when he asked if he personally believed that humans are driving warming.
"The administration has been very clear. The climate is changing. There's definitely no denying that," he said.
OSTP, where Kratsios works, historically has played a coordinating role in the national climate assessment and other federal climate research, but it's been unclear since the election how much the office would focus on the issue, or energy in general. In August, records obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request showed that OSTP eliminated many of its former climate positions (Greenwire, Aug. 4).
Last month, Trump set a record for going longer than any modern president without an OSTP director in place.
Asked about that, Kratsios said that "we're very excited to have someone nominated very soon" but did not provide a timeline. Currently, OSTP general counsel Rachael Leonard is serving as acting director, according to an administration official.
Eventually, Kratsios said OSTP likely would have about 60 to 70 staffers, which is about half the level at the end of the Obama administration but in line with historical numbers.
"I don't see head count as a proxy for commitment to particular policy initiatives," he said.
Kratsios also said OSTP is leading a White House review of the U.S. nuclear fleet, along with the National Economic Council and National Security Council.
"We should be seeing some results of that in coming months," he said.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2017/11/14/stories/1060066515
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Democrats, Environmentalists Vow Ongoing Climate Push
Nov 15, 2017 | Inside EPA
Environmental advocates and their Democratic allies on Capitol Hill are using the ongoing United Nations climate change talks to continue to push back against the notion that current regulatory rollbacks from EPA and other agencies will permanently end climate mitigation efforts in the United States.
Several groups -- including the Center for American Progress (CAP) and League of Conservation -- -- as well as Hill Democrats held a Nov. 14 press event outside the Capitol to drive home the theme that the country is “still in” on the climate change effort, despite President Donald Trump's pledge to leave the Paris climate agreement.
“All across America, our communities are letting the rest of the world know they are still in the Paris climate agreement. Our states, our cities and our local governments are still in,” CAP President Neera Tanden said.
She added: “Today is just the start. Let's keep spreading the word so we can defeat Donald Trump's dangerous and radical climate agenda.”
Lawmakers speaking at the event included Sens. Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who noted they had just returned from the U.N. climate talks in Bonn, Germany, and had sought to ensure participants there that the Trump administration's resistance to climate policies is not shared by the rest of the country.
“We explained to them that the statutes that allow us to move forward with clean energy are essentially the Clean Air Act, which no one is going to touch, and the investment tax credit and the production tax credit for wind and solar,” Schatz said. “We are going to continue the clean energy revolution.”
Whitehouse said that the lawmakers' message in Bonn was “to let the world know that the administration is not only isolated in the world . . . it is isolated from the rest of America,” including universities, corporations and state and local governments still working to meet their climate commitments.
The event underscored an ongoing push to motivate allies and other countries who support aggressive efforts to tackle climate change, and it comes amid several similar events in Bonn and elsewhere.
For instance, a coalition of states, cities and businesses unveiled a new report over the weekend at the U.N. climate talks that is meant to underscore the breath of mitigation efforts at a range of non-federal governments and other entities.
“It is important for the world to know, the American government may have pulled out of the Paris agreement, but the American people are committed to its goals, and there is nothing Washington can do to stop us,” said former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, co-chair of the group America's Pledge, during the Nov. 11 event.
Although the Democratic officials are seeking to portray Trump's climate rollbacks as irrelevant over the long term, they acknowledge that the federal government must re-engage on the issue at some point if the country hopes to achieve mid-century climate targets.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/democrats-environmentalists-vow-ongoing-climate-push
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