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ACC PM 28/12/17
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There's a Shocking Lack of Rigorous Testing and Regulation of Chemicals in the United States
Dec 28, 2017 | Alternet
By Michelle Perro, Vincanne Adams
The concerns raised by environmental health scholars are similar to those raised by researchers looking at pesticides. -
Trump Seeks to Roll Back Offshore Drilling Safety Standards
Dec 28, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The Trump administration wants to roll back some of a wide-ranging Obama-era regulation that was meant to improve the safety of offshore oil and natural gas drilling. -
U.S Offshore Drilling Agency Rolls Back Safety Regs
Dec 28, 2017 | Houston Chronicle
By James Osborne
The nation's offshore drilling regulator announced Thursday it was pulling back some of the safety regulations put in place following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico. -
Interior Repeals Obama-Era Fracking Rule
Dec 28, 2017 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Alex Guillen
The Interior Department will repeal the Obama administration’s fracking rule that would have required companies to disclose what chemicals they use, according to a notice to be published in Friday’s Federal Register.
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There's a Shocking Lack of Rigorous Testing and Regulation of Chemicals in the United States
Dec 28, 2017 | Alternet
By Michelle Perro, Vincanne Adams
The concerns raised by environmental health scholars are similar to those raised by researchers looking at pesticides. Most people would be surprised, however, to learn there is a shocking lack of rigorous testing and regulation of chemicals in the United States. One would expect our food supply to be well regulated, but in far too many cases the three federal government agencies that bear responsibility for some aspect of food safety have not been exercising adequate oversight. These agencies are the FDA, the USDA (US Department of Agriculture), and the EPA.
The FDA has been granted the major role, and it is supposed to be exercising great precaution. According to the stipulations of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, this agency must ensure that all new additives to our food that do not have a safe history of use prior to 1958 are demonstrated to be safe via standard scientific testing before they’re allowed on the market. In cases where sufficient technical evidence of safety has already been produced, and this evidence is well-recognized among experts, the new additive can be deemed to be “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS), and the manufacturer is not required to produce additional evidence. But these precautionary safeguards have been violated when it comes to genetically engineered foods. As the public interest attorney Steven Druker has revealed in his book, Altered Genes, Twisted Truth, even though the FDA has acknowledged that the various pieces of DNA inserted into genetically engineered organisms are within the purview of these laws, it has claimed they are exempt from testing because they are GRAS—despite the fact its own files demonstrate the agency knew that neither of the requirements for GRAS status had been satisfied. Druker argues that although (1) the FDA’s own experts concluded that GM foods pose abnormal risks and need to be tested, (2) the agency also knew that a significant number of experts outside the agency also believed that safety testing is needed, and (3) the agency additionally knew that no technical evidence of safety had been generated, it covered up these facts and falsely proclaimed that the conditions for GRAS had been satisfied. Accordingly, Druker states that the FDA allowed GM foods to come to market without requiring any testing whatsoever. GM foods that are pesticides or PIP (plant-incorporated protectant) are regulated by the EPA.
The USDA, the oldest of the three institutions, established in 1862, also regulates agrochemicals and the ways that farmers grow crops or raise livestock and poultry. However, their main concern in this regard is in relation to new technologies or chemicals jeopardizing existing animal and farm resources. They do not regulate agriculturally used chemicals in relation to their toxicity to humans. Nor do they regulate or test the foods themselves (once they have left the farm, so to speak).
Finally, the EPA was established in 1970 with a more general and loosely defined responsibility to protect human health and the environment, based on monitoring, standard setting, and enforcement. In 1976, Congress passed the Toxic Substances Control Act, which gave the EPA full power to control chemicals that posed a health risk to humans and the environment. But have they?
The EPA’s task has been to monitor the nearly 100,000 chemicals produced in or imported into the United States. Of these 100,000 chemicals, the EPA has only taken action to reduce the risk of over 3,600 chemicals, and it has banned or limited the production or use of only 5. It has not actually regulated a single chemical in the United States since the mid-1980s. Keep in mind, the EPA is the same agency responsible for determining the safe limits of pesticide residues in plants that are produced for human consumption.
On top of all this, the EPA’s central stance on regulation is that chemicals are safe until proven otherwise. However, just how it determines this “safe” level is surprising. To determine maximum levels of exposure for certain chemicals, the EPA samples the concentrations of a chemical in the population. In other words, the EPA does not conduct rigorous research on the effects of chemicals; rather, it surveys the population and figures out how much is already present with the assumption that that amount is safe. This sets a range for an acceptable amount.
The EPA also does rigorous searches of the available research literature on toxicity from chemicals. The obvious flaws in this logic are twofold: First, adverse health effects are often not immediate or acute, but rather are long term before they develop as chronic problems. It is difficult to decipher exact causes of environmentally induced health effects, especially if they take a long time to develop. Chronic low levels of chemicals can accumulate in the body over time, and create long-term health effects such as cancer, but these are not going to be seen for decades. Thus, “safe levels” are likely to be inaccurate and the use of dangerous chemicals might persist for many decades because toxicity is not yet apparent.
Second, in regard to the EPA’s use of scientific studies when it comes to foods, it follows the pattern of the FDA. Many studies on chemicals in foods are focused on establishing equivalence with existing foods, showing that they are no more dangerous than foods already in circulation. Thus, most foods do not fall under the scrutiny of the EPA, just as they don’t under the FDA. The EPA does, however, exercise regulatory power over the use of foods that have become pesticides in and of themselves (such as some GM foods) because it is charged with regulating pesticides. However, the EPA has never actually curtailed use of these pesticide foods.
Finally, studies on chemical toxicities that are done in animals are almost exclusively done by the industries that produce and sell them, raising questions about bias and validity that are seldom heard at any of these regulatory agencies. The EPA accepts standards set by chemical companies that are based on their own research of “safe levels” or what are called “no observed adverse effect levels” (NOAELs). These levels are based on exposure tests on animals or humans, comparing biologically or statistically significant changes between test and control groups for alteration of morphology, functional capacity, growth, development, or life span. The EPA takes into account a variety of different measures of safe levels, which can vary from state to state, including no significant risk levels (NSRLs), maximum allowable dose levels (MADLs), and chronic reference dose levels (cRfD), depending on what type of disorder or toxicity one is looking at.
What all this adds up to is that despite the fact that many of these chemicals have been assigned “safe levels” of exposure and are on the market for use in our homes, schools, and businesses, they are often adjusted later, after reports begin to trickle in about possible effects or about exposure-related effects that are below these safe levels. Even when safety levels are set, often these minimal regulations are only made by the EPA in response to complaints, lawsuits, and hard-fought advocacy work of public interest organizations, rather than because the EPA is proactive and, on its own, does research to test safety.
Shifting the burden of proof of safety to industries has resulted in outcomes that should have been expected; industries are not very good at policing themselves. And, it turns out, neither is the EPA, FDA, or USDA very good at protecting us. The coordination between industry, health researchers, and government regulation in the area of agrochemicals used in food production is abysmal. So, if we are quite literally surrounded by and bathing in—and entirely unable to escape from—the chemical hurricane that has arrived with the scientific engineering of our food supply, what sort of science, what kind of regulation, and what sort of medicine should we practice to deal with this?
To answer this question, we first need to explore what these poisons are and how exactly they impact our health. It turns out that answering these questions is not so easy. After all, not everyone who eats these foods gets sick, or at least not right away. In fact, some people never do, and this has created huge skepticism among many. Food industries and agribusinesses have spent a good deal of time assuring us that these foods and the chemicals we use to grow these foods are safe. Finally, again, the USDA the EPA, and the FDA are not telling us that these crops are dangerous. Is it possible, however, that in our effort to ensure a sufficient food supply and profit margin for our farming communities we have had the wool pulled over our collective eyes when it comes to food safety?Report Advertisement
Leaving aside the issues of meat, poultry, and dairy that are full of antibiotics and hormones (and that eat grain and grass crops that are genetically modified), what are these crops we are so worried about? The genetic engineering technologies that are of particular concern to food-focused medicine are twofold. First is the genetic engineering of crops so that they are resistant to the herbicide Roundup, referred to as “Roundup Ready crops.” These crops are specifically modified genetically to withstand death from glyphosate. That is, they are designed to enable use of Roundup. The second is the genetic engineering of crops so they contain the natural insecticide Bacillusthuringiensis toxin (Bt toxin). Bt is almost always used in conjunction with Roundup Ready genetic modifications. Plants modified with Bt are designed to kill pests trying to eat them; in fact, the plants themselves are turned into insecticides. No matter what part of the plant is eaten by a pest, it will kill the insect. Again, arguments for and against the safety of these genetic engineering technologies in food crops are controversial on both sides.
When you consider that most of the Roundup Ready crops, including soy, corn, canola, alfalfa, cotton, sugar beets, apples, potatoes, and, soon, wheat (although experimental forms of genetically modified wheat do exist), are getting drenched in glyphosate and other herbicides as a normal part of their agricultural production, questions about how many of these chemicals are ending up in the foods we eat, and in the environment, naturally follow.
Prior to GM crops, farmers could not spray herbicides on the crops themselves, because the herbicides killed the food crops along with the weeds. Farmers sprayed the soil prior to planting. With the advent of Roundup Ready crops (and now, new GM crops that are resistant to stronger, more toxic herbicides), for the first time, farmers are able to spray the food itself—repeatedly—meaning a vastly increased amount of herbicides has entered directly into our food supply in just the past two decades.
When you further consider that many of these food crops are themselves also modified to act like pesticides against living organisms, questions about what exactly these foods are doing inside of our guts, and specifically to the microorganisms in our guts, naturally arise as well. When you consider that poultry and livestock are fed foods with these same genetic modifications, plus the large quantities of added herbicides that accompany them, then questions about the pervasive dissemination of these chemicals into the animals that we consume escalate quickly. Finally, when you consider that most processed foods—even baby formula and baby foods in most US grocery stores today—are made from these crops (especially soy and corn or their derivatives), then one begins to see the contours of our contemporary Silent Spring.
Exactly how are these chemically dependent tactics for food production impacting the human body and specifically the health of our children? There is much less information about this topic, and virtually none available to clinicians. Even clinicians who are aware of these profound disruptions in the environment and in our food will have a hard time parsing the information and applying it to their clinical practices. This interface is challenging at best, daunting at worst. This lack of information is appalling considering the pervasiveness of genetically modified crops that saturate the food supply of Americans today.
https://www.alternet.org/books/theres-shocking-lack-rigorous-testing-and-regulation-chemicals-united-states
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Trump Seeks to Roll Back Offshore Drilling Safety Standards
Dec 28, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
The Trump administration wants to roll back some of a wide-ranging Obama-era regulation that was meant to improve the safety of offshore oil and natural gas drilling.
The proposed rollbacks by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) are meant to help fulfill President Trump’s promise to ease regulations for production of fossil fuels and his goal of “energy dominance.”
BSEE said the changes would save the oil and gas industry $33 million a year and would not compromise safety, the environment or worker protections.
The Obama administration rule, written in 2016, integrated some of the lessons learned in the massive 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster at a BP well in the Gulf of Mexico.
But Thursday’s action does not make changes to the Well Control Rule, which was the most significant post-Deepwater Horizon regulatory action. The Trump administration is still reviewing that rule for potential rollbacks or other changes.
“I am confident that this revision of the Production Safety Systems Rule moves us forward toward meeting the administration’s goal of achieving energy dominance without sacrificing safety,” BSEE Director Scott Angelle said in a statement.
“By reducing the regulatory burden on industry, we are encouraging increased domestic oil and gas production while maintaining a high bar for safety and environmental sustainability.”
BSEE said in its proposal industry groups and companies raised concerns or objections that led to the changes.
The most significant changes in Thursday’s proposal would eliminate the requirement for third parties to certify that certain safety equipment can withstand the most extreme conditions and reduce the mandate that certified professional engineers review drawings of all of a driller’s safety equipment.
The third-party certification is unnecessary, BSEE concluded.
“Compliance with the various required standards ... ensures that each device will function in the conditions for which it was designed,” it said in the proposal due to be published in the Federal Register Friday.
As for the review of diagrams by certified engineers, BSEE decided to require that step only for the “most critical documents.”
“This change would reduce the burden on operators by no longer requiring a [professional engineer] to certify as many diagrams and drawings,” it said.
BSEE is accepting comments from the public for 30 days on the proposal.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/366669-trump-seeks-to-roll-back-offshore-drilling-safety-standards
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U.S Offshore Drilling Agency Rolls Back Safety Regs
Dec 28, 2017 | Houston Chronicle
By James Osborne
The nation's offshore drilling regulator announced Thursday it was pulling back some of the safety regulations put in place following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico.
"It's time for a paradigm shift in the way we regulate the OCS," said Scott Angelle, director of the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. "There was an assumption made previously that only more rules would increase safety, but ultimately it is not an either/or proposition. We can actually increase domestic energy production and increase safety and environmental protection."
Among the changes outlined in the more than 80-page proposal, oil and gas drillers in U.S. waters would no longer be required to hire a third party to test safety equipment designed to reduce the risk of spills and explosions while accessing oil and gas deposits far below the ocean's surface. And they would report less frequently to federal regulators onshore "prior to commencement of production, and for reporting equipment failures."
RELATED STORY: Offshore safety chief urges shift from 'little bitty things'
BSEE said it would also reopen earlier decisions like what constitutes an equipment failure, potentially allowing companies to avoid more draconian provisions within current regulations.
"Safety experts in the offshore oil and gas industry now have the opportunity to comment on this important regulation. This 'second bite at the apple' provides an opportunity for further dialogue," said Randall Luthi, president of the trade group National Ocean Industries Association.
The announcement comes as President Donald Trump seeks to expand U.S. energy production, both though expanded leasing on federal lands and waters but also through the shrinking of environmental regulations enacted by former president Barack Obama.
The reaction from environmentalists was swift.
"Reversing offshore safety rules isn't just deregulation, it's willful ignorance," said Miyoko Sakashita director of the oceans program at the Center for Biological Diversity. "By tossing aside the lessons from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Trump is putting our coasts and wildlife at risk of more deadly oil spills."
http://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/U-S-offshore-drilling-agency-rolls-back-safety-12459560.php
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Interior Repeals Obama-Era Fracking Rule
Dec 28, 2017 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Alex Guillen
The Interior Department will repeal the Obama administration’s fracking rule that would have required companies to disclose what chemicals they use, according to a notice to be published in Friday’s Federal Register.
“The BLM believes that the 2015 rule, which would impose compliance costs and information requirements that are duplicative of regulatory programs of many states and some tribes, is redundant and therefore unnecessarily burdensome on regulated entities,” the Bureau of Land Management wrote in its notice. “Any marginal benefits provided by the 2015 rule do not outweigh the rule’s costs, even if those costs are a small percentage of the cost of a well.”
The rule’s rescission will take effect immediately.
The Trump administration made repealing the rule a priority as part of its effort to expand oil and gas production on federal lands. The rule never took effect, having been frozen by a federal judge who ruled it an unconstitutional expansion of Interior’s regulatory powers.
An ongoing appeal to the 10th Circuit was halted recently after the judges concluded the impending repeal of the fracking rule made the matter moot. The 10th Circuit said it would wipe the lower court’s ruling off the books in a move that could allow environmental groups to press for a new version of the fracking rule.
On Wednesday, the court gave Interior until Jan. 12 to finish repealing the rule.
WHAT’S NEXT: The repeal will be published in Friday’s Federal Register with immediate effect.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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