Preview Newsletter
ACC PM 5/17/18
-
(ACC Mentioned) Industry Will Need Help Reaching Aggressive Recycling Goals
May 17, 2018 | Plastics News
By Don Loepp
Perhaps the biggest news for the long-term future of the plastics industry that came out during NPE week didn't even happen in Orlando, Fla. -
The Last 24 Hours of a 24 Year-Old NAFTA?
May 17, 2018 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Fernand Fernandez
Members of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement are under pressure to deliver renegotiated deal within the next 24 hours to meet a May 17 deadline set by House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). But a revised NAFTA is no guarantee that the United States will stay in the multilateral agreement. -
Emails: EPA All Ears as Industry Pitched 'Secret Science'
May 17, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Maxine Joselow
Industry groups pitched EPA a proposal last spring that closely resembled what became Administrator Scott Pruitt's "secret science" plan, according to emails released this week under Freedom of Information Act litigation. -
(ACC Mentioned) NGO Warns Against Rushing to Alternative Methods Under TSCA
May 17, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Emma Davies
NGO the Natural Resources Defense Council has voiced concern that new technologies will be deployed too fast under the US EPA's draft strategy for alternative test methods under TSCA. -
Claims of Spike in US Animal Testing for New Chemicals Disputed
May 17, 2018 | Chemistry World
By Rebecca Trager
A major environmental organisation is disputing new claims by two animal rights groups that animal testing for new chemicals at the US Environmental Protection Agency rocketed in 2017. -
(ACC Mentioned) The U.S. Must Ban Asbestos – With No Exemptions
May 17, 2018 | Environmental Working Group
By Linda Reinstein
Fifty-five nations have banned all uses of asbestos. Shockingly, the U.S. isn’t one of them. The nation’s new toxics law gives the Environmental Protection Agency the power to completely ban the notorious killer, but the chemical industry is pushing for continued exemptions for some uses. -
(ACC Mentioned) Sen. Tom Udall Wants EPA to Ban Neurotoxic Chemical: 'Scott Pruitt Doesn't Listen to Science'
May 17, 2018 | Yahoo News
By Michael Walsh
In defiance of President Trump’s deregulatory agenda, Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., is fighting to ban a pesticide that’s been found to cause brain damage and other neurological harm to children. -
EDF and Others Take FDA to Court to Demand Action on Carcinogenic Flavors Petition
May 17, 2018 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Tom Neltner
On May 2nd, EDF and other consumer health advocates filed a lawsuit to force the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to make a final decision on our food additive petition, which asked the agency to reverse its approvals of seven carcinogenic synthetic flavors. -
Campaigners Press US National Toxicology Program on Animal Testing
May 17, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
Two advocacy groups have called on the US National Toxicology Program to replace "wasteful" animal tests with alternative methods for determining the safety of chemicals. -
Glyphosate Study Defender Tapped to Lead Cancer Agency
May 17, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Corbin Hiar
The World Health Organization's leadership has tapped a Brazilian researcher to lead its embattled cancer bureau who has vigorously defended the office and its work on a controversial study of the herbicide glyphosate. -
EU Priorities for EDC Test Methods Outlined in Workshop
May 17, 2018 | Chemical Watch
The European Commission has published a report outlining its priorities for the development of test methods for the identification of endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs). -
EU Restriction on CMRs in Textiles a 'Missed Opportunity'
May 17, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Leigh Stringer
EU action to restrict 33 carcinogenic, mutagenic or reprotoxic (CMR) substances is a welcome move, but much work remains to protect consumers against harmful chemicals in textiles, says European consumer group Beuc. -
Antimony Industry to Start Data Gathering Effort in 2019
May 17, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Leigh Stringer
The International Antimony Association (i2a) is to run a data gathering campaign next year to generate exposure information on all REACH registered antimony substances, including those under evaluation by German authorities. -
Echa Round-Up
May 17, 2018 | Chemical Watch
Echa says there will be a necessary delay in responding to C&L notifications over the next two weeks because it will be busy processing REACH registration dossiers for the 31 May deadline. -
Canada Consults on Ecological Risk Classification for Inorganics
May 17, 2018 | Chemical Watch
Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) is seeking public comments on its ecological risk classification of inorganic substances (ERC-I), used to determine whether substances warrant further evaluation or have a low likelihood of causing ecological harm. -
UK Proposes Post-Brexit Environmental Body
May 17, 2018 | Chemical Watch
The UK’s Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) has announced plans to establish an independent and statutory environmental watchdog by the end of 2020. -
Energy Infrastructure Investment Can Unlock Jobs, Energy Security
May 17, 2018 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Jack Gerard and Terry O’sullivan
Spring weather is finally here, but some New Yorkers haven’t forgotten being left in the cold when their homes lost heat over the winter. -
Cuomo's 'Politics' to Blame for N.Y.'s Latest Project Denial
May 17, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Saqib Rahim
State regulators under New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) denied yesterday that election-year politics have any role in the state's evaluation of a proposed natural gas pipeline. -
Energy Jobs Cut into Red and Blue State Divide
May 17, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Peter Behr
The remaking of the U.S. energy sector is happening in ways not entirely tethered to the nation's red state-blue state political divide. -
Wehrum Strongly Hints EPA Will Not Scrap GHG Risk Finding
May 17, 2018 | Inside EPA
EPA air chief Bill Wehrum is strongly hinting that the agency will not seek to scrap its finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, though he is stopping short of agreeing with the finding's conclusions and is not definitively committing to retaining the risk assessment that forms the basis for all of EPA's climate rules. -
Top Official Gets Climate Science Lessons
May 17, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Camille von Kaenel
A top EPA political appointee is receiving staff briefings on climate change science at his request.
Industry and Association News
LCSA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Transportation and Infrastructure News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Environment News
-
(ACC Mentioned) Industry Will Need Help Reaching Aggressive Recycling Goals
May 17, 2018 | Plastics News
By Don Loepp
Perhaps the biggest news for the long-term future of the plastics industry that came out during NPE week didn't even happen in Orlando, Fla.
It was the American Chemistry Council's announcement of a goal to reuse, recycle or recover all plastics packaging by 2040.
Maybe 22 years sounds like a long time, but it's not. Many Plastics Newsreaders have been in the industry that long — or longer. If you can remember working in plastics in 1996, then just imagine if the industry had made this goal back then and achieved it. How different would the plastics industry be today? How much less pressure would there to ban plastics products?
It's an intriguing question. Conversely, consider where the industry will be in 2040 if it keeps chugging along with the status quo: suppliers announcing more capacity to take advantage of low-cost feedstocks but growing concern from consumers about litter, marine debris and low recycling rates.
That's not a sustainable path.
So, the members of the ACC Plastics division should be applauded for setting an ambitious goal to end plastics packaging waste. Making the announcement, Vice President Steve Russell acknowledged that the goals will not be easy to achieve.
As Plastics News' Jim Johnson pointed out in his story about the goals, even steel and aluminum, which have many advantages over plastics when it comes to recycling, have recycling rates that are nowhere near 100 percent.
Progress will require big improvements in infrastructure, recycling technology, materials science, product design and consumer attitudes. It will require cooperation from all sectors of the plastics industry and, perhaps most important of all, consumer product companies that specify plastics packaging. For most, their No. 1 priority has never been sustainability or recyclability; it's been selling product. The makers of Coca-Cola and Tide aren't selling plastic bottles; they're selling soft drinks and laundry detergent.
But they want to keep selling soft drinks and laundry detergent in plastics packaging, so they need to realize that it's in their interest to get on board with ACC's goal.
The plastics industry has had problems in the past when some set ambitious "rates and dates" goals when faced with public pressure, then quietly stepped away from the commitment when it became financially too difficult. The fact that ACC's Plastics division, which represents nearly all of the region's resin manufacturers, is behind this goal is a good sign because it will take a unified effort to achieve.
I wonder how the plastics industry will reach the goal. I hope I'm there in 2040 — or before — when they announce the victory. And I know Plastics News, and the world, will be watching for signs of progress.
http://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20180517/OPINION01/305179997/industry-will-need-help-reaching-aggressive-recycling-goals
-
The Last 24 Hours of a 24 Year-Old NAFTA?
May 17, 2018 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Fernand Fernandez
Members of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement are under pressure to deliver renegotiated deal within the next 24 hours to meet a May 17 deadline set by House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). But a revised NAFTA is no guarantee that the United States will stay in the multilateral agreement. President Trump has vowed that, if his demands for a revision of “the worst trade deal in the history of the world” are not met, he will unilaterally withdrawal.
The arbitrary May 17 deadline is not conducive to a trade agreement that will protect American jobs and grow the American economy. In fact, the pressure only contributes to economic uncertainty.
In order to renegotiate an agreement that creates jobs and supports American industries, the three countries will need to take a holistic approach to NAFTA negotiations. This will require far more than 24 hours.
In attempting to stunt NAFTA negotiations, Speaker Ryan runs the risk of subjecting NAFTA to the same fate as the Trans Pacific Partnership, a multilateral trade agreement that the U.S. exited shortly after President Trump’s inauguration. This was a hasty and ill-advised decision that damaged U.S. economic interests and increased China’s competitive advantage.
Instead of eliminating trade deals, we should be seeking trade opportunities—NAFTA negotiations are a new opportunity for growth, and it is crucial that negotiations end with NAFTA intact.
Our economy depends on NAFTA. Since NAFTA was established in 1994, trade between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada has more than tripled, reaching almost $1 trillion in recent years. American industries have spread supply chains across the three countries, and roughly 6 million jobs in the U.S. depend on NAFTA.
Before NAFTA, it was difficult for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to access international markets. Today, barriers for exporting are lower, and SMEs can export to Mexico and Canada regardless of their proximity to the border. In fact, contrary to popular belief, many of the non-border states would face severe economic downturn if NAFTA were eliminated.
For example, according the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Missouri would risk losing 250,000 jobs is the U.S. withdraws from NAFTA. This is because Missouri exports $7.8 billion annually to Mexico and Canada, totaling 56 percent of total exports. Unsurprisingly, the economic impact is ever greater in border states with large Hispanic populations.
My home state of Texas alone exports approximately $112 billion annually to Mexico and Canada, or 56 percent of total exports. If the U.S. withdrew from NAFTA, 970,000 Texan jobs would be at risk. Hispanic business owners in Texas are particularly dependent on tariff-free trade with Mexico, as Hispanic-owned businesses are twice as likely to export compared to non-minority-owned firms.
Granted, at the age of 24, NAFTA requires some updates. Changes are needed to guarantee that the agreement can continue to facilitate economic growth. Again, these changes should be carefully deliberated.
Understanding that NAFTA negotiations must extend far beyond Speaker Ryan’s deadline, I would like to make a suggestion—The economic benefits of NAFTA can be leveraged by the creation of a small business committee, similar to the committee that was established by the Trans Pacific Partnership.
A NAFTA small business committee would make regular evaluations and offer suggested updates to the agreement to guarantee that small businesses can take advantage of the benefits of free trade. This is only one of many opportunities to change NAFTA for the better, all while maintaining essential economic and diplomatic ties with Mexico and Canada.
It is my hope that the May 17 deadline comes and goes without a word—or a tweet—from our leaders in government. The renegotiation of NAFTA will take ample time, but I am optimistic that continued deliberation will end in a deal that creates economic growth for all.
Fernand Fernandez is the interim CEO and President of the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (@USHCC).
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-budget/388158-the-last-24-hours-of-a-24-year-old-nafta
-
Emails: EPA All Ears as Industry Pitched 'Secret Science'
May 17, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Maxine Joselow
Industry groups pitched EPA a proposal last spring that closely resembled what became Administrator Scott Pruitt's "secret science" plan, according to emails released this week under Freedom of Information Act litigation.
The National Association of Manufacturers offered detailed suggestions on EPA's handling of scientific studies last May to the agency's regulatory reform task force, which was soliciting suggestions on rules and rulemaking.
"A common complaint among manufacturers in recent years has been a process at the EPA for evaluating science that is not transparent and minimizes third party stakeholder input," wrote Ross Eisenberg, NAM's vice president of energy and resources policy.
"EPA's process often relies on data, information and methods that are not publicly available and are insufficiently transparent to meet the standard of reproducibility. The NAM recommends the EPA take a hard, honest look at how the agency evaluates science and propose reforms to improve transparency and better involve the public."
A few days later, Patrick Davis, a senior adviser for public engagement at EPA, commented on NAM's proposal in an email to Samantha Dravis, a top Pruitt aide who was leading the regulatory task force. "I found these comments from NAM all in one place to be very helpful," he wrote.
The documents were released to the Southern Environmental Law Centers under FOIA.
Davis circulated the suggestions to other colleagues, including Nancy Beck, deputy assistant administrator of EPA's chemicals office.
The American Petroleum Institute also pitched EPA on a similar idea last May. Howard Feldman, API's senior director of regulatory and scientific affairs, wrote to the task force, "The science and data used to support a regulation should be reviewed to determine if they are still valid based on scientific integrity, consistent with EPA's Principles of Scientific Integrity and Policy (2012), with meaningful disclosure of all potential areas of bias, guarding against manipulation or misinterpretation."
Last July, two members of the EPA task force met with representatives of NAM and API.
Prior to the meeting, the task force was provided with NAM materials calling for "reforming [EPA's] process for evaluating science to improve transparency and better involve the public."
EPA didn't respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.
NAM also didn't respond to multiple inquiries, and an API spokesman redirected inquiries to a May 2017 news release.
The emails show that EPA was attentive to industry's desire for re-evaluating science in rulemaking nearly a year before Pruitt formally announced the plan on April 24.
"The era of secret science at EPA is coming to an end," Pruitt announced. "The ability to test, authenticate, and reproduce scientific findings is vital for the integrity of rulemaking process. Americans deserve to assess the legitimacy of the science underpinning EPA decisions that may impact their lives."
Yogin Kothari of the Union of Concerned Scientists' Center for Science and Democracy said industry promotion of the science plan isn't surprising.
"This whole idea is driven by politics, and it's a way to insert politics into science-based policymaking," Kothari said. "If the EPA cared about transparency, they'd be talking to the scientific community, not NAM, who stands to gain if EPA rolled back rules pursuant to this policy."
Sean Gallagher, senior government relations officer at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said EPA never reached out to his organization about the policy.
"It's totally fine to consult with industry to get a broad perspective. But they did not reach out to us," Gallagher said.
He added, "Our thoughts were out there," noting that his colleagues had written letters warning EPA about "not politically meddling in the scientific process."'Making EPA Great Again'
The newly released emails also show that momentum for the EPA science plan continued to build after a contentious House Science, Space and Technology hearing in February 2017 that committee Republicans dubbed "Making EPA Great Again."
The "secret science" proposal has long been championed by House Science Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas).
Smith, a leading opponent of mainstream climate science, has introduced bills that would require EPA to publicize data it uses when crafting regulations.
While Smith used the February 2017 hearing to raise objections to EPA's use of science, he made clear that he had no plans to reintroduce his "Secret Science Reform Act" (E&E Daily, Feb. 8, 2017).
NAM had endorsed that bill in a 2014 letter to lawmakers, saying it would "create a more transparent regulatory system that will create better outcomes from the regulatory process."
In the wake of Smith's hearing that month, President Trump signed Executive Order 13777, which established regulatory reform task forces at all agencies to identify rules ripe for repeal, replacement or modification.
The order set in motion the process by which NAM, API and other groups submitted suggestions to EPA.
In response to the order, EPA created a four-member regulatory reform task force, and the panel began soliciting comments from stakeholders on the site Regulations.gov.
"Most noteworthy about this docket is that it was record setting!" Barbara Bernales of EPA's Office of Enterprise Information Programs wrote to colleagues.
"More individual comments were posted for the Reg Reform docket (63,346) than the [Clean Power Plan] docket — our largest docket ever. In fact, it even surpassed the combined total of individual comments posted (52,973) in response to all dockets that were open for comment during FY 16. I'd say that is pretty amazing."
In March 2017, Smith introduced a revised version of his "Secret Science Act" called the "Honest and Open New EPA Science Treatment (HONEST) Act."
His office also coordinated with EPA on the unveiling of Pruitt's proposal this year, according to emails obtained by the Union of Concerned Scientists (Climatewire, April 20).
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/05/17/stories/1060081997
-
(ACC Mentioned) NGO Warns Against Rushing to Alternative Methods Under TSCA
May 17, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Emma Davies
NGO the Natural Resources Defense Council has voiced concern that new technologies will be deployed too fast under the US EPA's draft strategy for alternative test methods under TSCA.
In accordance with the 2016 amendments to TSCA, the EPA has developed a draft plan to "promote the development and implementation of alternative test methods and strategies to reduce, refine or replace vertebrate animal testing".
But in a comment submitted for its public consultation, the NRDC says that the pace could exceed the ability of the technologies to provide "equivalent or better" information for the purposes of assessing chemicals.
"The overzealous deployment of tests that may underestimate or completely miss toxicity or exposure (high false negative rate) would result in risk evaluations and determinations that are not consistent with the requirements of the revised TSCA," it warns.
"In short, while [alternative methods] can provide useful data, the context here is whether the data [from such methods] are sufficiently robust to reduce or replace animal test data."
The comment suggests that emerging tools involving the use of vertebrate animals should be included in the strategic plan.NTP criticsm
The EPA received more than 1,500 public comments on its draft, most from individual members of the public supportive of the aim of reducing animal testing. But it also received comments from stakeholder organisations.
The draft strategy says that new approach methodologies (NAMs) should be described transparently and that all information should be made publicly available. However, Warren Casey, director of the National Toxicology Program Interagency Center for Evaluation of Alternative Toxicological Methods (Niceatm) has a "potential criticism" of this decision. Together with Nicole Kleinstreuer, deputy director, he says that such a requirement could preclude the use of proprietary models.
"The important point is sufficient transparency to understand how a prediction model was developed and how the results can be used in the context of a regulatory decision," write Dr Casey and Dr Kleinstreuer.
The EPA intends to publish a full list of NAMs. However, it should instead consider listing only the NAMs that are relevant to the programme, says the Niceatm comment. Both the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods (Iccvam) and the European Union Reference Laboratory for alternatives to animal testing (EURL Ecvam) have "learned that providing 'empty' numbers leads (understandably) to unrealistic expectations from stakeholders and the public", they say.
Dr Casey and Dr Kleinstreuer also question how the EPA might evaluate whether industry has sufficiently considered NAMs before embarking on animal tests. Meanwhile, NGO People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) calls on the EPA to affirm that it will review industry compliance with voluntary testing provisions and publish the results of reviews.Existing methods
As well as assessing the performance of NAMs, it would be useful to conduct retrospective analyses of existing animal tests to fully characterise their reliability, reproducibility and applicability domain in order to provide appropriate and realistic expectations for NAMs, says NGO Cruelty Free International.
The American Chemistry Council (ACC) suggests that the strategic plan should prioritise using a threshold of toxicological concern (TTC). The approach uses data on structurally related chemicals to establish human exposure levels that are unlikely to cause a safety concern.
The American Petroleum Institute (API) recommends that anticipated routes of exposure, durations of exposure, and levels of exposure be given greater consideration in determining what kinds of toxicity tests will be necessary to conduct a risk assessment.
The public comment period was extended until 11 May 2018 at the request of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).
https://chemicalwatch.com/67009/ngo-warns-against-deploying-alternative-methods-too-fast
-
Claims of Spike in US Animal Testing for New Chemicals Disputed
May 17, 2018 | Chemistry World
By Rebecca Trager
A major environmental organisation is disputing new claims by two animal rights groups that animal testing for new chemicals at the US Environmental Protection Agency rocketed in 2017. This was the first full year for the updated Toxic Substances Control Act (Tsca), which governs America’s chemical policy.
When the almost 40-year-old Tsca law was modernised in June 2016, it directed the EPA to ‘reduce and replace’ the use of vertebrate animals in chemical testing through tools like computational toxicology and bioinformatics, as well as high-throughput screening methods and associated prediction models. However, upon examination of the EPA’s ChemView database, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) concluded that in 2017 the agency required or requested 331 animal tests for each new chemical put on the market, meaning the use of around 76,000 animals. They claim this is a roughly nine-fold increase from the 37 animal tests per new chemical that the EPA required or requested in 2016, which translated to the use of about 6500 animals.
‘The dramatic increase we have documented indicates that the EPA is failing to balance its responsibilities to determine whether chemicals present unreasonable risks with its congressional mandate to reduce and replace the use of vertebrate animals in chemical testing,’ Peta and PCRM asserted in a letter to the EPA.
However, the Environmental Defense Fund’s lead scientist, Richard Denison, argues that the Peta-PCRM analysis is flawed. His organisation reviewed the Chemview data and found that the analysis erroneously understated the extent of testing that the EPA required prior to the passage of Tsca. Denison contends that they omitted the EPA’s testing requirements for two-thirds of the new chemicals they examined from 2015 and 2016.
’While I certainly agree that there has been an increase in animal testing, it is much less stark than they suggest because they underestimated the EPA’s animal testing requirements in the two years before Tsca’s enactment,’ Dension tells Chemistry World. He worries that the EPA will use these questionable figures to support efforts to avoid imposing testing requirements on new chemicals.
For its part, the EPA says it has not yet reviewed the Peta–PCRM analysis in detail. However, the agency notes that it supports reducing animal testing and plans to issue a strategy to achieve that goal by promoting the development and implementation of alternative test methods. The EPA released that draft plan for public comment in March.
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/claims-of-spike-in-us-animal-testing-for-new-chemicals-disputed/3009040.article
-
(ACC Mentioned) The U.S. Must Ban Asbestos – With No Exemptions
May 17, 2018 | Environmental Working Group
By Linda Reinstein
Fifty-five nations have banned all uses of asbestos. Shockingly, the U.S. isn’t one of them. The nation’s new toxics law gives the Environmental Protection Agency the power to completely ban the notorious killer, but the chemical industry is pushing for continued exemptions for some uses.
The EPA is expected to release a key document detailing how the agency plans to evaluate the risk of asbestos soon. But the current scope of the EPA’s so-called problem formulation document doesn’t even call for evaluation of the risk of a particularly dangerous type of asbestos that’s in the insulation of an estimated 30 million homes.
Such insulation is only one of the sources through which Americans can be exposed to asbestos. Investigations by the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, or ADAO, and EWG have found that even some children’s toys and makeup contain asbestos-contaminated talc.
Even the smallest amount of asbestos fiber, if inhaled, can trigger deadly asbestos-related disease later in life. According to Dr. Jukka Takala, president of the International Commission of Occupational Health, asbestos-related diseases cause more than 39,000 deaths in the U.S each year – more than double the previous estimate of 15,000 deaths a year.
ADAO, EWG and other public health advocates have been working for a complete asbestos ban for more than a decade. We have testified at congressional hearings, met with the EPA, and submitted more than 100 studies confirming that there is no possible safe or controlled use of asbestos.
The fact that asbestos is still legal in our country today is a crime. The asbestos industry has known for more than 100 years that asbestos kills, but hid the risks from the public.
More than 25 years after the industry thwarted the EPA’s previous attempt to ban asbestos, the American Chemistry Council is again lobbying the EPA to exempt so-called legacy uses. The chief beneficiary of the status quo is the chlor-alkali industry, which uses asbestos to make diaphragms used in the manufacturing of chlorine and sodium chloride. The U.S. Geological Survey says the chlor-alkali industry accounted for nearly 100 percent of the asbestos used nationwide last year.
The EPA must take action and fully evaluate the risk of asbestos in our homes, schools and workplaces. Americans must send the EPA a strong message that it’s time the U.S. joined the United Kingdom, the European Union, Japan and other nations in getting rid of all uses of this deadly mineral.
Click here to join the nearly 12,000 people who have signed the petition to ban asbestos without exemptions or loopholes.
https://www.ewg.org/news-and-analysis/2018/05/us-must-ban-asbestos-no-exemptions#.Wv2ed-6FPX4
-
May 17, 2018 | Yahoo News
By Michael Walsh
In defiance of President Trump’s deregulatory agenda, Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., is fighting to ban a pesticide that’s been found to cause brain damage and other neurological harm to children.
Udall introduced a bill last summer, the Protect Children, Farmers and Farmworkers from Nerve Agent Pesticides Act, to prohibit chlorpyrifos (pronounced klawr-pir-uh-fos), which is commonly used on popular vegetables, nuts and fruits, including apples and oranges.
In March 2017, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt rejected the conclusion of EPA scientists that all uses of chlorpyrifos put children and farmworkers at risk. Pruitt claimed that the science isn’t settled and struck down an EPA rule proposed two years earlier to outlaw use of the chemical.
“In one of his first decisions at the EPA, Administrator Pruitt showed his hand. He showed the American people exactly how he’d use his position at the EPA: to grease the wheels for his friends in industry at the expense of the health and safety of children, families and workers,” Udall told Yahoo News.
Over the past decade, the science has built up to show that even low levels of exposure to chlorpyrifos during critical times in a brain’s development, whether in utero or during childhood, can lead to long-lasting, potentially permanent changes. A landmark brain-imaging study from the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health at the Mailman School of Public Health in 2012 identified cognitive damage in humans, corroborating previous findings in animals, after prenatal exposure to chlorpyrifos at levels below the EPA’s toxicity threshold.
“Scott Pruitt doesn’t listen to science,” Udall said.
Since introducing the bill, Udall said, there’s been evidence that members from both sides of the aisle realize that protecting children from toxic chemicals is not a partisan issue. He noted that a bipartisan coalition came together to end Michael Dourson’s nomination to run the EPA’s toxics office. He called Dourson “a toxicologist for hire who produced junk science for industry.”
“And there are other signs of progress: Hawaii just became the first state in the country to officially ban chlorpyrifos,” Udall continued. “I’m optimistic that other states will pursue a ban as well, as long as the EPA Administrator refuses to uphold the fundamental mission of his office to protect American families.”
A brief history of how we got to this point: The EPA banned chlorpyrifos, the most used pesticide in the U.S., from household products in 2000, but affirmed it would still be permissible for agriculture and industry. In September 2007, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Pesticide Action Network of North America filed a petition for the EPA to either ban the toxic chemical outright or establish residue standards for our food supply. In September 2015, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ordered the EPA to respond to the petition and — following an extensive review — the EPA ordered that the chemical be banned from the food supply completely.
Miriam Rotkin-Ellman, the senior scientist for the health and environment program at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said they have long been concerned about chlorpyrifos and the related pesticides, which are known as organophosphates, because they’ve followed the science since it was allowed in homes to kill roaches and ants.
“The federal EPA had reanalyzed the safety of this pesticide and found the food uses were not safe and were putting in motion the process to get it out of the food supply. The administration changed and Pruitt reversed that process and now we’re scrambling to fight to fulfill what should have been done already,” Rotkin-Ellman told Yahoo News.
Andrew Liveris, the CEO and president of Dow Chemical, the multinational chemical corporation that’s manufactured chlorpyrifos for over 50 years, was appointed to lead Trump’s now-defunct American Manufacturing Council in December 2016. The corporation subsequently donated one million dollars to his inauguration fund. Pruitt was scheduled to have a half-hour meeting with Liveris at a Houston hotel during an energy conference on March 9 — just weeks before he reversed the EPA’s chlorpyrifos ban. An agency spokesperson told the AP that the meeting “never happened due to schedule conflicts” but that they had a “brief introduction in passing.”
In April 2017, the Associated Press reported that lawyers from Dow and other manufacturers of organophosphates sent letters to the heads of three of Trump’s cabinet agencies, urging them to “set aside” the government studies that determined the toxic chemical to be dangerous. According to the report, federal scientists compiled more than 10,000 pages showing that chlorpyrifos and two other pesticides — diazinon and malathion — pose a risk to nearly every endangered species it studied.
In response, Dow released a statement denouncing the AP article for allegedly “misleading and inaccurate statements” and said more than 4,000 studies support chlorpyrifos’ as safe for health, safety and the environment.
“In its preparation of biological evaluations of chlorpyrifos and the other compounds under the Endangered Species Act, EPA did not apply its own standards of data quality, nor did it follow its own procedures. As a result, Dow and other companies submitted concerns and scientific requests through various proper channels,” the statement reads.
Dow stood by chlorpyrifos and argued a “comprehensive regulatory review of all available data” would continue to support its safety. The company pointed out that it’s been approved for use in nearly 100 countries.
“We are advocating that EPA return to applying its own standards of data quality and following its own procedures. Dow will continue to actively participate in policymaking and political processes in compliance with all applicable federal and state laws,” Dow said.
Udall said it’s hard to know exactly how Dow Chemical influenced the EPA’s surprise decision to reverse its own proposed ban, but that Pruitt’s scheduled meeting with the company’s CEO days before overruling his own agency’s scientists is extremely troubling.
“It certainly appears that the Administrator was putting the interests of corporate chemical manufacturers ahead of the health and safety of American families when he made this disastrous decision,” he said.
In May, 2017, the Trump administration named Nancy B. Beck deputy assistant administrator at EPA’s toxic chemical unit, the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, which is responsible for protecting “you, your family and the environment from potential risks from pesticides and toxic chemicals.” She spent the previous five years as an executive at the American Chemistry Council, a chemical industry trade group whose members include Dow, ExxonMobil Chemical, Monsanto, DuPont and KMG Chemicals.
The New York Times and others have reported that Beck’s arrival brought immediate demands for rules regarding the regulation of hazardous chemicals to be rewritten, so it’s harder to track their impacts on the public health or regulate them. Beck shares the chemical industry’s view that “phantom risks” lead to oppressive regulations. Beck ordered EPA scientists to revisit its rules for methylene chloride (found in paint strippers),trichloroethylene (which is used in dry cleaning and to remove grease from metal) and perfluorooctanoic acid (which is used in fabric protectors and as a non-stick coating for cooking pans), in addition to chlorpyrifos. Each has been linked in studies to serious health issues.
On May 10, the EPA announced it would take action on methylene chloride “shortly.” NRDC health program director Erik Olson responded in a statement that Pruitt should “immediately act to save others’ lives by finalizing the agency’s proposed bans of methylene chloride and two other highly toxic solvents.”
Udall’s bill is co-sponsored by Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Cory Booker, D-N.J., Ben Cardin, D-Md., Richard Durbin, D-Ill., Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Kamala Harris, D-Calif, Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.
“I’ll keep fighting to raise awareness of our effort to ban chlorpyrifos and encourage my colleagues to cosponsor our bill to protect the health of our children, farmers, and farmworkers from this toxic pesticide,” Udall said.
But federal legislation isn’t the only avenue for public health advocates on this issue. Udall encouraged citizens to raise their voices to the EPA, their representatives and their food providers.
“During the Trump administration we’ve seen time and again, on divisive issues from health care to gun control, that a group of concerned, organized Americans can succeed in holding not only Washington but corporate America accountable,” he said.
Udall recently sent a letter to more than 80 grocery stores, food service providers, and national restaurant chains asking whether they source their fruits and vegetables from suppliers that utilize chlorpyrifos.
“I’m confident that if consumers make it clear that they have no interest in consuming foods treated with chlorpyrifos, large food buyers will listen and change their on-farm policies and practices,” he said.
States have independent authority to ban pesticides and some are considering their own bans. California is conducting an exhaustive review of chlorpyrifos. Rotkin-Ellman said California is the biggest chlorpyrifos user and among its biggest producers, so a ban there would make a big difference.
“The folks working on that are expecting to get some real answers from the state this summer. Timing is converging here,” she said.
Udall and other Democratic senators have placed a hold on H.R. 1029, the Pesticide Registration Enhancement Act of 2017, in an effort to stop the EPA from moving forward with its plans to roll back these Obama-era rules.
“I want the EPA to comply with the law with respect to its dangerous decision not to go through with a ban of chlorpyrifos,” he said. “I will remove my hold on PRIA if EPA works with me to protect these common-sense and highly popular protections for kids and farmworkers.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/sen-tom-udall-wants-epa-ban-neurotoxic-chemical-scott-pruitt-doesnt-listen-science-161902036.html
-
EDF and Others Take FDA to Court to Demand Action on Carcinogenic Flavors Petition
May 17, 2018 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Tom Neltner
On May 2nd, EDF and other consumer health advocates filed a lawsuit to force the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to make a final decision on our food additive petition, which asked the agency to reverse its approvals of seven carcinogenic synthetic flavors. Earthjustice is representing EDF in this petition for a writ of mandamus to the court of appeals. We did not take this action lightly. However, with the statutory deadline for a decision passing more than 20 months ago, we saw little chance that FDA would act without court oversight.
Our food additive petition narrowly focused on one specific issue where the law and science were clear, and laid out our review of both the scientific literature and the law concluding that the seven chemicals were no longer safe. FDA formally accepted the petition for filing – essentially confirming it was complete – which triggered a 180-day deadline under the statute to make a final decision. That deadline passed in August 2016 without a decision by FDA.
Additives can’t be carcinogenic
In 1958, Congress enacted a law requiring that FDA reject food additives found to induce cancer in humans or animals. Over the years, the National Toxicology Program (NTP), the program designated by Congress to make cancer determinations, found that seven synthetic flavors – benzophenone, ethyl acrylate, methyl eugenol, myrcene, pulegone, pyridine, and styrene – approved by FDA in the 1960s did indeed induce cancer. Thus, FDA could not permit use of these additives in food if approval were sought today.
The law is clear and absolute that carcinogens must not be intentionally added to food. Seeing no action by FDA to remove its approvals of these food additives on its own action, in 2015 consumer health advocates petitioned the agency to act.
We thought the decision would be straightforward for several reasons. First, NTP concluded that styrene and methyl eugenol were reasonably anticipated to be human carcinogens, as stated in the Congressionally-mandated Report on Carcinogens that it prepares every two years on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services, of which FDA is a part. It also found that all induced cancer in two animal species. Second, other science-based organizations had also assessed the chemicals and reached similar conclusions. Third, thousands of other flavors are available to choose from, including botanical spices, and thus, industry has many alternatives.
After we submitted the petition, an industry trade association petitionedto FDA claiming that use of styrene as a flavor was abandoned.
The statutory deadline for an FDA decision on our request passed in August 2016. After waiting more than a year and a half past the deadline for FDA to act, the petitioners are asking the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to order FDA to make a decision.
Ensuring food additives are safe, including those previously approved, must be FDA’s priority
Every week, FDA approves new chemicals to be intentionally added to food, used to make food packaging, and used in food processing equipment. Some of these decisions are made with limited information – often less than FDA’s guidance says it needs to make an informed decision on whether there is reasonable certainty the proposed chemicals’ uses will cause no harm. The agency usually takes 120 to 180 days to make these decisions.
However, when it comes to chemicals it has already approved, the agency lacks a systematic review process to reassess their safety as new evidence emerges. The exception is when the evidence is overwhelming, as is the case of partially hydrogenated oils (aka artificial trans fats) – the only time FDA has reversed an approval in the past several decades over industry objection.
So instead, consumer health advocates have to make the investment and lay out the evidence demonstrating the uses don’t meet the legal safety standard in the form of a food additive petition. The law obligates the agency to review and make a final decision within 180 days – about the same time the agency gives itself to approve new chemicals. But thus far, the agency’s track record for responding has been poor.
FDA’s priority must be resolving safety concerns with existing chemicals over approval of new ones. So far, concerns with safety all too easily take a backseat to the deadlines for new chemicals. If FDA lacks the resources or authority to get the information it needs, it should make that clear to Congress. But in the meantime, the agency must address public health threats/risks first.
http://blogs.edf.org/health/2018/05/17/fda-carcinogenic-flavors-petition/
-
Campaigners Press US National Toxicology Program on Animal Testing
May 17, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
Two advocacy groups have called on the US National Toxicology Program to replace "wasteful" animal tests with alternative methods for determining the safety of chemicals.
Co-authored by the White Coat Waste Project and the New England Anti-Vivisection Society, the report – Toxic testing: wasteful animal tests in the National Toxicology Program – says more than 80% of the NTP's testing for chemical safety is performed on animals.
In recent years, the interagency programme has spearheaded initiatives like Toxicology in the 21st Century (Tox21), which focuses on high throughput screening. And through the NTP's Interagency Center for the Evaluation of Alternative Toxicological Methods (Niceatm), it has validated more than 70 alternative test methods.
But according to the report, NTP is using only seven of these alternative tests, although it uses more than 100 different types of animal tests.
For substances currently being assessed, less than half have non-animal tests planned, while all call for at least one animal test, the authors found.
The report also cites a "troubling lack of transparency" with regards to how the agency is making progress toward reducing animal tests, as well as its test methodologies, costs, animal use, and the human relevance of its test outcomes.
The authors have called for:the NTP to halt planned animal tests and commission an audit to identify ways to avoid these;the redirection of funds from NTP's animal testing to the development of alternatives;NTP reports to indicate how many animals were used and the cost of these tests; andrestricted funding for animal testing across federal agencies.
The NGOs are also pressing for Congress to pass the Federal Accountability in Chemical Testing (FACT) Act. This bill (HR 816) seeks to improve federal agency reporting of animal testing and alternative test method use.
The organisations held a legislative briefing in conjunction with the rollout of their report.
The NTP is an interagency programme housed within the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). It evaluates substances of potential public health concern by "developing and applying tools of modern toxicology."
It did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publishing.
https://chemicalwatch.com/67008/campaigners-press-us-national-toxicology-program-on-animal-testing
-
Glyphosate Study Defender Tapped to Lead Cancer Agency
May 17, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Corbin Hiar
The World Health Organization's leadership has tapped a Brazilian researcher to lead its embattled cancer bureau who has vigorously defended the office and its work on a controversial study of the herbicide glyphosate.
Elisabete Weiderpass, who is a naturalized Swedish and Finnish citizen, will begin running the International Agency for Research on Cancer on Jan. 1.
Set to become IARC's first female director, she was chosen from a pool of 33 candidates by the WHO director general and representatives of the agency's 26 participating states.
Weiderpass will take over from Christopher Wild, who has led the Lyon, France-based bureau for two five-year terms — the longest tenure allowed under IARC rules.
"I am delighted to have been selected as the next Director for the Agency, and I look forward to bringing my expertise to IARC and contributing to the important work of the Agency," she said in a statement.
Currently, Weiderpass leads both the Department of Research at the Cancer Registry of Norway and the Genetic Epidemiology Group at the Folkhälsan Research Center in Finland.
She is also an epidemiology professor at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and the Arctic University of Norway, and has taught the subject in Brazil, China, Iran and Kuwait.
Chemical industry opponents of the agency are already criticizing Weiderpass as "the ultimate IARC insider." They point to her involvement in defending a controversial evaluation of glyphosate, a weedkilling chemical that EPA and other national and international health organizations have determined is safe.
IARC found in March 2015 that glyphosate is a "probable human carcinogen." That conclusion prompted immediate backlash from the chemical industry and has led to thousands of lawsuits against Monsanto Co., which uses glyphosate in its popular Roundup herbicide.
Later in 2015, Weiderpass co-authored a commentary for the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives that dismissed industry's complaints about the process that led to the glyphosate determination.
"We have looked carefully at the recent charges of flaws and bias in the hazard evaluations by IARC Working Groups, and we have concluded that the recent criticisms are unfair and unconstructive," she and her co-authors wrote.
Last year, Weiderpass also co-authored a commentary in the peer-reviewed Journal of Epidemology and Community Health that defended the IARC glyphosate review after the European Food Safety Authority found "there was no unequivocal evidence for a clear and strong association of [the cancer non-Hodgkin lymphoma] with glyphosate."
Weiderpass is likely to face continued calls from the chemical industry and its allies in Congress to enact reforms that would, for example, give industry greater influence over the evaluation process.
Some House Republicans have even threatened to withdraw financial support for IARC, an agency the U.S. helped found in 1965 (E&E Daily, Feb. 7).
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/05/17/stories/1060081999
-
EU Priorities for EDC Test Methods Outlined in Workshop
May 17, 2018 | Chemical Watch
The European Commission has published a report outlining its priorities for the development of test methods for the identification of endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs). The report is based on an expert workshop held last summer that had the aim of:identifying gaps in the currently available test methods;identifying ways of filling those gaps; andprioritising further development and validation of test methods and approaches to testing.
About 70 experts attended from: EU institutions; member state authorities; universities, research centres, industry and NGOs. According to the report, attendees said the most important adverse outcomes for human health were:thyroid-related developmental neurotoxicity;metabolic dysfunction;female reproduction; andmale reproduction.
They said the most important adverse outcomes for the environment were related to: reproductive health; and growth and development. Overall, the highest priorities identified at the workshop matched in large part those identified in a 2017 survey of experts conducted by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre.
A longer version of this article is available on Chemical Risk Manager.
https://chemicalwatch.com/67038/eu-priorities-for-edc-test-methods-outlined-in-workshop
-
EU Restriction on CMRs in Textiles a 'Missed Opportunity'
May 17, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Leigh Stringer
EU action to restrict 33 carcinogenic, mutagenic or reprotoxic (CMR) substances is a welcome move, but much work remains to protect consumers against harmful chemicals in textiles, says European consumer group Beuc.
In a public statement, Beuc says it is pleased that member states have endorsed the European Commission's proposal to ban the use of the chemicals in clothing, textiles and footwear.
However, Monique Goyens, the organisation's director general says that, while it is "glad that the EU is taking the bull by the horns, and that some harmful substances will disappear from the clothes we wear and the bedsheets we sleep in ... the EU missed an opportunity to protect consumers better."
The statement says more needs to be done to protect consumers against other harmful chemicals in textiles, such as endocrine disruptors or allergens.
It also expresses disappointment with the "limited scope" of the restriction. The Commission initially considered 286 substances, which were narrowed down to 33.
In addition, Beuc says, it should have reduced thresholds further, such as for formaldehyde, "a chemical that is presumed to cause cancer".
Unfortunately, says Ms Goyens, the restriction, while a good start, will still allow some toxic substances at unacceptable levels, in baby and infant clothes for instance.EU ecolabel
In the meantime, Ms Goyens recommends consumers seek out ecolabelled products. "The best way to protect consumers is to adopt specific legislation for textiles that would address all the chemicals that may harm health. Until then, ecolabelled products remain the safest alternative for consumers – a standard that industry should put more weight behind," she says.
The label, she says, already restricts the use of all chemicals that may cause cancer, change DNA, or harm reproductive health as well as some allergens and endocrine disruptors.
In March, ahead of the member state vote, eight European trade associations released a joint position paper, saying that the Commission's proposal is a "sensible, pragmatic set of restrictions".
The restriction will apply 24 months after publication in the EU Official Journal. This will follow its scrutiny by the European Parliament and Council. Once in force, clothing and related articles, textiles and footwear containing the listed substances – whether produced within the EU or imported - are not allowed on the EU market.
https://chemicalwatch.com/67025/eu-restriction-on-cmrs-in-textiles-a-missed-opportunity
-
Antimony Industry to Start Data Gathering Effort in 2019
May 17, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Leigh Stringer
The International Antimony Association (i2a) is to run a data gathering campaign next year to generate exposure information on all REACH registered antimony substances, including those under evaluation by German authorities.
Germany's Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (Baua) is looking at five antimony compounds. It will assess how they should be classified regarding their potential carcinogenicity. This, according to Baua, could result in the reclassification of one or more compounds.
They compounds being evaluated are:antimony trichloride;antimony glycolate;antimony trioxide;antimony sulphide; andantimony metal.
Antimony substances are used extensively in flame retardants and also in lead batteries, alloys, plastics, paints, glass and other ceramics.
The campaign will begin in January. Before that, an i2a workshop on 6 June this year will present a workplace monitoring strategy. It will also encourage users and producers of the substances under evaluation to join the campaign and generate exposure data.
At last year’s Antimony Day, an event organised by i2a in November, downstream users of the substances were urged to start preparing information needed for evaluation because a lack of data could have serious consequences.
According to i2a’s secretary general Caroline Braibant the substance evaluation has formally started and industry has updated dossiers for the five substances.
She and the antimony industry expect that towards the end of this year, or early next, Baua will release a draft decision on the evaluation. "We anticipate that the proposal will contain three things: requests for more information on the effects of the substances; workplace exposure data; and confirmation that the German authorities will propose a harmonised classification," Ms Braibant said.Campaign steps
i2a has already developed a testing plan to "clarify the effects of the substances" via read across – an approach which uses information from one or more substances to predict the properties of others.
At the June workshop, delegates will be expected to address the gap in occupational exposure data – something identified at last year's Antimony Day. The insufficient access to data is putting authorities in a difficult position, requiring them to judge a substance without this information being widely, and publicly, available, Ms Braibant said. "The data generating campaign will address these concerns but in a "harmonised manner", she said.
This is important, she said, because a review of current data collected by companies shows the information is gathered and reported in a non-standardised way.
"Therefore, currently, we would not be able to easily pull all the data together to assess the broader situation," she said.
i2a will invite workshop stakeholders to agree a standard approach and if they decide to apply this in a "proactive way" they can join the campaign, Ms Braibant said. Their data can then be presented to authorities.
The organiser is looking for "good representation" from the supply chain at the workshop – particularly at least from a few producers and users of each of the antimony compounds up for evaluation.
According to Ms Braibant, some users have already showed interest in joining the campaign largely because of the substances’ "extremely useful properties within applications at such small quantities". This, she added, also means they are cost-efficient. The supply chain has confirmed that antimony compounds are necessary and that their safe use should be defended, she said.
In February, a US peer review panel unanimously accepted the outcome of the National Toxicology Program’s draft assessment of antimony trioxide. This concludes that the substance is 'reasonably anticipated' to be a human carcinogen. i2a contests this and is "convinced that the carcinogenicity observed in animals is not likely to manifest itself in humans," Ms Braibant said.
https://chemicalwatch.com/67005/antimony-industry-to-start-data-gathering-effort-in-2019
-
May 17, 2018 | Chemical Watch
C&L notifications – delayed responseEcha says there will be a necessary delay in responding to C&L notifications over the next two weeks because it will be busy processing REACH registration dossiers for the 31 May deadline.
Iuclid Cloud available to all registrants
The agency is opening the Iuclid Cloud to all companies registering under REACH. The service was originally developed to make registration easier for SMEs.
The agency says the platform works best for companies that:have to manage data for around 50 substances and the volume of data is low (does not exceed 1GB);want to work online, keeping their Iuclid application always up to date; andwant to benefit from a simpler interface and get additional support through step-by-step guidance in dossier preparation.
Echa says it is easy to move data between the Cloud and the traditional Iuclid software, so companies can change how they wish to work without difficulty.
The agency has had to update its terms and conditions to extend the service. Therefore current subscribers will have to re-accept these.Advice on paying registration fees
Echa has advised that when paying the REACH registration fee it is important to indicate the invoice number in the reference or free text field of the payment. This is so REACH-IT can automatically identify the payment and confirm that the fee has been paid.
It also advises making only one payment per invoice to avoid delays to the registration process.Analysis of downstream user reports 2017
Echa's overview of downstream user reports, submitted in 2017, is now available on its website.
Downstream users are required to report to the agency if:they prepare a chemical safety report (CSR) to assess a use not covered by the exposure scenario received from their supplier;they rely on certain exemptions from the obligation to prepare a downstream user CSR; ortheir classification is different from that of all of their suppliers.Video tutorials on successful registration
The agency has just published video tutorials showing the three ways to successfully prepare member registration dossiers. These are:directly in REACH-IT (if you only need to register one composition and do not plan to opt out);in Iuclid Cloud (for one or multiple compositions; limited number of substances); andin Iuclid (for one or multiple compositions).Tips on incomplete dossiers
Echa has issued advice on incomplete dossiers. It reminds registrants that it checks if information is complete before issuing a registration number and will inform registrants by their REACH-IT account if there is information missing.
This must then be included and the updated dossier resubmitted.
There is no rush in doing this as the date will be set a few months after 31 May, it says. It advises taking time to understand what is needed and to contact the agency if anything is unclear.
The registration number will be issued as soon as the requested update is successfully submitted. The registration date will be the date the initial dossier was received, regardless of whether the update is received after the registration deadline of 31 May.Q&A on preparing joint submission for UVCB substances
The agency has published Q&A advice to lead registrants on how to create a joint submission for substances that are of unknown or variable composition, complex reaction products or biological materials (UVCBs) without any numerical identifier (EC/Cas numbers).
The agency says to ask for support if companies have already created a joint submission and submitted a dossier but failed the business rules check.https://chemicalwatch.com/67019/echa-round-up
-
Canada Consults on Ecological Risk Classification for Inorganics
May 17, 2018 | Chemical Watch
Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) is seeking public comments on its ecological risk classification of inorganic substances (ERC-I), used to determine whether substances warrant further evaluation or have a low likelihood of causing ecological harm.
ECCC applied the ERC-I approach to a broad range of priority inorganic substances in the third phase of Canada's Chemicals Management Plan. The classification has identified 80 as being of overall low ecological concern.
Substances not identified as such will be subject to a "more refined analysis" separately.
The 80 identified substances belong to 12 chemical groups based on: antimony; barium; bismuth; iodine; iron; lithium; molybdenum; rare earth elements; tellurium; tin; titanium; and vanadium.
The report contains detailed results for each of the substances. These are intended to form the basis for the ecological portion of screening assessments, which will be published in conjunction with assessments of potential human health risks.Approach
The ERC-I characterises hazard based on predicted no-effect concentrations (Pnecs) and water quality guidelines. When niether are available, it uses hazard endpoint data to derive a preliminary Pnec.
It then uses both predictive modelling and measured concentrations to create exposure profiles. Comparing modelled and measured predicted environmental concentrations (Pecs) with Pnecs identified during hazard profiling, gives rise to risk quotients. A risk matrix then classifies the level of potential for ecological risk as high, moderate, or low.
Substances classified as being of low ecological concern, primarily on the basis of current low exposures, may be subject to follow-up or tracking of use-pattern-information to inform future priority-setting.
The ERC-I was published on 12 May in a science approach document in the Canada Gazette. The public comment period lasts for 60 days.
https://chemicalwatch.com/67024/canada-consults-on-ecological-risk-classification-for-inorganics
-
UK Proposes Post-Brexit Environmental Body
May 17, 2018 | Chemical Watch
The UK’s Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) has announced plans to establish an independent and statutory environmental watchdog by the end of 2020.
The plans form part of a proposed Environmental Principles and Governance bill, which will hold Whitehall to account on delivering commitments to protect the environment after the UK leaves the EU.
The government expects to set up the watchdog in time for the end of the EU withdrawal transition period which – subject to final negotiation outcomes – will run from 29 March 2019 until December 2020. During this time EU environmental laws will continue to apply in Britain.
Environmental decisions made in the UK are currently overseen by the European Commission and are underpinned by the EU executive’s principles, such as the precautionary principle. The latter covers cases where scientific evidence is insufficient and there are reasonable grounds for concern that potentially dangerous effects on humans and the environment may be inconsistent with the EU’s high level of protection.
The UK’s new bill will "ensure government continues to have regard" to important environmental principles through its policy, which would be scrutinised by Parliament.
The government launched a 12-week consultation on the plans last week. This seeks views on whether the principles to be contained in the bill should be listed in primary legislation – that is to say enforced by an Act of Parliament.
Whitehall also wants feedback on the most effective way for the new body to hold government to account. This "would include, as a minimum, the power to issue advisory notices".
Subject to consultation, the new environment watchdog could specifically be responsible for:providing independent scrutiny and advice on existing and future government environmental law and policy;responding to complaints about government’s delivery of environmental law; andholding government to account publicly on this and exercising enforcement powers where necessary.
UK environment secretary Michael Gove said the country "will not weaken environmental protections" when it leaves the EU. The bill will ensure core environmental principles "remain central to government policy and decision making".
Environmental and green groups, which met with Mr Gove before the policy was officially launched, emerged from the meeting disappointed. Green Party leader Caroline Lucas said the proposals are "shamefully weak" and that there are no "meaningful" protections.Chemicals impact
Although the bill does not directly reference chemicals policy, the governance arrangements "could be important" for the UK chemicals industry, the Institute for European Environmental Policy’s Nigel Haigh told Chemical Watch.
And the inclusion of the precautionary principle in Annex A "suggests that it is being taken more seriously and applies generally and not just to decisions under REACH".
Richard Macrory, former co-chair of the UK Environmental Law Association taskforce, said in general terms the proposal for an independent environmental watchdog is "a significant development". And even if Brexit was somehow reversed, he added, the plan would still be a "useful initiative".
Assuming there is UK REACH-type legislation, this body, he said, "could hold the HSE – or whoever was the competent authority – to account if they felt it was applying the correct legal tests. This wouldn't prevent an alternative route of complaint."
If there were some sort of mutual recognition between the UK and Union on REACH, he added, "it may well be that the EU would insist on there being some sort of supervisory mechanism in place, equivalent to the European Commission within the EU. Judicial review on its own is not good enough, so this body might also be useful in that context."
Most industry associations and NGOs have strongly advocated the UK remaining part of REACH and Echa.
https://chemicalwatch.com/67027/uk-proposes-post-brexit-environmental-body
-
Energy Infrastructure Investment Can Unlock Jobs, Energy Security
May 17, 2018 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Jack Gerard and Terry O’sullivan
Spring weather is finally here, but some New Yorkers haven’t forgotten being left in the cold when their homes lost heat over the winter. In the cold, but not in the dark when it comes to the solution: build more pipelines. That’s the plea from tenants at seven New York City Housing Authority developments, who recently wrote a public letter urging construction of a proposed natural gas pipeline, stating: “As we learned with [Superstorm] Sandy, without reliable energy infrastructure, our residents can easily lose power and heat.”
Northeastern state officials don’t seem interested – obstructing one pipeline project after another, even pipelines approved by federal regulators after exhaustive reviews. Failure to invest in energy infrastructure is a big reason New York’s electricity costs have been running as much as 50 percent above the national average. Same for Boston, which actually welcomed a tanker containing Russian natural gas earlier this year. All the while, plenty of U.S. natural gas is available in nearby Pennsylvania – one of the leading natural gas-producing states in the world’s leading natural gas-producing nation.
New England is a case study in the costs of self-imposed infrastructure constraints, but the region’s troubles also illustrate the flipside: the benefits of infrastructure opportunity. Communities across the nation who embrace those opportunities can enjoy not just affordable, reliable energy but jobs – including well-paying, middle-class sustaining construction jobs. Besides the roads, bridges and buildings usually in the spotlight when policymakers talk about investing in U.S. infrastructure, 32 percentof today’s construction industry workforce is employed on energy projects, amounting to over 2 million workers. Pipeline construction alone supports more than 41,700 jobs for union workers each year, generating over $2.3 billion in wages.
And those numbers could grow. Our road to the top in world natural gas and oil production has led to growing production in some new areas – areas not always well-connected to the existing energy transportation network. Even established production regions like the Permian Basin in Texas are straining pipeline capacity because production has grown so much. Expanding energy infrastructure to keep pace with the U.S. energy renaissance spells major job opportunities. Private sector investment in energy infrastructure could total $1.34 trillion by 2035 –supporting more than 1 million jobs each year on average, according to a recent ICF study. Skilled workers from the construction and energy industries are ready to go – recently launching a joint pipeline construction safety training program to expand opportunities and reinforce safe practices.
These are essential, shovel-ready projects that don’t rely on taxpayer dollars. But they do hinge on a fair, efficient permitting process. That’s where recent proposals by the administration and Congress to streamline infrastructure review can make a welcome difference. Setting clear timelines for agencies to complete reviews and permitting decisions, clarifying the roles of state and federal agencies in reviewing water quality permits, preventing agencies from blocking permits prior to an application or pulling them back unjustly, and providing equal treatment for rights-of-way for all modes of infrastructure on federally controlled lands, will go a long way toward removing hurdles that delay important projects.
Eighty-one percent of American voters support increased energy infrastructure development. For the few who oppose pipeline projects, some key facts might make a difference. For one, natural gas and oil pipelines deliver their products at a safety rate of 99.99 percent, according to the most recent data. That makes pipelines one of the safest, most efficient ways to transport the energy homes and businesses need. And make no mistake, we need natural gas and oil. Even under optimistic scenarios for renewable energy growth, government projections show these resources will supply an estimated 60 percent of U.S. energy needs in 2040. Natural gas is an essential partner that enables integration of intermittent renewable sources like wind and solar – providing reliable power when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine – and it’s a clean fuel in its own right. The United States leads the world in the reduction of carbon emissions, which have reached 25-year lows due largely to greater use of natural gas in power generation.
But before communities can see the benefits of U.S. energy, we need to build the infrastructure to get it to them. America’s energy and building industries are ready with the skilled workers and technology to get the job done. By enacting reforms to streamline infrastructure approval, Congress and the Trump administration can cut the red tape so we can start the ribbon-cuttings on job-creating, community-sustaining pipeline projects.
Jack Gerard is president and CEO, American Petroleum Institute and Terry O’Sullivan is general president of Laborers’ International Union of North America
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-environment/387778-energy-infrastructure-investment-can-unlock-jobs
-
Cuomo's 'Politics' to Blame for N.Y.'s Latest Project Denial
May 17, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Saqib Rahim
State regulators under New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) denied yesterday that election-year politics have any role in the state's evaluation of a proposed natural gas pipeline.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), which has denied permits for several natural gas pipelines in the last two years, this week stated concerns about the Northeast Supply Enhancement, a project that would expand the company's ability to push gas through Pennsylvania to New York City.
The president and CEO of Williams Cos., Alan Armstrong, said this month that Cuomo is "trying to stay far to the left" as he fends off a Democratic primary challenge by actress Cynthia Nixon.
In a statement to E&E News, DEC rejected the notion that politics factor into its decisions.
"DEC subjects all applications for environmental permits to an extensive and transparent review process that encourages public input at every step," the department said.
With the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's review of the project underway, the comments may mean there's a new front in the national pipeline wars.
Under federal law, FERC is the lead agency on permitting interstate gas pipelines. But under Cuomo, New York has been perhaps the most aggressive state in using its power, under the joint federal-state process, to keep pipelines from getting to construction.
The Trump administration has decried this as an abuse of power, and it has explored options under federal law to overrule states. Congressional Republicans have also been trying to figure out legislative fixes to get pipelines through.
In the meantime, FERC and federal courts are taking a case-by-case approach on the pipeline disputes that come before them. The Supreme Court has thus far declined to weigh in.
The Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) would include a variety of projects meant to expand Transco, a 10,200-mile gas network that runs from the Gulf of Mexico to the Northeast. The work would include installations in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, as well as a roughly 17-mile pipeline running underwater to New York City.
FERC is taking comments on the project's draft environmental report. Eventually, to get built, the project would also need water permits from each of the states it touches. States get that authority from Section 401 of the Clean Water Act.
On April 20, two days before Earth Day, New York's DEC denied NESE's application for that permit. The state said it had incomplete information but that more information would emerge from the federal environmental process.
DEC denied the application without prejudice, meaning that the company could reapply.
On May 3, Armstrong, Williams' chief executive, told analysts that the application would have a better shot after the New York Democratic primary.
"We think ultimately, the politics will turn to our favor on this," he said. "We've been working closely with the state and again feel like there's very much an issue of timing regarding the denial on this that's more related to the governor's election, and particularly in the primary."
Nixon, Cuomo's primary challenger, has said she would not allow any new fossil fuel infrastructure in New York.
But DEC issued a filing this week suggesting that it will, at a minimum, maintain the option of denying it.
In a filing to FERC, DEC said there would be "significant" greenhouse gas emissions from building and operating the project, as well as "reasonably foreseeable" emissions upstream and downstream — that is, from the processes of producing natural gas and consuming it.
The words "reasonably foreseeable" are likely connected to a federal court ruling from last year. In August, a panel of judges overturned a FERC approval of a pipeline in the Southeast, saying FERC did no analysis on the downstream emissions that would be associated with the project.
If FERC fails to do that review for the NESE project, New York could technically deny the project a water permit, said Kim Ong, a staff attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
"Until FERC completes this analysis in its environmental review, that environmental review ... would be incomplete and the section 401 certification would be properly denied," she said by email.
Environmentalists argue that a true evaluation of a pipeline's environmental impact has to include all the emissions associated with it — from producing the gas to building the project to burning the fuel.
But FERC, for its part, is still deciding how much weight to give greenhouse gases. It's one of the issues in the agency's pending review of its pipeline permitting process.
In April, FERC said it has generally declined to factor in upstream and downstream emissions, because those impacts are "speculative and unknown, and therefore not reasonably foreseeable."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/05/17/stories/1060081939
-
Energy Jobs Cut into Red and Blue State Divide
May 17, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Peter Behr
The remaking of the U.S. energy sector is happening in ways not entirely tethered to the nation's red state-blue state political divide.
President Trump's rejection of his predecessor's climate and clean energy policies was met with praise from Republican governors and pledges of resistance by Democrats. But a new report says job growth in new energy technology reaches over that divide, and the expansion of those opportunities will be led by states.
The report, from former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz's think tank, the Energy Futures Initiative, and the National Association of State Energy Officials, (NASEO) shows state-by-state employee counts of workers directly engaged in energy fields. Based on a survey of 24,000 employers, the report aims to fill in the gaps where the Department of Labor didn't account for certain corners of energy technology development.
States will play a critical role in new energy technology growth, Moniz said, especially as more states align economic development, energy policies and workforce development plans.
The survey documents the crosscutting shifts in energy-related work in four areas: electric power generation and fuel supply; energy transmission, distribution and storage; energy efficiency appliances; and electric car and other alternative-fuel vehicles or jobs tied to fuel economy.
It includes jobs in production of shale gas, a boon to the traditional "oil patch" states. Shale gas makes the list because it has a smaller carbon footprint than coal in the generation of electricity. And it also includes wind energy production, strongest in the Great Plains region.
Employment counted in the report totaled about 6.5 million people out of the 145 million in the U.S. workforce in 2017. The U.S. energy sector added 133,000 jobs last year, with more than half of them in energy efficiency.Solar's job numbers
Solar energy firms employed about 250,000 people nationwide who spent a majority of their work time on solar in 2017 and 100,000 who did part-time solar work, with the total down 24,000 jobs, or 6 percent, from the year before, the authors said.
But two-thirds of the decline was in the states of California and Massachusetts. In 29 other states, with politics swinging both right and left, red and blue, "the solar industry actually grew," said David Foster of the Energy Futures Initiative, who led the same research when it was started in the Energy Department under Moniz. EFI took over the project when the Trump administration's DOE did not budget it last year.
Philip Jordan, principal researcher at the BW Research Partnership, which conducted the employer survey first for DOE under Moniz and now with the EFI project, said that the solar job drop in California and Massachusetts might reflect a slowdown in the heavy sales promotions of rooftop solar. The improved productivity of rooftop installations may be a factor, too.
Almost 650,000 jobs (26 percent) in the report's motor vehicle sector involved work on increasing fuel economy or transitioning to alternative fuels.
Jobs involving hybrid vehicles and alternative motor vehicles totaled 220,000, down almost 40,000 from the year before. However, jobs supporting development of all-electric vehicles rose sharply, and 23 percent of firms in motor vehicle parts got all of their revenue in products that increase vehicle fuel economy, a significant jump, the report said.
The number of jobs tied to battery storage, whether to back up renewable energy or to power electric vehicles, grew by 12 percent, with firms saying they want to hire 6 percent more this year. The United States is a leader in power electronics research, development and deployment, which supports integration of renewable power and battery storage into grid operations. This technology has seeded itself in Wisconsin, North Carolina and Vermont, E&E News reported in the series "United States of Batteries" (Energywire, March 27, 2017).Coalition of the willing
Moniz gave a wry anecdote about the wider interest in clean energy and a split in Washington over low-carbon policies.
At the end of 2016, Utah, Colorado and Nevada announced they would work together to build a network of fast-charging stations for electric vehicles on their interstate highway corridors. "One year later, four states were added on: Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and New Mexico," Moniz said.
Wyoming went for Trump in 2016 by 70 percent of the vote; in Idaho, it was 59 percent for Trump, and Montana chose Trump by 57 percent of the vote. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton carried New Mexico by 48 percent to Trump's 40 percent.
"As a physicist, I can do a simple extrapolation and say in 11 more years, the entire country will be part of this charging network," Moniz said. "Those are blue states and red states in terms of the governors."
From his policy perspective, a coalition of the willing is far better than none at all.
"There's no doubt that long-term, we need an economywide national approach. But I think it's very important that we maintain the momentum toward this long-term, very low-carbon economy," Moniz said, adding at another point, "The reality is, mayors and governors have a lot more of a can-do spirit than you find at the national level because they're close to where the issues are, the problems are, and they are looking for the future."
Jobs data indicate that in the auto industry, at least, some U.S. carmakers miscalculated despite their immersion in the market.
Jobs involved in alternative-fuel vehicles declined by almost 40,000 in 2017, despite a 25 percent increase in hybrid, plug-in and electric vehicle sales in the United States. That suggests that foreign manufacturers' imports seized opportunities that U.S. rivals didn't see or act on, Foster said.
Moniz and Foster said they hope the report's detail will sharpen recognition of new opportunities in energy and the need for more targeted education, training and apprenticeships in those fields. One-quarter of the firms surveyed said it was "very difficult" to hire qualified workers over the previous 12 months, and 70 percent of companies reported difficulty in doing so.
David Terry, executive director of NASEO, said the employment report begun by DOE and continued under EFI "has proven to be an important tool for state energy officials, who will use this unique set of 'all of the above' energy jobs data to inform policy development and planning."
The survey of 24,000 firms draws on the Bureau of Labor Statistics' methodology for classifying workers, based on the BLS quarterly census of employment and wages. Researchers made nearly 400,000 calls to employers and sent 40,000 emails to collect data from 23,000 businesses. About 5,500 of the 24,000 respondents provided full responses to the survey, the authors said.
This detail filled in gaps — some very large — in the Labor Department assessment of energy jobs and the picture from surveyed employers, Foster said.
The survey's job total in the wind energy sector was 15 times higher than the BLS report and almost 100 times greater than in solar. "This plays out in virtually every one of these technologies," Foster said.Efficiency boost
The count of direct solar jobs in New York state came to just 61 jobs in 2017, according to BLS.
"Why on Earth would [the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority] be interested in continuing to invest in the solar industry if at the end of a decade it only produced 61 jobs, because that's what the BLS data would show you," Foster said.
The study's conclusion is that solar supported 12,411 jobs in the state.
One reason for the discrepancies is the way contract maintenance workers are counted. Utilities increasingly rely on contractors, but they aren't counted as part of the utility job classification.
Likewise, installers of residential photovoltaic solar panels are classified as roofers and electricians. Those who design wind turbines likely are not associated with energy at all, he added.
The authors said the most surprising survey finding was the sustained growth of jobs related to increasing energy efficiency of a wide variety of products, from appliances to home insulation to factories installing combined heat and power units.
This category added 67,000 net new jobs in 2017, a 3 percent growth rate and twice the national average. The number of jobs related to combined heat and power grew by 9,000, a 55 percent rate compared with 2016.
"Since no one had studied this industry before with a direct survey, it provided the first-ever look at what's going on with how businesses are trying to embrace these new technologies," the study said.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/05/17/stories/1060081937
-
Wehrum Strongly Hints EPA Will Not Scrap GHG Risk Finding
May 17, 2018 | Inside EPA
EPA air chief Bill Wehrum is strongly hinting that the agency will not seek to scrap its finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, though he is stopping short of agreeing with the finding's conclusions and is not definitively committing to retaining the risk assessment that forms the basis for all of EPA's climate rules.
In an exchange with Rep. Scott Peters (D-CA) during a May 16 hearing of a House Energy & Commerce panel, Wehrum refused to say whether he or Administrator Scott Pruitt accepts the finding's conclusion that human-released GHGs endanger public health because they are the main cause of climate change.
And he also reiterated Pruitt's prior statements that climate skeptics were not given a “voice” in the development of the 2009 finding.
Nevertheless, Wehrum said it is important to “look at the broader context” of the issue, noting that earlier in the hearing he was asked about EPA's light-duty vehicle GHG rules, which were a direct outgrowth of the endangerment finding.
“I said we're working on a proposed rule to maybe change those,” he said. “I didn't say we're working on a proposed rule to eliminate those standards, and we're not going to do that.”
However, on the fundamental risks that GHG pose for the climate, Wehrum said he accepts that humans play a role in climate change but said he is “not sure” about the extent of that role. He added that he is in the middle of a series of staff briefings on the “mountain” of reports regarding climate science.
Regarding Pruitt, Wehrum said the administrator believes “people with a different view haven't had a voice so far in this process. He's been trying to find a way to allow them to have some voice.” But he said there is no “process” to solicit those views and there is no “schedule” to do so.
Reports in March suggested that EPA might formally accept comment on a series of petitions from climate policy opponents to revisit the finding, though the status of that idea is not clear.
Peters expressed frustration that Wehrum and Pruitt are unable to “answer” if they agree with the finding regarding GHG endangerment, and added that there is apparently “no process for these voiceless oil and gas companies to get their voice heard.”
He added: “I'm comfortable staying where we are, but I'm suspicious that that's not where you want to be.”
Asked to confirm that there is no “action to revisit” the endangerment finding, Wehrum said, “That's correct.”
Several free-market groups that oppose carbon controls have outlined arguments for scrapping the GHG finding, as well as claims that EPA improperly extended the finding to stationary sources, claiming that it failed to craft a source-specific GHG endangerment finding for the power sector and other industries.
However, many industry groups have urged EPA to leave the climate risk finding alone, arguing that it would be a fool's errand legally and politically to seek reverse it due to the increasingly strong scientific conclusion that human-released GHGs are the dominant cause of climate change.
Going after the finding would also directly contradict the power sector's call for a narrow replacement to the Obama-era Clean Power Plan that it believes would provide regulatory certainty.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/wehrum-strongly-hints-epa-will-not-scrap-ghg-risk-finding
-
Top Official Gets Climate Science Lessons
May 17, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Camille von Kaenel
A top EPA political appointee is receiving staff briefings on climate change science at his request.
Bill Wehrum, EPA's air chief, told lawmakers on the House Energy and Commerce Committee yesterday that he was in the middle of a series of briefings on the state of climate change science by the agency's staff.
"For the last 10 years, I was an attorney in private practice, and nobody hired me to go dive into the mountain of data that exists on climate, so there's a lot I have to learn," he told Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.). "I'm putting my money where my mouth is."
Wehrum was previously an industry attorney at Hunton & Williams LLP after serving as EPA's acting air chief during the George W. Bush administration.
"I've done several, and there's more to go," he said of the briefings. "There's a mountain."
Wehrum's boss, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, has said he wants a public debate on climate change that would pit a "red team" composed of people with views challenging the mainstream science against a "blue team." He has also downplayed the role that carbon dioxide plays in warming the Earth.
As assistant administrator for air and radiation, Wehrum oversees EPA's Climate Change Division in the Office of Atmospheric Programs.
Climate scientists there maintain information about global warming on EPA's website, some of which has been buried or removed under the Trump administration. They contributed to a comprehensive cross-agency report last November that found humans are the primary cause of global warming in the last century.
Under President Trump, staff have continued gathering greenhouse gas emissions data that the United States is required to submit to the United Nations. The White House has targeted the program for deep budget cuts, along with most climate science initiatives across the federal government.
"The question is, is he going into these briefing with actual intentions to learn, or is this just another disingenuous way to delay action?" said Rachel Cleetus, policy director of the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "If he is going into these meetings with an open mind, what he would hear is the science is clear and urgent, and we need to cut emissions quickly to limit the effects of climate change."
"We encourage Wehrum to act on these facts, rather than continue to delay important action," she added.'I'm not sure'
Wehrum told Peters yesterday he agrees that climate change is happening and that human-caused emissions play a role, but does not know about the extent of humankind's contributions.
"What I said at my confirmation hearing and what I continue to believe is, I'm not sure," he said.
Wehrum refused to tell lawmakers what Pruitt thinks of the state of climate change science. He said Pruitt has a "process concern at a minimum" with EPA's finding that greenhouse gas emissions harm public health. That endangerment finding underpins EPA's climate rules.
"People with alternate views haven't had a voice in the process so far, and he's been trying to find a way to give them a voice," Wehrum said yesterday.
Dina Kruger, the former director of EPA's Climate Change Division, told E&E News in an earlier interview that her former colleagues who are still at the agency have had much less to do under Trump.
"It's very hard for them," she said. "The people at EPA want to work, and they want to do good work. Especially for the climate people, Pruitt isn't going to talk to them. Nobody is going to talk to them about what they should be doing ... it's hard. You're sitting there, and you don't have a lot of work to do."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/05/17/stories/1060081949
Industry and Association News
LCSA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Transportation and Infrastructure News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Environment News
Add recipients
Suggested