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PM ACC Clips Report - February 25, 2018
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(ACC Mentioned) Prices for PP and Solid PS, PET Resins Tick down in January
Feb 25, 2019 | Plastics News
By Frank Esposito
The year got off to a bit of a rough start for North American polypropylene, solid polystyrene and PET bottle resin markets. Regional PP and solid PS prices both fell an average of 2 cents per pound in January, with PET down 1 cent... -
Trump to Delay Tariff Increases on Chinese Imports
Feb 24, 2019 | Wall Street Journal
By Bob Davis and Lingling Wei
President Trump said Sunday he would delay an increase in tariffs on Chinese goods set to take effect at the end of this week, citing “substantial progress” on issues including intellectual property and technology transfer after a... -
US Science Agencies Fare Well Under Tardy Budget
Feb 25, 2019 | Chemistry World
By Rebecca Trager
The US’s science agencies have done well in the budget for the remainder of the financial year, recently signed off on four-and-a half months late. The nation’s research base had faced significant cuts proposed by the Trump administration. -
Ewire: Democrats Seek IG Inquiry of Wehrum over Ethics Claims
Feb 25, 2019 | Inside EPA
Top Democratic lawmakers are urging EPA's Office of Inspector General (OIG) to launch an investigation into whether agency air chief Bill Wehrum broke ethics laws when dealing with his former industry clients, citing his role in crafting... -
EPA Regulator Skirts the Line Between Former Clients and Current Job
Feb 25, 2019 | Washington Post
By Juliet Eilperin
Less than a month into his tenure as the top air policy official at the Environmental Protection Agency, Bill Wehrum hopped into the EPA’s electric Chevy Volt and rode to the Pennsylvania Avenue offices of his former law firm. -
Roundup Chemical Found in Beer, Wine — Study
Feb 25, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Marc Heller
The weedkiller glyphosate is common in low levels in beer and wine, a consumer group said after testing a handful of the beverages. The U.S. Public Interest Research Group said it found, at levels within safe limits set by EPA, traces of... -
Regulatory Future Murky for ‘Forever Chemicals’ (Podcast)
Feb 25, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By David Schultz
Bloomberg Environment’s Sylvia Carignan joins our podcast, Parts Per Billion, to talk about the future of PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals,” a family of man-made substances that have been found in groundwater across the country and... -
Bayer Gains Edge in Round Two of Roundup Cancer-Claim Test Cases
Feb 24, 2019 | Bloomberg
By Joel Rosenblatt
Faced with billions of dollars in claims from people who say Roundup weed killer gave them cancer, Bayer AG is hoping its first loss in a U.S. court last year was a fluke. When the next trial starts in California on Monday, the German... -
“Our Families Need Answers”: Feds Commit to Test People for Toxic “Forever Chemicals” near Military Bases in Colorado, 7 Other States
Feb 25, 2019 | Denver Post
By Bruce Finley
The federal government’s commitment to test blood and urine near military bases in Colorado and seven other states where drinking water was contaminated with toxic “forever chemicals” set off a scramble as residents worry about... -
Barnes Airport Assessment Looks at Lasting Impact of Exposure to Chemicals
Feb 25, 2019 | Mass Live
By Anne-Gerard Flynn
The Centers for Disease Control and the Agency for Toxic Substancesand Disease Registry announced Feb. 21 that they will test residents around Westfield's Barnes Air National Guard Base as well as in seven similar communities... -
United States: EPA's PFAS Action Plan Presents Opportunities For Advocacy
Feb 25, 2019 | Mondaq
By Rachel Jacobson and H. David Gold
On February 14, 2019, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released an Action Plan for addressing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (collectively, PFAS), a group of chemical compounds that has been linked to negative... -
Who Will Support Real Cosmetics Reform?
Feb 25, 2019 | Environmental Working Group
By Scott Faber
In coming weeks, members of Congress will again introduce bipartisan bills to ensure that the chemicals used in cosmetics and other everyday personal care products are safe. As The New York Times noted, it’s been 30 years... -
The FDA Just Announced a Sunscreen Safety Proposal With Big Implications
Feb 25, 2019 | Allure
By Rebecca Dancer
On February 21, the Food and Drug Administration announced a new proposal on sunscreen safety that will likely overhaul the entire sunscreen industry. No, we're not exaggerating — despite repeated calls for action from watchdog... -
Nordic Nations Warn of Swag Danger
Feb 25, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Marcus Hoy
The corporate world is well aware that people love free gifts, but Nordic chemical agencies say they can be dangerous to people’s health. Companies spend millions of dollars annually on promotional giveaways or “swag” like zip drives... -
(ACC Mentioned) It's Time to Connect the Dots on Atlantic Coast Pipeline
Feb 25, 2019 | The State Journal
By Robert R. Simpson Jr.
The phrase “connecting the dots” stems from the children’s activity of drawing lines between dots in a particular sequence to create a picture. It also refers to the process of understanding the big picture by piecing together the.. -
Exclusive: Interior Hands out Hundreds of Offshore Drilling Safety Rule Waivers
Feb 25, 2019 | Politico Pro
By Ben Lefebvre
The Interior Department has given offshore oil drillers hundreds of exemptions to Obama-era safety rules put in place after the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, effectively gutting parts of the regulation before the Trump administration... -
Speaker Proposes $1b for Energy Efficiency Grants
Feb 25, 2019 | AP (In E&E - Greenwire)
By Steve LeBlanc
Massachusetts House Speaker Robert DeLeo has unveiled a plan to spend $1 billion over the next 10 years to help cities and towns adopt new technology designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions, strengthen infrastructure projects... -
California Regulators Cite SoCal Reliability Risks, Reiterate Climate Goals
Feb 25, 2019 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Richard Nemec
The California Energy Commission (CEC) on Wednesday indicated there are questions about Southern California’s natural gas storage and pipeline capacity in the latest Integrated Energy Policy Report (IEPR). -
Cleanup Continues Months After Gasoline Spill Near Anthony
Feb 25, 2019 | KRWG Public Media
By Mallory Falk
When a gasoline pipeline burst late last year in southern New Mexico, local officials wanted to make sure it wouldn’t happen again. But the county and state don’t have much authority over the line.Late one night last December, several... -
Bill That Calls for Sweeping Environmental Reviews Stalls
Feb 25, 2019 | AP (In E&E - Greenwire)
Business and city leaders, energy companies, electric utilities, farmers and others are all voicing concerns about proposed legislation in New Mexico that would require sweeping environmental reviews by state agencies for many... -
How Many Regs Could It Take to Launch 'Green New Deal'?
Feb 25, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Niina Heikkinen
The aim of the "Green New Deal" to remake the U.S. economy has experts in government regulation guessing how the proposal could shape the scope of the nation's environmental standards. Progressives have laid out an ambitious plan... -
Unilever, L’Oreal, Danone Deemed Most Ready for Climate Change
Feb 25, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Emily Chasan and Katie Linsell
Among the world’s biggest consumer companies, Europe’s Unilever NV, L’Oreal SA and Danone are best prepared for the effects of climate change relative to their peers, according to a report from the nonprofit CDP. Formerly known... -
Five Carbon Capture Techniques to Help Ward Off Global Warming
Feb 25, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Michael Belfiore
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that warding off catastrophic global warming requires actively removing 100 billion to 1 trillion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by midcentury. -
Researchers Urge EPA a to Weigh PM Emissions’ Neurological Harm
Feb 25, 2019 | Inside EPA
Clean air researchers and health professionals are urging EPA as part of its ambient air standards setting process to protect against the neurological harm caused by fine particulate matter (PM2.5) emissions, in a new report that...
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(ACC Mentioned) Prices for PP and Solid PS, PET Resins Tick down in January
Feb 25, 2019 | Plastics News
By Frank Esposito
The year got off to a bit of a rough start for North American polypropylene, solid polystyrene and PET bottle resin markets.
Regional PP and solid PS prices both fell an average of 2 cents per pound in January, with PET down 1 cent, according to market sources contacted by Plastics News. Prices for PP continued a slide that has seen them tumble a total of 18 cents in November and December.
Like previous price drops, the January PP slide was tied into lower prices for polymer-grade propylene feedstock. Those prices have dropped as propylene supplies have increased. North America now has the lowest PGP prices in the world, according to Scott Newell, a market analyst with Resin Technology Inc. in Fort Worth, Texas.
Recent PP demand also has been hurt by higher prices earlier in 2018, he added.
“Inventories are high for both monomer and PP [resin],” Newell explained. “We should start to see these [lower] prices attract [PP] demand back to the U.S. in coming months.”
The regional PP market in 2018 also was impacted by increased supplies of PP imported from other countries. Tight North American PP supplies and low prices for imported resin led buyers to foreign suppliers.
North American PP sales through November were down a little more than 1 percent, according to the American Chemistry Council, as a drop of 32 percent in export sales brought down flat domestic sales. Market watchers said actual PP consumption in the region more likely was up 3-4 percent for the year because of increased amounts of imported PP.
Regional solid PS prices slipped an average of 2 cents per pound in January after sliding 7 cents in December. Those moves were tied to lower demand and to lower prices for benzene feedstock, which is used to make styrene monomer.
North American solid PS sales struggled in 2018, dropping almost 5 percent through November. Exports have provided a bright spot, growing more than 13 percent and reducing the impact of a 5.5 percent drop in domestic sales.
PET bottle resin prices were down 1 cent in January after declining by 4 cents in December. Those drops followed declines of 6 cents in November and 1 cent in October. Market watchers cited lower demand and improving supplies of purified terephthalic acid and other raw materials as reasons for the declines. Demand for bottle resin declines in the fall and winter months — the result of declining sales of bottled water and carbonated soft drinks.
Other prices flat
Regional prices for all grades of polyethylene and PVC were flat for January, sources said. In December, regional prices for all grades of PE had slipped an average of 3 cents per pound. Major PE makers were seeking a 6-cent hike effective Jan. 1, but that move was pushed back. Market watchers said that some PE makers now may seek back-to-back monthly increases of 3 cents per pound.
The 3-cent December drop for all grades of PE followed a similar 3-cent decline in November. Market watchers cited lower oil prices and lower global demand for PE, especially from the packaging market, as reasons for the November and December drops. Oil prices affect global resin markets, even though most North American PE is based on natural gas.
U.S./Canadian high and linear low density PE sales reported major growth in 2018, resulting from larger amounts of new capacity being sold into the export markets as well as domestic sales that have grown at strong rates.
HDPE sales in the region were up 12 percent for the year, according to ACC, with domestic growth of more than 5 percent amplified by export sales growth of more than 42 percent. Domestic HDPE growth for 2018 was led by the pipe and conduit market, where sales surged 14 percent.
In LLDPE, 11-month sales soared more than 24 percent, with domestic sales up almost 5 percent and export sales exploding almost 96 percent. Trash and can liners led domestic LLDPE growth through November, increasing 8 percent.
Regional sales of LDPE grew at lower rates in 2018, rising just over 7 percent. Flat domestic LDPE sales were boosted by a gain of more than 26 percent in exports. Domestic LDPE growth in 2018 was led by food packaging film, which grew more than 4 percent.
January marked the ninth consecutive month of flat pricing for North American PVC. Market prices haven’t moved since April, with supply and demand being closely balanced. Regional PVC prices were up a net of 3 cents in 2018.
U.S./Canadian PVC sales were solid in 2018, climbing 3 percent vs. the previous year. Domestic PVC sales were flat, but the overall growth rate was bolstered by a jump of 10 percent in export sales. Among PVC end markets, extruded windows and doors showed strong growth of almost 27 percent. That segment accounted for almost 7 percent of all domestic PVC sales for the year.
At the macro-feedstock level, West Texas Intermediate crude oil prices began January at $47 per barrel but had increased to $55 by the end of the month, a gain of 17 percent. Regional prices for natural gas fell from $2.80 per million British thermal units to $2.70 in the same comparison, for a drop of almost 4 percent.
https://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20190225/NEWS/190227691/prices-for-pp-and-solid-ps-pet-resins-tick-down-in-january
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Trump to Delay Tariff Increases on Chinese Imports
Feb 24, 2019 | Wall Street Journal
By Bob Davis and Lingling Wei
President Trump said Sunday he would delay an increase in tariffs on Chinese goods set to take effect at the end of this week, citing “substantial progress” on issues including intellectual property and technology transfer after a weekend of talks.
In a tweet, Mr. Trump wrote that should progress continue, the U.S. would plan a summit with President Xi Jinping of China to “conclude an agreement” that would settle a yearlong trade fight between the two nations.
Mr. Trump’s tweets didn’t specify how long the extension of a trade truce would last or any date for a potential summit.
U.S. tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods had been scheduled to rise to 25% from 10% at 12:01 a.m. Saturday.
In recent talks, Beijing offered to increase purchases of U.S. farm and energy products and services, ease restrictions on U.S. firms in financial services and auto manufacturing and improve protection of U.S. intellectual-property rights, according to people briefed on the discussions.
But China’s leadership sees all those measures as aligned with the nation’s own interests. Beijing so far hasn’t given much ground on issues it sees as crucial to maintaining the Communist Party’s rule, including government subsidies and support to state-owned companies and other policies that underpin its state-led economic model.
“We’re taking steps to reform state-owned enterprises to make them more competitive, just not in the way the U.S. wants us to,” a Chinese official said. The Chinese delegation is expected to leave Washington for Beijing on Monday afternoon. A statement by the official Xinhua News Agency echoed Mr. Trump’s tweets, saying negotiations were centered on putting together the text of an agreement and that “substantial progress” has been made.
Mr. Trump tweeted the progress involved “intellectual property protection, technology transfer, agriculture, services, currency, and many other issues,” without offering details.
Previously, U.S. officials had said China had agreed to a currency accord. Beijing has recently tried to keep its currency from depreciating because of fears of capital flight.
The two sides are working on a text that could top 100 pages, a person tracking the talks said.
“Trump has now substantially ratcheted up the pressure on his negotiators to strike a deal with China, even if it does little to assuage U.S. hard-liners’ concerns about China’s commitments on core structural issues,” said Cornell University China expert Eswar Prasad. “There is still a yawning gap between the two sides on major issues due to U.S. lack of trust in China’s commitments on structural issues and China’s unwillingness to make any fundamental changes to its industrial and economic strategies.”
Divisions also remain on how to address U.S. complaints that Chinese authorities and companies pressure U.S. companies to share technology. Chinese officials deny that Beijing applies such pressure and argue that foreign firms voluntarily share technology in exchange for access to China’s markets.
U.S. semiconductor, chemical and auto firms, in particular, complain that Beijing has a variety of ways to obtain U.S. technology, including by joint-venture requirements and by regulatory panels that pass along U.S. technology secrets to Chinese firms.
During the latest round of trade talks, said the people briefed on the matter, Chinese negotiators said Beijing was willing to better police practices on the local level and encourage U.S. businesses operating in China to report coercion to regulators. U.S. negotiators are pushing for much broader changes.
“If extending the deadline leads the two governments to secure a sustaining bilateral deal that addresses American concerns about market access and structural reforms, then it will be worth it,” said Myron Brilliant, executive vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “Business wants a comprehensive deal that will reduce tensions and eliminate existing punitive tariffs.”
The two sides also haven’t agreed how to enforce any deal. U.S. officials, who have for years complained about China’s poor follow-up record, are pushing for provisions that would either permit Washington to reimpose tariffs on Chinese goods should Beijing fail to meet certain milestones—called “snapback” in trade lingo—or leave the levies in place and gradually remove them if Beijing meets agreed-upon yardsticks.
Chinese officials have criticized that approach as unfair, and they said the two sides should jointly evaluate complaints.
Another issue: what standards should be used to judge compliance with an accord. If one or two U.S. firms continue to have intellectual-property problems in China, for instance, should that be sufficient to reimpose tariffs? If that isn’t sufficient, what is?
Hudson Institute China scholar Michael Pillsbury, who advises the Trump trade team, said the president hoped to get a negotiating edge by having a summit meeting in the U.S., rather than China.
In past negotiations with the U.S., he said, China has reserved its most significant concessions for a final meeting with a U.S. president. But some in the White House worry that Mr. Trump will be so committed to getting a deal that he will settle for a weak agreement.
Some Chinese officials said the U.S. underestimates the domestic political problems facing Beijing given the growing nationalist feeling at home.
The two sides are working off a lengthy list of U.S. demands on trade, delivered to Beijing last May, that includes cutting the bilateral trade imbalance by $200 billion in two years and halting subsides for advanced technologies. Many Chinese have compared those demands to the infamous “21 Demands” made by Japan in 1915 that would have greatly extended Japan’s control of the Chinese economy during World War I.
Mr. Trump has made cutting a trade deal with China a priority. His top trade negotiator, Robert Lighthizer, has long taken a hard line on Chinese trade practices—and in recent weeks has been cautioning about the big hurdles that remain before the two sides can strike a deal. Mr. Lighthizer has focused on so-called structural issues, including subsidies and technology transfer.
Major stock indexes in Shanghai and Shenzhen each jumped more than 2% in early trading on Monday. The gains followed the signs of progress in trade talks, as well as comments from President Xi Jinping, reported in state media over the weekend, that finance should play a bigger role in the economy.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-to-delay-tariff-increases-on-chinese-imports-11551050187?mod=hp_lead_pos6
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US Science Agencies Fare Well Under Tardy Budget
Feb 25, 2019 | Chemistry World
By Rebecca Trager
The US’s science agencies have done well in the budget for the remainder of the financial year, recently signed off on four-and-a half months late. The nation’s research base had faced significant cuts proposed by the Trump administration.
President Trump signed into law the final omnibus funding bill on 15 February, just in time to avoid another government shutdown. The previous day, both chambers of Congress had overwhelmingly approved the package to fund agencies for the rest of the financial year, which ends on 30 September. The science community celebrated a significant funding boost over the cuts put forward by Trump.
Overall, federal R&D spending reached $151.5 billion (£116 billion) in 2019, representing a 6% increase over the last year, according to analysis by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). That compares very favourably to the 7% cut that would have occurred under the president’s original funding request. Support for basic research rose 5%, whereas it would have fallen 8% under Trump’s proposal, AAAS figures shows.
Among the winners are the National Science Foundation, which received a 4% boost, but was slated for a reduction of nearly 30% under Trump’s original proposal. While funding for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) remained flat, just like last year, a 24% cut had been sought by the White House. The EPA’s science and technology funding also remains level, while the administration had wanted to slash this this by 40%.Cuts avoided
Nasa’s science directorate budget will rise 11% to nearly $7 billion, and the agency’s Earth Science directorate averted Trump’s requested cuts of more than 6%. The Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope – a Nasa observatory designed to answer key questions about dark energy, exoplanets and infrared astrophysics – also received a reprieve from the administration’s bid to eliminate it. The telescope, which is tentatively scheduled to launch in the mid-2020s, will receive $312 million in funding.
The Chemical Safety Board (CSB), an independent agency charged with investigating serious industrial chemical accidents, will receive its first budget increase in years to $12 million – around a 10% increase. The Trump administration has repeatedly attempted to close it.
Policy experts underscore that Congress is responsible for the increase in science funding, noting that these increases were enabled by a bipartisan budget deal reached last year. ‘In many ways, there is credit to be given to the Congress – the appropriators – but the administration should understand … that this is no time to reduce federal funding for research,’ said AAAS chief executive Rush Holt at the organisation’s annual conference on 15 February in Washington DC.Next year
David Parkes from the AAAS’s R&D budget and policy programme echoes Holt: ‘Generally, these increases for research programmes are attributable to the work of Congress – both chambers – prioritising R&D funding, essentially sort of side-lining the administration’s proposed reductions and instead providing good, robust funding increases for core research agencies,’ Parkes tells Chemistry World.
Ben Corb, a spokesperson for the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, adds: ‘I am not surprised that Congress rejected the president’s budget proposal for science agencies – most of us didn’t take it as a serious starting point,’ he tells Chemistry World. ‘We are glad that Congress, in its wisdom, sees the value of what the scientific community does.’
Now that this year’s budget is wrapped up, thoughts are already turning to next year’s. The White House usually issues the next year’s budget proposal in February, but Trump’s 2020 budget request is delayed and will be released next month. An initial budget blue print is expected on 4 March, with a more detailed interagency budget to be released the following week. Expectations in the science community are not high.
’I don’t expect that the president’s next budget proposal for science agencies will be all that great, and I anticipate that Congress will pretty much ignore it again,’ says Corb. He stresses the importance of getting another bipartisan budget deal in place, that way Congress can raise the spending caps again and allow room to increase funding for research programmes.
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/us-science-agencies-fare-well-under-tardy-budget/3010152.article
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Ewire: Democrats Seek IG Inquiry of Wehrum over Ethics Claims
Feb 25, 2019 | Inside EPA
Top Democratic lawmakers are urging EPA's Office of Inspector General (OIG) to launch an investigation into whether agency air chief Bill Wehrum broke ethics laws when dealing with his former industry clients, citing his role in crafting a major policy shift on a key air permitting program that aided a former utility sector client.
“There's a plain and flagrant violation of ethics rules,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), in an interview with the Washington Post, which first reported on the request to OIG.
In addition to Whitehouse, the request was signed by House Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone (D-NJ) and Senate Environment & Public Works Committee ranking member Tom Carper (D-DE).
The lawmakers focus on EPA's Dec. 7, 2017, memo that dropped the agency's long-running position that it can use its own projections of a facility's potential future emissions to trigger Clean Air Act new source review (NSR) permitting requirements. Instead, the agency now defers to companies to assess whether they believe NSR applies.
The memo “disavowed” EPA's position in then-pending litigation against Michigan utility DTE Energy over an alleged NSR violation, and could have affected whether the Supreme Court reviewed the case -- though the court ultimately declined to take the case despite the agency's revised stance.
“While the underlying facts and legal arguments in the DTE litigation are complicated, the ethics violations are simple and clear: federal employees may not participate in particular matters that involve their former clients or employers,” the lawmakers write in a Feb. 21 letter.
DTE has long been represented by the firm formerly known as Hunton & Williams -- now Hunton Andrews Kurth following a merger -- which employed Wehrum and EPA air office senior counsel David Harlow before they joined the agency in late 2017.
“The DTE memo is a particular matter involving a client represented by their former law firm, and their participation in it was prohibited by ethics rules,” the letter adds.
The Post reports that EPA officials were working to issue the DTE memo by Dec. 8, 2017, which was the day the Supreme Court was set to decide whether to review the litigation involving the company. After the justices declined to take the case, the utility entered settlement talks with EPA, “and DTE's hand has been strengthened.”
Wehrum participated in a meeting to review the memo and explain the intent of 2002 EPA rules -- which he helped craft -- that were key to the DTE dispute, the story notes, while also citing two sources as saying the meeting strayed to other topics, such as the memo's potential effect on future EPA enforcement and the “need to issue it before the Supreme Court conference on the DTE case.”
The request to OIG comes amid increasing scrutiny of Wehrum's interactions with his former clients, including a report last week by Politico about a summer 2017 meeting at which he crafted a broad campaign to target EPA air and climate rules for a major utility group, just months before beginning such a deregulatory push after taking over as EPA air chief.
Wehrum in both stories defended his conduct, saying he strictly follows ethics rules. “I have, from day one, tried to be absolutely strict and assiduous as to what I do about complying with my ethical obligations,” Wehrum told the Post. “Because it doesn’t do me any good, and it doesn’t do the agency any good, to be doing things that people see as unethical.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/ewire-democrats-seek-ig-inquiry-wehrum-over-ethics-claims
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EPA Regulator Skirts the Line Between Former Clients and Current Job
Feb 25, 2019 | Washington Post
By Juliet Eilperin
Less than a month into his tenure as the top air policy official at the Environmental Protection Agency, Bill Wehrum hopped into the EPA’s electric Chevy Volt and rode to the Pennsylvania Avenue offices of his former law firm.
There, he met with representatives of the nation’s largest power companies — including two groups that, shortly before, had been his paying clients — to brief them on the Trump administration’s plans to weaken federal environmental regulations.
The Dec. 7, 2017, meeting is just one example of interactions between Wehrum, a skilled lawyer and regulator, and former clients that ethics experts say comes dangerously close to violating federal ethics rules. Since joining the EPA in November 2017, Wehrum acknowledges that he has met with two former clients at his old firm — without consulting in advance with ethics officials, even though they had cautioned him about such interactions. He also weighed in on a policy shift that could have influenced litigation involving DTE Energy, a Detroit-based utility represented by his former firm.
Late last week, three Democrats — Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (N.J.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) and Thomas R. Carper (Del.) — asked the EPA’s Office of Inspector General to investigate Wehrum’s conduct, saying it runs afoul of rules requiring federal appointees to recuse themselves from most matters involving former clients and employers for two years.
“There’s a plain and flagrant violation of the ethics rules,” Whitehouse said in an interview. “It’s hard to overlook in an agency that’s absolutely riddled with industry operatives that appear to be putting a thumb, wrist, forearm and elbow on the scale for the industry patrons they service.”
In an interview, Wehrum defended his conduct, saying he has followed the letter of the law on ethical matters.
“I have, from day one, tried to be absolutely strict and assiduous as to what I do about complying with my ethical obligations,” Wehrum said. “Because it doesn’t do me any good, and it doesn’t do the agency any good, to be doing things that people see as unethical.”
President Trump has tapped dozens of former industry lobbyists to fill senior roles in various agencies whose work affects their former clients, federal records show. That list includes more than a dozen EPA appointees, including the president’s nominee to head the agency, acting EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist.
[‘The man behind the curtain’: The ex-oil lobbyist who now runs Interior]
Under Wheeler and his predecessor, Scott Pruitt, the EPA has moved aggressively to roll back Obama-era environmental regulations criticized as onerous by industry leaders — a mission in which Wehrum has played a crucial role.
To avoid conflicts of interest, Trump asks appointees to sign an ethics pledge that requires them to recuse themselves from specific matters involving their former employers and clients for two years. If an appointee does meet with a former client, the pledge, part of a 2017 executive order, says the session should be open to all interested parties — a dictum that has been interpreted to mean four other participants who were not clients.
Wehrum said he is still unclear about exactly what sort of meetings are permissible under the Trump pledge. However, he said he has concluded that his meetings comply so long as five different entities participate. And, he said, it does not matter how many of those entities are former clients.
“It’s enormously important to me to understand — as it relates to how folks in industry are potentially affected by what we’re doing — who I can talk to, who I can be dealing with, and who I can’t,” he said.
Wehrum’s former law firm, Hunton Andrews Kurth, is one of the nation’s premier challengers of federal air and water pollution standards. Its website notes that its clients “include most major industrial groups that are affected by air quality regulations” and says it raises “frequent” court challenges to EPA regulations. The firm declined requests for comment.
A trained chemical engineer who earned his law degree at night while working for a company in Delaware, Wehrum, 55, led the EPA’s air and radiation office on an acting basis under President George W. Bush until Democrats blocked his nomination.
He joined Hunton as a partner in 2007 and spent the next decade representing utilities, petrochemical manufacturers and trade groups. In his last year at the firm, he reported income of $2.15 million. At the EPA, his salary is $164,200.
Among Wehrum’s clients was the Utility Air Regulatory Group, a coalition of power companies that use coal. The organization lacks corporate forms and does not have a physical office separate from the law firm.
Just months before joining the EPA, in May 2017, Wehrum invited then-EPA official Mandy Gunasekara to brief the group “on any Clean Air Act regulatory issue that you are willing and able to address,” according to emails released under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the Sierra Club, an advocacy group. The email was first reported by Politico. And in June, according to a document first obtained by Politico, Wehrum convened the Utility Air Regulatory Group for a meeting where he and his colleagues requested $8.2 million for work related to the EPA.
Soon after joining the EPA, Wehrum spoke at an event on Dec. 7, 2017, organized by his former law partner, Makram Jaber, on behalf of the group; the event was first reported by the New York Times. In an interview, Wehrum said he asked Jaber to include Duke Energy, another former client, and three other utilities — all among the Utility Air Regulatory Group’s most generous backers — so the event would comply with his interpretation of Trump’s ethics pledge.
Wehrum said that he did not run the meeting by ethics officials because he thought he knew what the rules were, and did not see it as a potential business development opportunity for Hunton.
That same week, Wehrum participated in an agency decision that appeared to benefit his former law firm.
On Dec. 7, 2017, Pruitt, then the EPA chief, signed a memo saying the agency would not be “second guessing” companies’ projections about how much their expanded operations might increase pollution.
The memo’s timing was fortuitous for Hunton because it came on the eve of a critical Supreme Court hearing in a case against DTE Energy. In 2010, Obama’s EPA had accused DTE of excluding pollution that would result from its expansion of a Michigan coal plant when it calculated whether it needed to apply for a federal permit.
The timing was no coincidence. In a Dec. 4, 2017, email to other top EPA officials, Gunasekara said the memo had to be finalized before the court met on Dec. 8.
“The cert hearing is planned for Wednesday,” she wrote in reference to the court’s review of the DTE case. “The memo needs to go out before.”
Hours before the justices conferred on the case, Hunton hand-delivered Pruitt’s memo to the Supreme Court. After the high court declined to take up the case, the matter entered settlement talks, and DTE’s hand has been strengthened.
Though Wehrum was prohibited by ethics rules from engaging in any matter regarding the DTE lawsuit, he acknowledges reviewing the Pruitt memo in advance and discussing it with EPA colleagues in a meeting on Dec. 5, 2017.
He said a lawyer in EPA’s Office of General Counsel cleared him to hold the meeting to explain the intent of 2002 air rules he helped write during the George W. Bush administration — rules that were key to the DTE dispute. Two political appointees redacted the memo before the meeting to black out references to DTE’s lawsuit, while preserving the rest for Wehrum to read.
“I looked at that [redacted] document, and then I sat in one meeting where we talked about the meaning of the 2002 rules,” Wehrum said. “That was it, that was my involvement.”
However, two people familiar with the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the discussion ranged beyond the 2002 rules, covering such topics as the memo’s potential impact on future EPA enforcement activities and the need to issue it before the Supreme Court conference on the DTE case.
John Walke, who directs the clean-air project at the advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council, blasted Wehrum’s involvement in drafting the memo.
“EPA was winning against DTE Energy, which is what makes these revelations so damning,” Walke said. “It was an abuse for him to facilitate amnesty for his former law firm’s client in a pending enforcement case.”
Don Fox, who served as general counsel and later acting director of the Office of Government Ethics during the Obama administration, agreed Wehrum’s conduct raises “significant” ethical issues.
Both his meetings with former clients and his involvement with the Pruitt memo are “highly problematic,” Fox said. “It would seem to me to be a misuse of position.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/epa-regulator-skirts-the-line-between-former-clients-and-current-job/2019/02/24/b826b5fa-3767-11e9-a400-e481bf264fdc_story.html?utm_term=.23343d4e7d91
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Roundup Chemical Found in Beer, Wine — Study
Feb 25, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Marc Heller
The weedkiller glyphosate is common in low levels in beer and wine, a consumer group said after testing a handful of the beverages.
The U.S. Public Interest Research Group said it found, at levels within safe limits set by EPA, traces of the farm chemical in wine brands such as Sutter Home and Beringer and beers such as Budweiser, Coors and Corona. Organic beverages contained traces, too, suggesting efforts to keep pesticides away from source crops aren't fully successful.
"When you're having a beer or a glass of wine, the last thing you want to think about is that it includes a potentially dangerous pesticide," said Kara Cook-Schultz of the U.S. PIRG Education Fund, who authored the study. "No matter the efforts of brewers and vintners, we found that it is incredibly difficult to avoid the troubling reality that consumers will likely drink glyphosate at every happy hour and backyard barbeque around the country."
The group's researchers tested 20 beverages: 14 beers, five wines and one hard cider. Three of four organic beverages contained glyphosate, the group said, even though the weedkiller isn't allowed on organic crops, suggesting it drifted from other crops.
Glyphosate, sold by Monsanto under the brand name Roundup, is commonly used on farms, including on "Roundup Ready" corn bred to resist it. The chemical is caught up in legal fights over its potential to contribute to cancer, a link that EPA disputes but that gained hold with the World Health Organization.
The PIRG study's release coincides with a case getting underway in federal court today.
The Beer Institute, a trade group, in a statement emphasized the low levels of glyphosate found.
"Our members work with farmers who go to great lengths to raise their crops sustainably and safely," the group said. "In addition, our members stand behind the quality of their beers and ingredients, and our industry's number one priority is consumer safety. The federal government tests a variety of commodities for glyphosate regularly, and the results of the most recent federal testing showed farmers' use of glyphosate falls well below federal limits. As the report itself says, the levels of glyphosate referenced 'are below EPA risk tolerances for beverages.'"
In its report, U.S. PIRG said studies have found traces of glyphosate across adult beverages. And while the levels in its study are below EPA's allowable tolerances, the group said some studies suggest even lower levels of the chemical can contribute to human health problems.
In a U.S. PIRG news release, the Brewers Association, which represents craft and small independent brewers, said, "Brewers do not want glyphosate used on barley or any raw brewing material, and the barley grower organizations have also come out strongly against glyphosate."
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2019/02/25/stories/1060122341
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Regulatory Future Murky for ‘Forever Chemicals’ (Podcast)
Feb 25, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By David Schultz
Bloomberg Environment’s Sylvia Carignan joins our podcast, Parts Per Billion, to talk about the future of PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals,” a family of man-made substances that have been found in groundwater across the country and have been linked to numerous health problems.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/regulatory-future-murky-for-forever-chemicals-podcast
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Bayer Gains Edge in Round Two of Roundup Cancer-Claim Test Cases
Feb 24, 2019 | Bloomberg
By Joel Rosenblatt
Faced with billions of dollars in claims from people who say Roundup weed killer gave them cancer, Bayer AG is hoping its first loss in a U.S. court last year was a fluke. When the next trial starts in California on Monday, the German company may have the upper hand.
Bayer, which took on a mountain of Roundup litigation after acquiring Monsanto Co. in June, persuaded a San Francisco judge to exclude, from the initial trial phase, evidence of the company’s influence on herbicide research and regulation. That same testimony proved crucial in August, when a separate plaintiff won a $289 million verdict, sparking a plunge in Bayer shares.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers say the judge in San Francisco is handling a collection of more than 1,600 lawsuits representing more than 9,000 individuals filed in federal courts over Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, with thousands more in state courts. Resolving those claims could cost Bayer $5 billion, so how the company fares in early court battles will likely signal the extent of its liability, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Holly Froum said.
Bayer is in “meaningfully better shape” in the second trial because of the way the judge has structured it, said Anna Pavlik, senior counsel for special situations at United First Partners LLC in New York.
During last year’s state court case, jurors heard testimony that Monsanto ghostwrote scientific literature and influenced regulators to rebut claims that glyphosate causes cancer. Legal experts said the revelations, supported by company emails, proved pivotal in the verdict against the company. A jury concluded Roundup caused cancer in a former school groundskeeper, though the judge reduced the damage award in October to $78.6 million.
However, the federal court trial starting this week will proceed differently for plaintiff Edwin Hardeman, who says he sprayed Roundup for decades on weeds growing over his large plot of land in Sonoma County, California, about 60 miles north of San Francisco. As with the thousands of other plaintiffs suing Bayer, Hardeman argues his years of exposure to the chemical caused his non-Hodgkins lymphoma.
Read More: What’s Next in Court for Bayer Toxic Chemical Claims
U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria ruled that the trial will initially focus on medical science, studies and data to answer one question: was Hardeman’s exposure to Roundup a substantial factor in causing his cancer? If so, the jury will begin a second phase to determine if Bayer is responsible for damages. If not, the trial would end.
These early trials, known as bellwethers, create guidance for how others should proceed.
“A significant portion of the plaintiffs’ case involves attacks on Monsanto for attempting to influence regulatory agencies and manipulate public opinion regarding glyphosate,” Chhabria wrote in a Jan. 3 order. While that testimony may be relevant in determining the company’s liability for damages, it would be a “distraction” from determining whether the chemical caused Hardeman’s cancer, the judge said.
That ruling gives Bayer “an opportunity to focus primarily on the core scientific studies as evidence, reducing the emotional response the jury may have towards Monsanto being malicious and allegedly plotting to hide evidence of glyphosate being harmful,” said Pavlik at United First Partners.
“We look forward to focusing on the extensive body of science that supports the safety of Roundup,” Chris Loder, a Bayer spokesman, said in an emailed statement. The documents presented at last year’s trial -- and now restricted in the second one -- “do not fully or fairly represent the company’s responsible conduct over more than four decades,” he said.
‘Monsanto’s Fingerprint’
Aimee Wagstaff, Hardeman’s lead trial lawyer, said breaking the trial into two phases put her client at a disadvantage. It “ties Hardeman’s hands and limits his ability to present the entire causation story to the jury,” Wagstaff said. “The jury will not know Monsanto’s fingerprint is all over the science and will not hear evidence regarding Monsanto’s actions to influence and shape the science.”
Still, Bayer probably will be on the hook for substantial costs to resolve all its glyphosate litigation, and other trials won’t have the same restrictions as those imposed by Judge Chhabria, legal experts said.
A third Roundup trial is scheduled for March 18 in state court in Oakland, where allegations about Monsanto’s role in research and regulation will be permitted. Alva and Alberta Pilliod, in their 70s, invoked the same California law that allowed the school groundskeeper to expedite his trial. The law gives scheduling preference to people who are ill.
There’s also growing concern that Roundup liability could expand to other industries, like food makers. The herbicide has been used for decades on all kinds of crops, and tracesof it have been found in products such as oatmeal, granola bars, ice cream, beer and orange juice.
“I have a number of clients looking at their product lines,” said Lori Elliot Jarvis, a lawyer at Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP in Richmond, Virginia, who represents companies in environmental litigation and product liability. “The concern is if this takes hold as a viable cause of action against glyphosate, that plaintiffs’ lawyers may decide to add new defendants to the litigation.” She declined to name her concerned clients.
The case is In re: Roundup Products Liability Litigation, MDL 2741, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-25/bayer-gains-edge-in-round-two-of-roundup-cancer-claim-test-cases
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Feb 25, 2019 | Denver Post
By Bruce Finley
The federal government’s commitment to test blood and urine near military bases in Colorado and seven other states where drinking water was contaminated with toxic “forever chemicals” set off a scramble as residents worry about future health trouble.
Cleanup of watersheds polluted with these perfluorinated chemicals that don’t break down, also known as PFAS, has stalled.
“People want to know, who is going to get picked?” Fountain Valley Clean Water Coalition leader Liz Rosenbaum said. “We want to know what our blood levels are. Then we’ll seek additional medical testing for our kidneys and thyroids.”
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry testing, announced last week, is expected to require 400 samples at each site to assess exposure. Blood tests to check for these chemicals can cost $700. A National Institute of Health-funded study by a University of Colorado Health Sciences team, using 200 samples from south of Colorado Springs, recently found blood levels more than 10 times higher than the national norm.
Long-term exposure to the chemicals — used in firefighting foam, nonstick cookware, dental floss, stain-resistant carpet and fast-food packaging — has been linked to health problems, including high cholesterol, low birth weight, kidney cancer, immune-system ailments and testicular cancer.
For more than three years after news reports revealed contamination of drinking water, residents have been left largely on their own to deal with possible health effects. The prospect of government-financed blood testing, following the Environmental Protection Agency’s unveiling two weeks ago of a national action plan, raised hopes here in a predominantly low-income area.
“I’m definitely interested in knowing. I want to know,” said Max Hill, 63, a lifelong resident walking Saturday along Fountain Creek. “And if it impacts my life, I will be very disappointed.”
Many of those who drank water south of Colorado Springs served in the military, such as Mark Favors, 50, whose mother grew up on well water a mile from Peterson Air Force Base and drank it while pregnant. Favors spent weekends with his grandparents in Widefield until they died of cancer. His father died of kidney cancer. Now in New York, Favors has been pushing for health help.
“My family of military veterans has suffered terribly from kidney disease, including a child who needed to have a kidney transplant. We were never notified once during this decades-long contamination, and I only learned about this deadly contamination of our drinking water while visiting my mother,” Favors said. “Our families need answers on the long-term consequences of the contaminated water we drank.”
Federal health authorities’ mobilization last week reflected lobbying and rising concern in Congress. U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, who a year ago sent a letter urging health assessments, said he’s pleased the area south of Colorado Springs will be a focus.
“The prevalence of PFAS in water near Peterson Air Force Base is alarming. This study is a critical step toward understanding the effects of exposure on human health,” Bennet said.
Initial Air Force studies found that firefighting foam used at Peterson contaminated water and soil at levels more than 1,000 times higher than a EPA health advisory limit.
Last week, Air Force officials told The Denver Post that funding has not been approved yet for a planned “remedial investigation” — a required step before cleanup can begin.
Perfluorinated chemicals also have been detected in north metro Denver and near a firehouse west of Boulder.
Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment officials more than a year ago stopped monitoring the chemicals as they spread in groundwater south of Colorado Springs, saying the agency lacked water quality funds.
This month, CDPHE officials said the Air Force is responsible for tracking contamination. Air Force officials said they conducted 60 tests on base and 85 off base in December to measure chemical contamination in groundwater. But they declined to release the results, saying these must be “validated and vetted” by CDPHE officials and should be revealed in May.
CDPHE officials also declined to say what the tests found because the data has to be reviewed.
The EPA will consider setting a national regulatory limit for two of the hundreds of PFAS chemicals that have contaminated water in Colorado and around the nation.
Beyond Colorado, the federal health teams will sample blood and urine at sites near bases where Americans likely were exposed in West Virginia, Alaska, Massachusetts, Texas, New York, Delaware and Washington.
Residents will be selected randomly for blood tests, ATSDR and CDC National Center for Environmental Health director Patrick Breysse said. This testing will give “a foundation for future studies evaluating the impact of PFAS exposure on human health.”
https://www.denverpost.com/2019/02/25/chemicals-testing-colorado-military-bases/
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Barnes Airport Assessment Looks at Lasting Impact of Exposure to Chemicals
Feb 25, 2019 | Mass Live
By Anne-Gerard Flynn
The Centers for Disease Control and the Agency for Toxic Substancesand Disease Registry announced Feb. 21 that they will test residents around Westfield's Barnes Air National Guard Base as well as in seven similar communities for exposure to a large group of man-made chemicals known as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) that have been controversial for years for their contamination of drinking water.
The 2018 National Defense Authorization Act authorized the government assessment of PFAS exposure through blood and urine samples in communities near current or former military bases that are known to have had PFAS in their drinking water as a result of their concentration in the foam used to put out aircraft fires and in fire-fighting training exercises.
A number of lawsuits have been filed, including one by the City of Westfield, against companies that have made the firefighting foam.
The purpose of the assessments is to add to investigations into the exposure impact in humans of these substances as well as for individuals assessed to be better prepared to follow-up with health care providers and monitor their health.
PFAS are perfluorochemicals that, according to the CDC, have "limited water solubility, low volatility (as salts or ionized) and can remain in the environment and bioconcentrate in animals."
The CDC/ATSDR site assessments are one aspect of government efforts in some 30 communities to further evaluate the environmental and human impact of these chemicals that pass easily into water supplies where they persist and are ingested by fish, are known to have adverse health affects in animals and remain for years in the human body.
Some of the perfluoroalkyl acids have been used to make fluropolymers that "have applications in waterproofing and protective coatings of clothes, furniture, and other products; and also, as constituents of floor polish, adhesives, fire retardant foam, and insulation of electrical wire."
Perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) are said to be the two perfluorochemicals produced in the largest amounts in the U.S. and commonly found in our environment.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which has been under pressure for regulatory action limiting PFAS in the water supply and has an extensive website devoted to PFAS and their successors, PFOA and PFOS are no longer manufactured in the United States, but are still produced internationally and "can be imported into the United States in consumer goods such as carpet, leather and apparel, textiles, paper and packaging, coatings, rubber and plastics."
To provide Americans with what it called a margin of protection from a lifetime of exposure to PFOA and PFOS from drinking water, the EPA established a health advisory level at 70 parts per trillion in May 2016.
This is viewed as the level that will "not result in adverse developmental effects to fetuses during pregnancy or to breast-fed infants, who are the groups most sensitive to the potential harmful effects of PFOA and PFOS."
According to the Military Times, a Pentagon report in March identified 401 active and Base Closure and Realignment installations in the United States with at least one area where there was a known or suspected release of perfluorinated compounds.
The assessment of the eight communities announced last week builds on two pilot studies done last year and funded under the defense act in New York and Pennsylvania where elevated levels of PFAS were "comparable to levels reported in other communities with PFAS contaminated drinking water."
CDC/ATSDR has said the assessments will start this year and continue through next year and that they "will meet with communities to introduce ourselves, share our plans, and answer questions about the exposure assessments."
Overall findings and a written report are to be provide to each community.
The final report from the pilot assessment in Pennsylvania, posted on the state health department website, along with other information there offer some background both on PFOS and PFOA and what Westfield residents might expect from the assessments.
Here are some highlights from that information:
-PFOS and PFOA belong to a family of perfluoroalkyl substances, and are human-made chemicals that do not occur naturally in the environment.
-PFOS and PFOA can also be formed by environmental microbial degradation or by metabolism in larger organisms from a large group of related chemicals or precursor compounds.
-Companies have stopped production or have begun changing manufacturing practices to reduce releases and to reduce the amounts of these chemicals in their products.Industrial uses of these chemicals are in photo imaging, metal plating, semiconductor coatings, aviation hydraulic fluids, medical devices, insect baits, printer and copy machine parts, chemically driven oil production, rubber and plastic industries.
-Both chemicals have also been present in some foam firefighting materials.
-PFOS and PFOA can be found in air, soil, and water (ground and surface water) after release from the manufacture, use and disposal of products that contain these chemicals.
-Exposure to PFOS, PFOA and other PFAS like perfluorononanoic acid (PFNA) and perfluorohexane sulfonic acid (PFHxS) are widespread and have been detected in blood samples of the general U.S. population and wildlife. These chemicals have been detected in 95 to 100 percent of samples of people's blood in the years 1999-2000 and 2003-2004. Recent monitoring data show the levels of these chemicals in people's blood appear to be declining.
-PFAS tend to remain unchanged in the body for long periods of time. PFOA and PFOS stay in the body for many years. It takes nearly four years for the level in the body to go down by half. PFAS leave the body mainly through urine.The human health effects from exposure to low environmental levels of PFOS and PFOA are not known.
-Some of the available studies suggest that increase in blood cholesterol levels are associated with higher PFOS and PFOA blood levels.
-There is some indication that serum PFOS and PFOA may be associated with increased uric acid levels, which may be associated with an increased risk of high blood pressure.
-Exposure to PFOS and PFOA may cause liver damage. Studies in mice found that the immune system is a sensitive target for PFOS and PFOA; health effects include decreases in the size of the spleen, thymus and impaired immune system.
-The ingestion of PFOA contaminated water was found to cause adverse health effects on mammary gland development in mice. Also, oral studies on rodents have raised concerns about potential development, reproductive and other systematic effects of PFOA and PFOS.
-Humans and rodents react differently to PFOA and PFOS and not all of the effects observed in rats and mice may occur in humans. The liver appears to be the most sensitive target in animals ingesting PFAS. The health effects include increases in liver weight, changes in liver cells, change in blood cholesterol, and triglycerides levels.
-There are some studies that suggest that a possible relationship between exposure to PFAS and health effects, but other studies do not show a correlation between exposure to PFAS and health effects. Because of the contradictory findings, more research is needed to understand the health effects of exposure to PFAS on humans.Humans are exposed to PFAS in many ways, including consumption of contaminated drinking water and certain foods (such as fish), contact with commercial products (e.g., food packaging), inhalation of residues in household dust and indoor air, and through occupational exposure.
-Measurable concentrations of PFAS are found in 97 percent of the general U.S. population.
-Large-scale contamination of drinking water sources by PFAS occurred in Pennsylvania and in many other states among communities near military bases where PFAS were used in firefighting exercises. These bases were routinely performing firefighting trainings using PFAS-containing aqueous film-forming foams (AFFF) for several decades.
-The use of AFFF in training exercises led to direct emissions of PFAS into surface and ground waters.The Pennsylvania Department of Health conducted biomonitoring of 235 randomly selected community members who live in any of the four public water system service areas surrounding two military bases as part of a pilot project.
-Serum samples were analyzed for 11 PFAS compounds. Only perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS), perfluorohexanesulfonic acid (PFHxS) and perfluorononanoic acid (PFNA) were consistently detected in the serum samples of the study participants.
-Overall, 75, 81, 94 and 59 percent of the Pennsylvania study participants had levels exceeding the national average for PFOA, PFOS, PFHxS and PFNA respectively, and the levels in general increased with age.
-Though the difference was not statistically significant, males in the study had higher levels of PFOA, PFOS and PFHxS, whereas females had higher levels of PFNA.
-The serum PFAS levels increased with the length of residence in the area. Private well water users had higher levels of PFOA, PFOS and PFNA than public water users. However, the differences were not statistically significant.
-Estimated quantity of tap water consumed (self-reported) daily did not show a consistent relationship with serum PFAS levels.
-The study participants who reported ever working in the military base had higher levels (not statistically significant) of PFOA, PFOS and PFHxS compared to the other study participants.
-The most frequently reported health condition was elevated cholesterol level, followed by endocrine disruptions and cancer.
-A comparison of the number of reports of elevated cholesterol levels in relation to the median PFAS levels indicated a higher number of elevated cholesterol reports with higher levels for each of the four PFAS compounds.
-Likewise, a higher number of reports of endocrine disruptions was associated with higher levels of PFOA and PFHxS.
-A higher number of cancer reports was associated with median or higher levels of PFOA and PFNA.
-Elevated levels of PFAS observed among the community members in the pilot study were said comparable to levels reported in other communities, including New Hampshire and Minnesota, with PFAS contaminated drinking water.
-EPA uses a relative source contribution of 20 percent from drinking water for calculating health advisory levels for PFOA and PFOS in order to allow for other exposure sources, such as dust, diet and air.
-Although drinking water was contaminated in the current scenario the importance of other sources of PFAS exposure cannot be ignored. Therefore, it is not always possible to link an observed higher serum PFAS levels to drinking water without knowing all other exposure sources.
https://www.masslive.com/living/index.ssf/2019/02/assessment_of_barnes_area_residents_involves_exposure_to_chemicals_with_lasting_impact.html
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United States: EPA's PFAS Action Plan Presents Opportunities For Advocacy
Feb 25, 2019 | Mondaq
By Rachel Jacobson and H. David Gold
On February 14, 2019, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released an Action Plan for addressing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (collectively, PFAS), a group of chemical compounds that has been linked to negative human health impacts for sensitive populations. Although the Action Plan contains proposals aimed at minimizing the risks surrounding PFAS, binding, enforceable, promulgated standards are likely several years away. In the meantime, parties with affected interests have several opportunities to engage in advocacy and have been actively doing so.
What Are PFAS?
PFAS are a group of related, synthetic chemicals that include multiple fluorine atoms. PFAS have been commonly used in the United States since the 1940s to create products including water-repellent and stain-resistant fabrics, nonstick cookware, cosmetics, and firefighting foam. PFAS have been nicknamed "forever chemicals" because they break down very slowly; due to their use in common household items and their persistence, PFAS are present in the blood of most US residents.1
EPA, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry and others have asserted that PFAS may be linked to a litany of human health impacts. The two oldest and most common PFAS chemicals, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), have been removed from the marketplace due to concerns about their health impacts. Manufacturers have replaced them with shorter-chain "next generation" PFAS that are believed to be safer.
Regulatory History of PFAS
Due to concerns about human health effects, EPA has long been called upon to regulate PFAS chemicals. The most stringent form of regulation would require setting a Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). An MCL is a binding limit on the level of a contaminant allowed in a public water system. EPA has not yet set an MCL for any PFAS chemical.
In 2009, EPA first issued a health advisory regarding PFOA and PFOS. A health advisory is a nonbinding guidance document that EPA issues to assist state and local entities in regulating contaminants for which it has not yet set an MCL. EPA's health advisory set recommended levels of PFOA and PFOS in drinking water at 0.4 and 0.2 parts per billion, respectively. In 2016, EPA issued a new health advisory setting a much lower threshold for both contaminants: 70 parts per trillion. The new health advisory, which superseded the 2009 levels, brought PFAS back into the spotlight and created public alarm as people reacted to EPA's declaration that the water that they had been consuming and assuming safe was now considered hazardous.
In May 2018, then-Administrator Scott Pruitt held an EPA PFAS Summit, in which he announced that EPA was considering whether to adopt an MCL, with specific consideration of the 70 parts per trillion threshold, and using EPA's authority under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA, commonly known as Superfund) to initiate groundwater remediation efforts in the meantime.
On February 1, 2019, a group of 20 senators and congressional representatives asked Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler to set an MCL for PFOA and PFOS. The group noted that EPA "health advisories are non-enforceable and deprive the states of much-needed federal guidance on how to determine and implement effective drinking water standards for PFOA and PFOS chemicals."2 In the absence of federal standards, many states have acted to set their own drinking water standards for PFAS or otherwise regulate the substances. These state standards are inconsistent, which presents challenges and confusion for regulators and the regulated community alike.
EPA's PFAS Action Plan
Against this backdrop, and based on a series of EPA meetings with stakeholders across the country and in response to the approximately 120,000 comments submitted to the public docket, EPA last week released its Action Plan.3 The Action Plan lays out steps to (1) regulate PFOA and PFOS, for which significant data exist, and (2) stimulate research and regulatory activities to address more recently developed PFAS, such as "GenX" chemicals. The Action Plan includes a combination of short-term (to be accomplished within two years) and long-term (expected to take more than two years to complete) goals and actions.
The steps proposed in the Action Plan fit under four umbrellas: (1) drinking water; (2) mitigating releases and exposures; (3) toxics regulation; and (4) research, communications and enforcement. While the Action Plan contains dozens of proposals, the most significant are:
Drinking water
-The Action Plan does not propose a specific MCL for any PFAS chemical. However, it expresses EPA's intention to begin the MCL process in 2019 by proposing a regulatory determination for PFOA and PFOS (that is, a determination of whether EPA should regulate the substances based on a consideration of adverse health effects, the chemicals' presence in public water systems and the potential to reduce health risks through regulation). The MCL process requires formal rulemaking and extensive public engagement, so even if EPA determines it is appropriate to regulate PFOA and PFOS, an MCL could still be years away.
-The Action Plan states that EPA is committed to using new detection methods to monitor additional PFAS in drinking water starting in 2020. These efforts will focus on the presence of PFAS in public water systems to inform future regulations, and will be capable of identifying PFAS at lower minimum reporting levels than were previously possible.
Mitigating releases and exposures
EPA has initiated the administrative process to designate PFOA and PFOS as CERCLA "hazardous substances." This would open the door to using CERCLA response authorities to address PFAS in groundwater. Adding PFAS to CERCLA's hazardous substances list also would expand liability for potentially responsible parties.
-The Action Plan states that EPA is in the process of developing interim recommendations for addressing groundwater contaminated with PFOA and PFOS to address cleanup goals before these chemicals are added to the hazardous substance list. These recommendations are intended for use by federal agencies, states, tribes and communities engaging in site-specific cleanup efforts. The recommendations will be subject to public review and comment before they are finalized.
-EPA intends to evaluate the viability of developing ambient water quality criteria for PFAS under Section 304 of the Clean Water Act. Section 304 criteria would allow states to control releases of PFAS into waterways through their National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permitting programs.
-The Action Plan announces that EPA, starting in 2019, will examine existing information and seek new data from specific industries (airports and producers of organic chemicals, plastics, synthetic fibers, pulp and paper, and textiles) to identify industrial sources of PFAS groundwater pollution that may warrant regulation through national Effluent Limitation Guidelines and Standards (ELGs). ELGs would require identified sources to take action to address their releases.
Toxics
-EPA is currently working through the rulemaking process to issue a new Significant New Use Rule (SNUR) for PFAS under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to mitigate the risks from new PFAS. When implementing a SNUR, EPA is required to review the use or importation of a new chemical substance to identify whether it presents unreasonable risks and, if so, apply controls to mitigate those risks before the chemical enters commerce.
-EPA is considering whether to add PFAS chemicals to the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) Program. The TRI is used to track releases of chemicals that may pose a threat to human health and the environment. Facilities must report the release of chemicals on the TRI, and TRI data are used to inform private and governmental decision-making. Currently, no PFAS chemicals are included on the TRI, so there is no obligation to report their release under the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act.
-EPA is in the process of developing toxicity assessments of GenX chemicals and perfluorobutanesulfonic acid (PFBS), two of the newer PFAS chemicals that were designed to replace PFOS and PFOA. EPA intends to release final toxicity values for these chemicals in 2019 and develop toxicity values for five other PFAS starting in 2020. These toxicity values will help inform regulatory and risk management decisions by EPA, states, tribes and local communities, under the appropriate regulations and statutes.
Research, communications and enforcement
-The Action Plan proposes a slate of research and development activities geared toward assessing the risks that PFAS present and the appropriate ways to manage those risks. The proposed research focuses on four areas: (1) the human health and ecological effects of exposure to PFAS; (2) significant sources, pathways and exposures to humans and ecosystems; (3) the costs and effectiveness of various remediation methods; and (4) science required to support stakeholder efforts to address PFAS.
-EPA acknowledges the challenge of effectively communicating to the public the complicated issues surrounding PFAS, and aims to improve communication with stakeholders. Among other proposals, the Action Plan describes a plan to create a communications "toolbox" for federal, state, tribal and local regulators to use when interfacing with the public.
-The Action Plan indicates that EPA may undertake enforcement efforts where PFAS contamination poses an imminent and substantial endangerment to public health or welfare. As a general matter, however, the Action Plan states that EPA will employ an enforcement strategy that relies first on state and local authorities.
Conclusion
If fully implemented, EPA's Action Plan would represent a major shift in the regulation of PFAS. The Action Plan lays out an array of commitments and proposals, many of which present opportunities for public participation. The regulated community should closely monitor the regulatory processes that develop for promulgation of standards as well as the related actions, and should participate in those processes as their interests warrant.
http://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/x/784536/Environmental+Law/EPAs+PFAS+Action+Plan+Presents+Opportunities+for+Advocacy
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Who Will Support Real Cosmetics Reform?
Feb 25, 2019 | Environmental Working Group
By Scott Faber
In coming weeks, members of Congress will again introduce bipartisan bills to ensure that the chemicals used in cosmetics and other everyday personal care products are safe.
As The New York Times noted, it’s been 30 years since Ron Wyden, then a representative and now the senior Democratic senator from Oregon, called cosmetics regulation “a piecemeal patchwork system in dire need of repair.” But no reforms were enacted, and “a fresh round of health and safety risks have left people wary.” These risks include everything from contaminated products to cancer.
The Times said:
Independent researchers have found asbestos in glittery products marketed to young girls; they’ve linked chemicals in nail polish to serious health problems in nail technicians; and they’ve traced reproductive health issues and mercury poisoning to hair and skin products used by many women of color.
The good news is that bipartisan bills to give the Food and Drug Administration more power to review chemicals of concern have wide support – not only from public health groups like EWG but also from cosmetics companies large and small.
Among the companies that have supported these bipartisan bills are Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Revlon, Johnson & Johnson, the Honest Company and Beautycounter. A full list of supporters can be found here.
But so far, many companies have chosen to remain on the sidelines, including Amway, Mary Kay, Rodan+Fields, Merle Norman and Chanel, to name only a few. If cosmetics reform fails once again, these companies may prove to be among the brands that stood in the way.
It’s been 80 years since Congress last voted to regulate cosmetics. A lot has changed. Today cosmetics are a $70 billion-a-year business. The average woman uses 12 products, with 168 different ingredients, every day. The average man uses six products daily, with 85 unique ingredients.
The 1938 cosmetics law only prohibited the sale of cosmetics with any “poisonous or deleterious substance,” or any “filthy, putrid, or decomposed substance,” so the FDA has since banned just nine cosmetics ingredients for safety reasons. By contrast, other nations have banned or restricted thousands of chemicals found in cosmetics.
Over the years, Congress has made efforts to modernize cosmetics law, starting in the 1950s, but all of these attempts were defeated by the cosmetics industry’s trade association.
In the meantime, Congress has set safety standards for drugs, food, microwave ovens, toys, medical devices and electric blankets. Congress has regulated cars and cough suppressants. Congress has regulated laser scanners and laser pointers. Congress has taken steps to reduce water pollution and regulate waste disposal. Congress has even set safety standards for pesticides and tobacco.
Source: Environmental Working Group
But Congress has failed to set safeguards for cosmetics. As the Times noted:
While lawmakers dither, the F.D.A.’s oversight of the cosmetics industry remains astoundingly limited. The agency cannot require companies to submit safety data before they market a product, to adhere to basic manufacturing standards once they do or even to register with the agency, things drug and medical device makers are mandated to do.
Other than subjecting colors used in food, drugs and cosmetics to FDA review, cosmetics law has not changed in 80 years. Even guns are more heavily regulated than cosmetics. There are more rules governing the chemicals we spray on crops than the chemicals we spray on our bodies.
So who will support real cosmetics reform? We’ll be watching closely.
https://www.ewg.org/news-and-analysis/2019/02/who-will-support-real-cosmetics-reform
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The FDA Just Announced a Sunscreen Safety Proposal With Big Implications
Feb 25, 2019 | Allure
By Rebecca Dancer
On February 21, the Food and Drug Administration announced a new proposal on sunscreen safety that will likely overhaul the entire sunscreen industry. No, we're not exaggerating — despite repeated calls for action from watchdog organizations, most prominently the Environmental Working Group, the FDA hasn't updated its stance on sunscreen safety in more than 40 years. Even more shocking are the details of the proposal: Of the 16 different active ingredients in sunscreens currently on the market, the FDA deemed only two as being safe to use: zinc oxide and titanium dioxide.
What's more, the proposal states that there's not enough scientific data on 12 of the ingredients to determine whether they're safe to or harmful to humans. If you're counting, that leaves another two ingredients left that the FDA states are not safe for use in sunscreen products: PABA and trolamine salicylate. However, you generally don't need to worry about either of these.
"To our knowledge, there are no sunscreens currently on the market that contain the two active ingredients that we are proposing to be not generally recognized as safe," said Theresa Michele, director of the FDA's division of nonprescription drug products (DNDP), during a media briefing."There are many sunscreens on the market using the 12 ingredients that we’re requesting additional data on… We'll just have to wait and see to determine where the safety data are for these ingredients going forward."
The two ingredients that are safe, however, are zinc oxide and titanium dioxide. "Zinc oxide and titanium dioxide are minerals that act as physical blockers," explains New York City-based dermatologist Sejal Shah. "Unlike chemical sunscreen ingredients, they sit on the surface of the skin and reflect ultraviolet rays."
One of those 12 undetermined ingredients is oxybenzone. Last year, the state of Hawaii went so far as to legally ban the sale and distribution of sunscreens containing oxybenzone and octinoxate because they can also cause major damage to coral reefs.
Other highlights of the proposal include new sunscreen label requirements that will list the active ingredients on the front of the package, additional and "rigorous assessment" of all active chemical sunscreen ingredients on the market, and a cap on SPF at 60+. The FDA will also be seeking out expertise from within the industry (from experts such as dermatologists and cosmetic chemists) who might be able to help provide more information on those elusive 12 ingredients.
So, what happens next? The Sunscreen Innovation Act (passed back in 2014) requires the FDA to come to a final ruling on the proposed regulations before November 26, 2019. Although we'll have to wait until near year's end for the verdict, it's likely that February 21's proposal will prompt manufacturers to reassess and possibly reformulate their sunscreens right away. If (and hopefully when) it does pass, the FDA will likely grant manufacturers and retailers an allotted time period to continue selling out their existing stock.
"[This] announcement will cause a sea change in how sunscreens are formulated, and it's long overdue, but it is incredibly welcome news," said David Andrews, a senior scientist at the EWG, on a press call.
In the meantime, consider swapping out chemical sunscreen for a mineral-based option containing the "safe" active ingredients of zinc oxide and titanium dioxide. One great option is our Readers' Choice Award-winning Coola Mineral Sunscreen Cucumber Matte Finish Broad Spectrum SPF 30, or Neutrogena's Sheer Zinc Dry-Touch Broad Spectrum SPF 50 Sunscreen, which topped the EWG's annual Guide to Sunscreens in 2018.
https://www.allure.com/story/fda-sunscreen-regulations-proposal
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Nordic Nations Warn of Swag Danger
Feb 25, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Marcus Hoy
The corporate world is well aware that people love free gifts, but Nordic chemical agencies say they can be dangerous to people’s health.
Companies spend millions of dollars annually on promotional giveaways or “swag” like zip drives, T-shirts, bags, and Bluetooth speakers for trade shows and events. Most of these items are imported from Asia.
When tested, however, some freebies were found to include potentially harmful chemicals, the Finnish Safety and Chemicals Agency, known as Tukes, said in a Feb. 21 statement.
In fact, joint Finnish, Swedish, Icelandic, Danish, and Norwegian chemical audits on corporate gifts found that almost one in four breached environmental rules, according to Tukes.
Of the 263 freebies that were audited, 63 were found to breach rules on chemical content, labeling, and documentation, Tukes said. It added that the full report isn’t published yet, but should be out before the summer.
Exhibition Hall Blues
Electrical appliances and soft plastics were the worst performers among audited products that included batteries, jewelry, and textiles. Some products contained illegally high levels of restricted chemicals, while others didn’t display the contact information of the manufacturer or the European Union importer, according to the agency.
Another finding: The cheap price of the product wasn’t always tied to noncompliance. Two of the products dinged in Finland’s study were among the most expensive.
Because these products aren’t sold directly to consumers and typically not distributed in their original packaging, they can often bypass safeguards imposed on the retail sector.
“The fact that the products are given away for free doesn’t mean that they are able to circumvent the laws on labeling and chemical content,“ Camilla Westlund, an inspector at the Swedish Chemicals Agency known as Kemi, told Bloomberg Environment Feb. 22.
“The act of placing a product on the market includes the delivery or provision to third parties, regardless of whether the goods are sold or offered free of charge.”
Who Knew?
Ultimately, companies could be liable for the safety of the gifts they hand out. If a freebie displays only the name of a company that distributes it, then that company must assume the responsibilities and liabilities of the manufacturer, according to Tukes.
But “the distributing company doesn’t always see the final products,” Tukes Chemical Products Senior Officer Tiia Salamaki said. “The logo is often printed in a warehouse or factory and then delivered to the company. The responsibilities of the distributing and the ordering company are not always clear in the purchase stage.”
World Water Week, a large annual water conference in Stockholm, handed out 3,700 reusable water bottles to attendees last year. Participating organizations didn’t assess the giveaways, an event spokeswoman said.
“Corporate gifts have to comply with the relevant legislation, but we don’t have any information about company or conference policies,” Salamaki said. “Companies are not always aware of their responsibilities and they do not always know the legislation.”
In addition, companies trust the upstream information “and that may not be correct,” Salamaki said.
Westlund, from the Swedish Chemicals Agency, said she wasn’t aware of any companies or conferences that have policies on the types of gifts that can be offered, but many require their suppliers to live up to a general code of conduct.
Swedish companies that were found to be in breach of the audits may be reported to prosecutors, she added.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/nordic-nations-warn-of-swag-danger
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(ACC Mentioned) It's Time to Connect the Dots on Atlantic Coast Pipeline
Feb 25, 2019 | The State Journal
By Robert R. Simpson Jr.
The phrase “connecting the dots” stems from the children’s activity of drawing lines between dots in a particular sequence to create a picture. It also refers to the process of understanding the big picture by piecing together the evidence.
As overused as this phrase may be, it certainly applies to understanding the impact the Atlantic Coast Pipeline has on the West Virginia economy.
If you haven’t followed the story, here’s a summary. The Atlantic Coast Pipeline will stretch over 600 miles and will carry natural gas to markets south of us.
In December, a ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit caused a temporary suspension on work then being conducted across 300 miles of the project and involving approximately 2,000 workers in West Virginia. The court denied ACP’s request to narrow the scope of its stay to affected areas, leading to a suspension of virtually all work.
Now, let’s connect the dots:
GAS PRODUCTION — The boom in natural gas production is real. It reached 1.6 trillion cubic feet in 2017 and is projected by the U.S. Energy Information Administration to continue to increase.
Investments are being made and West Virginians are benefitting from the extraction of this resource in many ways, not the least of which is the overall reduction of the carbon footprint from electrical energy creation.
However, production is only necessary if there are markets for the product and a way to get it to them.
MARKET — We do not use all of the gas produced in West Virginia, but people elsewhere in the U.S. want it. While some questioned the market, the fact is that ACP investors are willing to invest $7 billion in this project based on their belief in it.
ENVIRONMENT — Preserving the environment is important to us all. No one denies that precautions must be taken. That is why rules are made and why government agencies are empowered to enforce them, as they have in this case.
Yet the court has permitted questions to stop the work — for what now appears to be at least six months, thus increasing the cost of the project.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND SMALL BUSINESSES — Great emphasis is now being placed on entrepreneurship in many of our West Virginia colleges and universities. Encouraging people to take risks and create new businesses is seen as a path to prosperity in the state.
This sudden, unexpected work stoppage not only threatens the livelihoods of many people, but threatens the survival of some small businesses. This will certainly have a chilling effect on the willingness of others to take future risks.
DOWNSTREAM MANUFACTURING — The production of much of the natural gas in West Virginia is accompanied by natural gas liquids, which can serve as feedstock for the petrochemical manufacturing industry. The American Chemistry Council estimates that the Appalachian region could generate as many as 100,000 new jobs through the use these liquids. However, connecting the dots, we must have gas production and transmission to support this manufacturing.
In fact, the West Virginia Roundtable, an organization of CEOs in the state, and which I serve as president, has identified the creation of a storage hub for natural gas liquids as its top economic development priority.
It would be easy to identify more “dots” and to construct a more complete picture. The ACP as a stand-alone project is important, but it is made even more so because it is an integral part of a bigger picture.
Indeed, virtually every West Virginian has an interest that will be served by the success of the ACP, either directly, or by some part of the rest of the picture.
We West Virginians sometimes consider ourselves isolated and unconnected from the bigger picture of the economic success which has brought an unprecedented standard of living to America.
In truth, we are all very much connected and our best interests are served when we see ourselves as part of that picture and do our part to advocate for progress.
Let’s connect the dots for a more prosperous West Virginia and continue work on the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.
https://www.wvnews.com/statejournal/opinion/it-s-time-to-connect-the-dots-on-atlantic-coast/article_cbac0197-b2c0-54d5-9598-55b8d5109e6f.html
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Exclusive: Interior Hands out Hundreds of Offshore Drilling Safety Rule Waivers
Feb 25, 2019 | Politico Pro
By Ben Lefebvre
The Interior Department has given offshore oil drillers hundreds of exemptions to Obama-era safety rules put in place after the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, effectively gutting parts of the regulation before the Trump administration officially rolls them back.
During the 20 months after the Well Control Rule took effect, the Interior Department awarded nearly 1,700 waivers to companies drilling for oil and gas in waters off the coast, according to data provided to POLITICO under a Freedom of Information Act request.
The most common waivers were those that allowed the companies to sidestep tighter rules for blowout preventers — the device that failed to seal off BP's well after it erupted in 2010, killing 10 workers and spewing more than 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf over five months.
“Are these rules becoming meaningless under the Trump administration?” said Lois Epstein, a civil engineer who focuses on drilling issues for The Wilderness Society. “These rules have been put in place for important reasons. They’ve gone through public comment period. It sounds like the regulators have decided that they are going to move toward waivers rather than looking at whether the rule could be made to work as intended.”
An Interior Department spokesperson said the waivers — also known as “departures,” “variances” and “alternative compliance” — are allowed under the Well Control Rule, but the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement does not track requests and is not required to make them public since they may include company’s trade secrets.
“In approving the permits, the BSEE engineers verify that any proposed alternate procedures or equipment provide a level of safety and environmental protection that equals or exceeds current BSEE regulations,” agency spokesperson Lisa Lawrence said.
The waivers mostly focused on 53 provisions of the final Obama-era rule that took effect at the end of July 2016 and which the industry had complained were the most burdensome. The Trump administration has begun to ease those provisions under its own rulemaking that began in May 2018. Those revisions are currently under review at the Office of Management and Budget.
BSEE, which is in charge of offshore rig safety standards, issued the waivers between August 1, 2016, just as the Obama administration implemented its rule, and March 21, 2018, though an industry lawyer told POLITICO that the number started to rise months after the rule became official as more companies applied for waivers.
The data provided by BSEE showed the number of times the bureau fulfilled companies' requests for waivers to individual provisions of the rule, but not the dates they were granted. BSEE said it approved the first request on August 15, 2016, but did not disclose how many the department has granted per month, which companies had received them or why the projects had qualified for waivers.
BSEE's tight grip on information about the waivers is a major concern, said Diane Hoskins, campaign director for environmental group Oceana.
“Right now, the public is in the dark about when and why these departures are being granted, and no set of criteria exists for whether a departure can be granted,” Hoskins said. “Given the industry’s documented deficient safety culture, the status quo creates opportunities for side-stepping rules that are vital to protecting human and environmental health and safety.“
The Wilderness Society's Epstein agreed that the agency needs to provide more data about the waivers granted.
“Do they just get the application and just approve it?” she said. “Do they distinguish between good operators and bad operators? Have they denied any requests? Some of [the provisions] may be very major, and we don’t know how long they’ve taken in processing these applications, or whether they just take the word of the company that everything is equal or better.”
But Erik Milito, a vice president at the American Petroleum Institute, said the Obama rule was flawed and needed fixing.
“It is important that it is revised based upon new insights and developments in the offshore exploration and development field to enhance the regulatory framework to ensure updated, modern, and safe technologies, best practices, and operations,” he said.
The rules enacted by the Obama administration had taken years to formulate, and were aimed at tightening safety standards that had been on the books for decades before the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion. Energy lawyers said the waiver requests began rolling in a few months after the Obama rule took effect.
“It’s a rule that came out that was highly technical,” said Larry Nettles, a partner at law firm Vinson & Elkins, who specializes in environmental and natural resources issues. "Some folks had identified they would need variances. They poured in more and more [requests] over time.”
And he said that once it became apparent BSEE was granting the waivers, more drillers began seeking them.
“There might have been some follow-the-leader that happened here,” Nettles added. “After a few of the large actors started doing this, other companies said, 'Hey, maybe we should, too.'”
BP, Chevron, Hess, Anadarko Petroleum and other companies that had applied for roughly 1,300 Gulf drilling permits during the 20-month period covered by BSEE data would not say whether they had sought waivers to the safety standards. The bureau has not yet provided data on the number of waivers given after March 2018.
More than a third of the 1,679 waivers granted during those 20 months allowed companies to deviate from regulations concerning tests that companies must perform on blowout preventers. The provisions had stipulated how often a blowout preventer should be tested, how long each test should last, and the parts that should be inspected.
Brian Salerno, who served as BSEE's director during the Obama administration, said waiver requests would normally be handled by bureau employees at the agency's Gulf of Mexico district offices. The rule was in effect for only the final six months of Obama's presidency, and the bureau would have been unlikely to grant many waivers on a such a new rule.
“We only had a few months of the [rule] being in effect before it was pencils down for the Obama team,” Salerno told POLITICO. “I do not recall if there were any departures granted for [blowout preventer] testing during that period. Typically, they would be managed at the field level, although given the newness of the regulations, I would think there would have been some communication to D.C. if any were granted.”
BSEE Director Scott Angelle — a former Louisiana lawmaker and member of pipeline company Sunoco Logistics' board of directors — has said the Trump administration's upcoming rule revisions would streamline offshore drilling regulations without weakening safety standards.
“Nothing in our proposed rule will alter any elements of other rules promulgated since the Deepwater Horizon event, including the drilling safety rule and the safety and environmental management system rules,” Angelle said in a video address at the rollout of the proposed revisions. “Our process was laser focused, seeking to rid and eliminate only burdensome regulations while ensuring safe and environmentally friendly development.”
Those revisions would eliminate requirements that drillers provide real-time well monitoring data to regulators and reduce the frequency of mandatory blowout preventer tests, among other things. But even before those changes are finalized, BSEE’s waivers are allowing companies to skip complying with them anyway.
Interior's Lawrence said BSEE decided to revise the rules partly because of the number of waiver requests it was receiving.
“The current administration concluded that managing [offshore drilling] risk by approving departures and alternate procedures or equipment was not a preferred method, and therefore undertook the review of provisions for which departures and alternate procedure or equipment requests were being granted as part of the regulatory revision process,” Lawrence said.
Among other waivers granted by BSEE were 192 that related to how companies test the cylindrical metal casing that prevents a drilled hole from caving in. The provisions set the minimum pressure a casing had to be able to withstand, and stipulated that companies had to conduct pressure tests on their blowout preventers before certain drilling procedures.
Another 156 waivers related to the amount cement companies had to pour into well casings to keep them stable, and how much pressure the cement casings had to withstand. In another 168 instances, the agency waived provisions dictating the technical standards rig operators had to adhere to. BSEE issued dozens of other waivers on a requirement that companies had to alert the agency’s district or regional managers before using equipment or safety procedures not cited in the Well Control Rule.
And BSEE approved 119 requests that companies could overlook a rule stipulating they “stop operations as soon as practicable” to evaluate wells that had gone more than 30 days without tests on well casings.
A small number of waivers concerned some of the most dangerous work. BSEE granted 18 waivers freeing companies from a rule prohibiting rig workers from welding while oil and gas continued to flow through a rig. A BSEE report in 2013 had cited welding in the presence of flammable gas as the reason behind an explosion of a Black Elk Energy offshore platform year earlier that that killed three people.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/article/2019/02/exclusive-interior-hands-out-hundreds-of-offshore-drilling-safety-rule-waivers-1190762
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Speaker Proposes $1b for Energy Efficiency Grants
Feb 25, 2019 | AP (In E&E - Greenwire)
By Steve LeBlanc
Massachusetts House Speaker Robert DeLeo has unveiled a plan to spend $1 billion over the next 10 years to help cities and towns adopt new technology designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions, strengthen infrastructure projects and reduce municipal costs.
The initiative — called GreenWorks — would include funding for renewable energy, energy efficiency and climate change resilience efforts.
The Democrat said the competitive grants would be available for municipalities to pay for projects like solar power, energy storage, microgrids and electric car charging stations. He said he hopes the availability of the grants — if the proposal becomes law — could help nudge communities to pursue renewable energy projects.
DeLeo made the announcement Friday at Greentown Labs in Somerville, described as the nation's "largest clean technology incubator."
DeLeo said the funding would come from the sale of bonds. He hopes the Legislature will take up the measure this year. He called the plan a "realistic and practical approach" to increasing renewable energy and toughening infrastructure for changes in the climate.
He said local communities are already aware of the challenges posed by climate change. The availability of grant funds could also help nudge some to think about ways to increase their reliance on renewable energy projects, he said.
"This will give them the opportunity to do those projects," DeLeo said. "They're going to have to have come up with some good ideas."
Greentown CEO Emily Reichert said DeLeo's proposal meshes with the company's "mission to support clean tech startups and help get their technologies to market."
Under the plan, the grants would be administered by the state's Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.
The state continues to take steps to boost its reliance on renewable energy. Earlier this month, Republican Gov. Charlie Baker announced more than $500,000 in funding for what he described as eight "early-stage clean energy companies."
Environmental activists are also pushing a slew of bills aimed at reducing the state's carbon footprint and minimizing waste.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2019/02/25/stories/1060122317
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California Regulators Cite SoCal Reliability Risks, Reiterate Climate Goals
Feb 25, 2019 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Richard Nemec
The California Energy Commission (CEC) on Wednesday indicated there are questions about Southern California’s natural gas storage and pipeline capacity in the latest Integrated Energy Policy Report (IEPR).
Subscription required for full text...
https://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/117521-california-regulators-cite-socal-reliability-risks-reiterate-climate-goals
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Cleanup Continues Months After Gasoline Spill Near Anthony
Feb 25, 2019 | KRWG Public Media
By Mallory Falk
When a gasoline pipeline burst late last year in southern New Mexico, local officials wanted to make sure it wouldn’t happen again. But the county and state don’t have much authority over the line.
Late one night last December, several residents of a small, rural area near Anthony heard an explosion and smelled gas. A gasoline pipeline had burst, spilling more than 10,000 barrels of fuel into a drainage ditch.
The pipeline was temporarily shut off and repaired. A cleanup crew recovered much of the gas, but tens of thousands of gallons soaked into the ground, contaminating soil and groundwater.
Nearly two months after the spill, cleanup efforts were still underway, and the site still smelled like gasoline.
Shannon Reynolds, a Doña Ana County Commissioner, visited the site on a windy February morning. He stood near a large yellow backhoe.
“They’re still bringing the soil that actually has gasoline in it, and they’re piling it up on the side of the ditch here for later removal to a safe location,” he said.
Reynolds wants to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again. But neither the county nor the state of New Mexico have much control over the pipeline. That’s because it’s an interstate pipeline, spanning three states and nearly three hundred miles.
The Santa Fe Pacific Pipeline runs from El Paso to Tucson, pumping more than three thousand barrels of gas every hour. It’s owned by energy giant Kinder Morgan, one of the largest pipeline companies in North America.
Interstate pipelines are regulated by the federal government. Specifically, the Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration or PHMSA. The agency oversees about two and a half million miles of pipelines nationwide.
The state does oversee the remediation process, whenever there’s a spill involving a water contaminant.
Justin Ball is with the New Mexico Environment Department. When a pipeline bursts or a transfer truck rolls over on the highway, his office gets involved.
“They need to tell us what they spilled, how they spilled it, where they spilled it, who they are, who owns the property, who’s the operator,” Ball says. “Basic information. And need to tell us within 24 hours of the spill.”
Then they come up with a remediation plan, which his department has to approve and monitor.
“Under the regulations, there is a specific process for them to clean up the site and for us to overview it and give our judgment on that,” he says.
But when it comes to actual pipeline, the state doesn’t have much power. PHMSA is the one making sure Kinder Morgan takes corrective measures, to figure out what caused the pipeline break and work to prevent other leaks in the future. It also determines when the company can turn the line back on.
That makes Commissioner Shannon Reynolds uneasy.
“One of the things that I was concerned with when we first started talking about this is the fact that they restarted the gas line before they actually knew what the problem was,” Reynolds says. He’s also concerned that Kinder Morgan didn’t perform in-line testing on the rest of the pipeline before they turned on the gas, to see if other sections were compromised.
“I’m concerned that because the pipes are old, we run the risk of another pipe bursting somewhere near this community in a very short amount of time,” he says. “We can address the cleanup. I’d rather address the cause and use preventative measures to make sure we don’t have a spill like this ever again.
One measure he’d like to see: automatic shut off valves near residential areas, so when there’s a sudden, dramatic drop in pressure, the gas stops flowing immediately.
Allen Fore, Vice President of Public Affairs for Kinder Morgan, says he understands these concerns but stresses that the company followed federal regulations.
“The federal agency that ultimately is in charge of this process, the agency that regulates our operations, said it was safe to put the pipeline back in operation,” he says. “So we followed their regulations, which include a pressure test. That’s the standard process for understanding the integrity of a pipeline.”
Fore says pipelines are the safest way to transport critical products like gas, and that the vast majority of these projects make it to their final destinations.
“That means the gasoline in this line gets to our facilities and then to gas stations and then to your cars,” Fore says. “So it’s the best way to transport. But it’s not a perfect system. And you do have incidents. And what you do from those is you learn from those. That will help us and other operators and the regulatory systems better understand how we can make our pipeline systems even safer.”
Still, some local officials, like Shannon Reynolds, would like more of a hand in making the pipeline system safer, since it runs through local counties, and they’re the ones affected when things go wrong.
https://www.krwg.org/post/cleanup-continues-months-after-gasoline-spill-near-anthony
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Bill That Calls for Sweeping Environmental Reviews Stalls
Feb 25, 2019 | AP (In E&E - Greenwire)
Business and city leaders, energy companies, electric utilities, farmers and others are all voicing concerns about proposed legislation in New Mexico that would require sweeping environmental reviews by state agencies for many projects.
The bill, known as the "Environmental Review Act," stalled in a House committee Friday as some lawmakers sought more information.
The bill was initially drafted by an attorney for the conservation organization New Mexico Wilderness Alliance and has undergone numerous changes.
Supporters say it would create a state framework similar to what the federal government has for reviewing proposed activities on lands it manages.
Opponents say existing laws and permitting requirements already address environmental protections, and adding another layer would stifle economic development in New Mexico.
State agencies also have said they would need more money and staff to implement such a proposal.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2019/02/25/stories/1060122303
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How Many Regs Could It Take to Launch 'Green New Deal'?
Feb 25, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Niina Heikkinen
The aim of the "Green New Deal" to remake the U.S. economy has experts in government regulation guessing how the proposal could shape the scope of the nation's environmental standards.
Progressives have laid out an ambitious plan for advancing renewable energy and green infrastructure across the United States to help reach zero net global emissions by 2050.
While much of the discussion focuses on government investment, some regulatory experts say the "Green New Deal" would require a whole new host of federal rulemaking to aggressively slash greenhouse gases.
They point out that implementing Obama-era climate rules currently on the chopping block wouldn't be enough for the type of deep decarbonization the "Green New Deal" would advance.
Other analysts see rulemaking taking on a more complementary role that could bolster the proposal's programs but would not be a central component.
Jessica Wentz, a senior fellow and associate researcher at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, said, "To achieve the goals in this proposal, we would need regulation that is more comprehensive and ambitious than anything we've seen to date."
Such a revival of regulatory action would follow and undo the Trump administration's aggressive and ongoing rule-busting efforts.
The "Green New Deal" proposes increasing federal investment in projects to promote renewable energy, protect vulnerable communities from environmental harm, and rebuild the country's aging and outdated infrastructure.
Backers acknowledge the potential role of rulemaking in achieving these objectives, without getting into specifics of how that would work in practice.
The nonbinding resolution from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) talks broadly about how the federal government needs to account for "the complete environmental and social costs and impacts of emissions," which could be done through existing laws, as well as new policies and programs.
Rhiana Gunn-Wright, policy director of the New Consensus, a progressive think tank aimed at fleshing out the policy details of the "Green New Deal," offered few hints of how regulations would advance the proposal's objectives.
In a recent interview on the "Columbia Energy Exchange" podcast, she noted that New Consensus often fields questions about how federal environmental and efficiency standards would fit in.
"We think those will likely be tools," she said. "We are not gonna come out and say, 'These are the things that we need,' because the goal of the 'Green New Deal,' beyond putting it forward, the goal of New Consensus process is really a collective solution."
'Need to compel action'
The lack of detail belies the importance of regulations to sustaining broad emissions cuts across the U.S. economy, some analysts say.
Dan Bosch, director of regulatory policy at the American Action Forum, contended that government incentives to switch to greener practices — like converting existing buildings to energy-efficient building designs — could get results in the short term.
But, he said, the federal government would eventually need regulation to spur businesses and individuals still unwilling to act voluntarily.
"The plan as written, the resolution, seems heavily reliant on these subsidies and incentives, but what they don't articulate is the point I just made, which is you are going to need to compel action," he said.
Regulatory action would likely take a number of forms, from fully implementing climate rules finalized under President Obama to strengthening existing efficiency, energy and environmental standards.
That would include implementing rules like EPA's Clean Power Plan and the Bureau of Land Management's methane guidelines for oil and gas.
It would mean boosting the Department of Energy's efficiency standards for appliances, lighting and equipment and requiring net-zero emissions standards for passenger and light-duty vehicles.
Regulators would have to be "extraordinarily efficient" to secure changes, which can take agencies years to finalize and frequently face legal challenges that can delay implementation.
"Do we have a government that is capable of implementing what is necessary, in the time frame that is necessary? I don't think we have any evidence of that on either the administrative side or the congressional side," Bosch said.
Beyond Obama
Returning to these rules may be unnecessary depending on the approach the federal government decides to take, said Wentz.
Congress and policymakers could decide to use existing rules or come up with new schemes aimed at reducing emissions.
One way agencies like EPA could use existing authority, said Wentz, would be to draft rules under Section 115 of the Clean Air Act, which addresses international air pollution.
Congress could establish a cap on greenhouse gas emissions or set some type of carbon pricing. The government could also set management standards to go along with direct investments and economic incentives, she said.
"Bottom line: I think it's fair to say that the proposal would support regulation that goes far beyond enacting/reinstating/implementing the Obama era climate rules," Wentz wrote in an email.
An efficient approach would be to pass one bill aimed at enacting the "Green New Deal," because it could go after multiple sectors at once, said Derek Sylvan, strategy director at New York University School of Law's Institute for Policy Integrity.
Such a bill would have clear goals and pathways to meet targets, which could then be put into place through regulatory approaches, he said.
One potential model might be America's Water Infrastructure Act of 2018, S. 3021, which sought to incorporate local input into projects and safeguards to make sure state infrastructure spending meets specific criteria, Sylvan said.
State, local action
Mark Antoniewicz, communications director at the Hip Hop Caucus, which has been working with the Sunrise Movement to promote the "Green New Deal," pointed to recent Washington, D.C., action to promote clean energy as an example of communities around the country often doing more than the federal government.
"In Texas and Iowa, all the renewable energy stuff that is going on is really incredible right now. My point being, making sure the best of these community-based solutions are making their way up to the top of what will be in the 'Green New Deal,' that is the priority," he said.
Sylvan said that the current resolution is a "promising step" toward setting high-level climate goals, but that a lot of details still need to be worked out. He acknowledged the complicated politics of passing ambitious legislation to spur net-zero emissions.
"Existing technology could get us a significant portion of the way there in the time frame discussed in the resolution, but that requires a bill that actually gets passed," he said.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2019/02/25/stories/1060122345
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Unilever, L’Oreal, Danone Deemed Most Ready for Climate Change
Feb 25, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Emily Chasan and Katie Linsell
Among the world’s biggest consumer companies, Europe’s Unilever NV, L’Oreal SA and Danone are best prepared for the effects of climate change relative to their peers, according to a report from the nonprofit CDP.
Formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project, CDP took a double-barreled approach in ranking the 16 largest consumer companies on measures including exposure to emissions, use of water, and climate governance. It assumed that businesses will need to adjust to the effects of a warming world for the sake of the bottom line and to make a compelling case to increasingly concerned consumers.
“If we all start getting hit by the physical risks of climate change ourselves, we will be much more conscious of buying products with less impact,” said Carole Ferguson, head of investor research at CDP.
Unilever topped the list, the result of big changes to its portfolio, including the purchase of Seventh Generation in 2016, and a suite of low-carbon brands that account for a big portion of revenue.
L’Oreal was a close second, with the supply chain most protected from physical climate risks and high marks for its renewable energy program. Danone’s investments in soil health and water stewardship, as well as its wide range of vegan products, landed it in third place, CDP said.
U.S. companies including Kraft Heinz Co. and Estee Lauder Cos. ranked near the bottom of CDP’s list. The organization said that Kraft Heinz’s Kraft and Oscar Mayer brands have fallen behind on low-carbon innovations, and its reliance on meat and dairy make it more vulnerable to physical risks from climate change. Estee Lauder was faulted for too little transparency into its use of palm oil, which has been blamed for widespread deforestation.
Kraft Heinz last year committed to setting “an aggressive, long-term greenhouse gas emissions reduction goal” and is looking to reduce its impact in logistics, packaging, and agriculture, said Caroline Krajewski, the company’s head of global corporate reputation. Estee Lauder didn’t respond to a request for comment.
“For this group of companies there’s a whole range of risks that have become substantive, rather than something they can just manage away easily,” Ferguson said.
Consumer goods companies have in part addressed the issue by buying smaller brands with better environmental practices. Those acquisitions are up fourfold in the last five years, including Nestle SA’s 2017 purchase of U.S. vegetarian burrito maker Sweet Earth and Danone’s takeover of nut milk maker WhiteWave Foods the same year.
Ferguson said she hoped companies would invest more in innovations that have systemic impact. For example, brewer AB InBev developed new barley varieties that can use up to 40 percent less water. As it is, through supply chains, consumer distribution, and waste creation, consumer brands probably account for one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions, she said.
“The companies that are leading are looking upstream and downstream to see what the big risks and opportunities are,” Ferguson said. “The laggards might be doing some interesting things, but they’re not scaling them up sufficiently.”
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/unilever-loreal-danone-deemed-most-ready-for-climate-change
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Five Carbon Capture Techniques to Help Ward Off Global Warming
Feb 25, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Michael Belfiore
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that warding off catastrophic global warming requires actively removing 100 billion to 1 trillion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by midcentury.
“We have to create an industry equivalent to the oil and gas industry whose job it is to undo emissions,” said Julio Friedmann, chief executive officer of Carbon Wrangler LLC and a senior research scholar at Columbia University.
Here are some of the most promising demo-ready projects trying to do just that.
Active Air Capture
The Climeworks plant in Hellisheidi, Iceland, blows air through reusable filters that chemically trap carbon dioxide. Heating the saturated filters releases the gas, which the company and partner CarbFix then inject underground to bind with basaltic rock, which can hold it indefinitely.
Passive Air Capture
When it is dry, a resin developed by Lackner’s team absorbs carbon from the air, releasing it for capture when dunked in water. Lackner envisions artificial “trees” that can each capture a daily ton of carbon with a cycle of repeated drying in air and soaking in an enclosure. He is working with a local utility to develop the technology further.
Air to Fuels
Carbon Engineering said its test plant uses air-captured carbon and supplemental hydrogen—split from water molecules using renewable energy—to produce gasoline and diesel fuel for less than $4 a gallon. Its technology also can capture carbon for permanent storage, according to the company.
Capture From Biofuel
Carbon is more concentrated in industrial exhaust plumes, and capturing it there results in negative emissions if the facility runs on renewable biofuels. ADM, with U.S. Department of Energy funding, began capturing carbon dioxide emitted by its Decatur, Ill., ethanol plant and pumping 1 million tons a year underground in late 2017.
Blue Carbon Restoration
So-called blue carbon, the carbon stored in coastal ecosystems such as mangroves and salt marshes, is 10 times as dense as carbon stored in forests. Last fall, Apple Inc. announced that it invested an undisclosed sum in a Conservation International project to protect and restore 27,000 acres of mangroves in Colombia, which is expected to capture 1 million tons of atmospheric carbon.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/five-carbon-capture-techniques-to-help-ward-off-global-warming
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Researchers Urge EPA a to Weigh PM Emissions’ Neurological Harm
Feb 25, 2019 | Inside EPA
Clean air researchers and health professionals are urging EPA as part of its ambient air standards setting process to protect against the neurological harm caused by fine particulate matter (PM2.5) emissions, in a new report that includes recommendations for how federal and state air regulators could better address risks from PM2.5 air pollution.
In an article published Feb. 21 in the American Journal of Public Health, a group of scientists, health professionals, and children’s and environmental health advocates calls attention to the mounting evidence linking exposure of children in utero to several developmental problems, ranging from autism and attention deficits to learning disabilities and low birth weight.
In the article, “Healthy Air, Healthy Brains: Advancing Air Pollution Policy to Protect Children’s Health,” the group, named Project TENDR (Targeting Environmental Neurodevelopmental Risks), makes a series of policy suggestions, including a focus on neurodevelopmental problems in EPA’s ongoing review of the national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) for PM, to include PM2.5 and the even-smaller “ultrafine” PM (UFP).
“EPA should develop an assessment of the health and economic cost of neurodevelopmental disorders associated with PM, nitrogen oxide, and other combustion related air pollutants,” the group says. “The benefits of reducing exposure and thus decreasing neurodevelopmental disorders should be incorporated into the cost-benefit assessment for the corresponding NAAQS.”
The group notes that in its draft integrated science assessment (ISA) supporting the current PM NAAQS review, EPA includes a review of scientific data on neurodevelopmental health outcomes and describes the effects on the nervous system as “likely to be causal” for UFP. The group describes UFP as “likely the most toxic fraction of particulate air pollution.”
This would appear to support EPA tightening the existing PM NAAQS of 12 micrograms per cubic meter as part of efforts to reduce “combustion-related” air pollutants including PM2.5, UFP, nitrogen oxides and others. EPA has set itself a deadline of December 2020 to complete the review.
The group also recommends increasing vehicles’ fuel efficiency; pursuing clean energy and energy efficiency projects; cutting air pollution from existing industrial sources; and restricting the construction of new industrial air pollution sources. None of these objectives fit with the Trump EPA’s deregulatory agenda, however. Project TENDR is funded by the John Merck Fund, Ceres Trust, Passport Foundation and Pediatric Epilepsy Research Society.
A source with the Health Effects Institute (HEI), a research body jointly funded by EPA and the auto industry, says the article reflects “the emerging body of evidence suggesting links between a range of nervous system effects -- from developmental effects in children to dementia in adults.” HEI is funding several such studies.
With respect to the PM NAAQS review, the source notes HEI “saw some justification” for EPA’s first-time draft conclusion in the ISA that long-term exposure to PM2.5 is “likely causal” for nervous system effects.
However, HEI did not agree with EPA’s conclusion that the same is true of long-term exposure to UFP. The source notes that research in this area is still “emerging.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/researchers-urge-epa-weigh-pm-emissions%E2%80%99-neurological-harm
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