EPA announced Wednesday that staff from the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention are making good on a promise to give the public increased access to health and safety studies about the toxic chemicals that pervade our lives. I applaud EPA for their work. Until Congress reforms TSCA to free EPA’s hand in regulating toxic chemicals, we have to rely too much on an imperfect alternative system, where public interest groups use publicly available data to inform the public about risks and campaign for chemical limits at the state level (see, e.g., BPA). . Broad access to the health and safety studies that EPA has just released, along with the TSCA Inventory and Chemical Access Data Tool, ensures that public interest groups and consumer advocates will have plenty of evidence to back their campaigns.
EPA’s data release is part of an ongoing effort to reassess whether certain information, once claimed to be confidential business information by the company submitting it to the agency, still deserves the protections that go along with the CBI designation. Under various sections of TSCA, chemical companies must submit health and safety studies about their chemicals to EPA. For instance, under § 8(e), companies must submit any study “which reasonably supports the conclusion that a substance or mixture presents a substantial risk of injury to health or the environment.” Skimming over EPA's list of recently released studies, it looks like many were 8(e) submissions.
The reason EPA is cleaning house, so to speak, is that, in many instances, companies would stamp data in the study or the company’s name or even the identity of the chemical as "CBI." So even though EPA dutifully put copies of 8(e) submissions on their website, the studies weren’t much use to outside researchers or advocates because they were missing key information. This week's release is a big step in the right direction.
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Matt Shudtz | June 9, 2011
EPA announced Wednesday that staff from the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention are making good on a promise to give the public increased access to health and safety studies about the toxic chemicals that pervade our lives. I applaud EPA for their work. Until Congress reforms TSCA to free EPA’s hand in regulating toxic chemicals, […]
Ben Somberg | June 7, 2011
How easy it is to make fun of those out-of-control, unelected government bureaucrats! The examples of their wild behavior are just so plentiful. Here’s Tim Pawlenty in his big economic speech this morning (prepared remarks, video): Conservatives have long made the federal bureaucracy the butt of jokes. And considering some of the bureaucrats in Washington, […]
Robert Verchick | June 5, 2011
Bonn–At a climate conference in Germany, with lager in hand, I was prepared to ponder nearly any environmental insult or failure. But rat pee? Really? The urine of rats, as it turns out, is known to transmit the leptospirosis bacteria which can lead to high fever, bad headaches, vomiting, and diarrhea. During summer rainstorms in São Paulo, Brazil, […]
James Goodwin | June 3, 2011
In testimony before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs in mid-April, Cass Sunstein, Administrator of the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), was asked to comment on a much-disputed $1.75 trillion estimate of the annual cost of federal regulations. The number comes from a report commissioned by the Small […]
Dan Rohlf | June 3, 2011
Few things in politics are certain, but it’s a safe bet that Barak Obama will not carry the state of Utah in his 2012 re-election bid. But despite its dismal electoral prospects in the state, the Obama Administration knuckled under to pressure from Utah and other western Republicans this week when Secretary of Interior Ken […]
Lena Pons | June 2, 2011
For the last two decades, scientists have amassed evidence that bisphenol A (BPA) poses a threat to human health. BPA is a chemical used in the manufacture of polycarbonate plastic, can liners for food and beverages, and thermal paper used for register receipts. It is used in so many applications that the Centers for Disease […]
Sidney A. Shapiro | June 2, 2011
The Obama administration has been busy with its regulatory look-back, which required agencies to identify health, safety, and environmental standards to be reviewed in the coming months, with the possibility of eliminating or modifying them (in some cases, the specific proposal for modification or elimination was already made last week). In explaining why the look-back […]
Daniel Farber | June 1, 2011
Cross-posted from Legal Planet. I’ve just spent some time reading the initial briefs in the D.C. Circuit on the endangerment issue. They strike me as much more political documents than legal ones. A brief recap for those who haven’t been following the legal side of the climate issue. After the Bush Administration decided not to […]
Matt Shudtz | May 31, 2011
OSHA published a report (pdf) last week on its role in the federal government’s response to last year’s massive oil spill. Within days of the blowout aboard the Deepwater Horizon, OSHA officials were in Louisiana, working to ensure that the people involved in the response and cleanup had adequate protection from the myriad hazards they would […]