EDF Health

Decision epitomizes administration’s disdain for public health protection (Washington, DC – January 14, 2021) Tomorrow, the Trump EPA will announce the formal withdrawal of proposed bans on high-risk uses of the dangerous chemicals methylene chloride, trichloroethylene, and N-methylpyrrolidone. By taking this action, the Trump EPA seeks to prevent the new administration from finalizing any of these bans without […]

Tom Neltner, J.D. is the Chemicals Policy Director. Many people may not be aware that lead is still added to brass and bronze used to make drinking water faucets and food equipment like coffee brewers and more. This is problematic because lead can leach into the water and beverages from the equipment – putting consumers […]

Tom Neltner, J.D. is the Chemicals Policy Director. In October 2019, we reported finding canned foods had a surprising number of samples with lead based on the Food and Drug Administration’s testing results. Almost half of the 242 samples had detectable lead, including a staggering 98% of 70 canned fruit samples. We suspect that the […]

Tom Neltner, J.D., is Chemicals Policy Director. In January 2017, the outgoing Obama Administration undertook a criminal investigation of Home Depot for alleged violations of the Lead-Safe Renovation, Repair and Painting (RRP) Rule. Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) signed a proposed civil consent decree with Home Depot committing the company to establishing a comprehensive […]

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist. Yesterday EDF submitted comments on a supplement to EPA’s 1,4-dioxane risk evaluation under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which the agency issued a scant three weeks ago. This solvent is a likely human carcinogen that contaminates drinking water nationwide and is present in millions of consumer products. […]

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist. In recent weeks EPA has issued for public comment significant modifications to its draft risk evaluations under the Toxic Substances Control Act for two chemicals:  Pigment Violet 29 (PV29) and 1,4-dioxane.  Because EPA initially provided relatively brief comment periods on the modifications, both were subject to requests for […]

Sam Lovell, Project Manager. Any successful initiative to replace lead service lines (LSLs) – the lead pipes connecting the water main under the street to homes – must be built on clear and consistent communications to residents. This will not only accelerate LSL replacement progress and equip people with information that impacts their health – […]

Sarah Vogel, Ph.D., is Vice President for Health. This post originally appeared on the Global Clean Air blog.  When we’re outside, either walking or driving, we’re instinctively looking out for traffic. “Look both ways when you cross the street,” is advice drummed into most children. But even so, we all have blind spots, and we’re not […]

Jennifer McPartland, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.  Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist. Today the Trump Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued its final risk evaluation for trichloroethylene (TCE).  It largely tracks the agency’s draft document, retaining numerous flaws that severely understate the highly toxic chemical’s risks to workers, the general public and those most susceptible […]

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist. In June 2016, Congress passed historic, bipartisan legislation overhauling the Toxic Substances Control Act, the country’s main chemical safety law, to better protect the public from harmful exposure to toxic chemicals. The Trump administration has spent the last four years working to undermine TCSA by driving its implementation […]

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist. Today Environmental Defense Fund, Earthjustice, Natural Resources Defense Council, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and Union of Concerned Scientists filed comments on EPA’s list of nominees for appointment to its Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals (SACC).  The SACC conducts peer reviews of chemical risk evaluations EPA conducts under the […]

Cloelle Danforth, Scientist.  This post originally appeared on the EDF Energy Exchange blog. Over the past few years, we’ve written a lot about the wastewater generated from oil and gas production — specifically, how little is known about what’s in it and the potential risks of exposure. But as states try to set standards for how to […]

Lindsay McCormick, Program Manager In September, Chicago took an important – albeit modest – step towards tackling its colossal number of lead service lines (LSLs) – the lead pipes providing drinking water from the main under the street to homes. With an estimated 389,900 LSLs, Chicago has more than two times as many LSLs as […]

Tom Neltner, J.D., Chemicals Policy Director The Association of State Drinking Water Administrators (ASDWA) released a new white paper to help states and utilities develop more useful inventories of lead service lines (LSLs). The paper builds on guidance the organization issued in August 2019. ASDWA partnered with BlueConduit to leverage that firm’s experience developing a […]

Tom Neltner, J.D., Chemicals Policy Director In 2018, we blogged on a study by Lanphear et al. that linked adult blood lead to a jaw-dropping 400,000 heart disease deaths annually. We called on federal regulatory agencies to give serious consideration to this and similar studies to develop a model they can use to quantify the […]

Tom Neltner, J.D., Chemicals Policy Director and Maricel Maffini, Ph.D., Consultant Update: FDA published the citizen petition upon receipt on 9/23, and is requesting public comment. More than 60 years ago, Congress enacted legislation requiring the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the food industry to evaluate the cumulative effects of substances in the diet that have related […]

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist. Readers of this blog will recall the major concerns EDF, EPA’s science advisors, and many others have raised about the Trump EPA’s systematic exclusion from its risk evaluations of all human exposures to chemicals released to air, water and land.  EPA has taken this illegal, unscientific and un-health […]

This post originally appeared on EDF Voices.  Maria Harris is an Environmental Epidemiologist. If the risks, hardships and anxiety of life during a pandemic were not enough, my fellow northern Californians are now facing another health crisis. As I write this, hundreds of wildfires are burning across the state, among them two of the largest ever […]

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist. What a mess.  That’s the best that can be said from the outside about the process EPA has followed to decide which companies are to pay fees to help defray the agency’s costs of conducting risk evaluations for the next 20 chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act […]

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist. The Trump EPA’s understating of the risks to workers posed by both existing and new chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) has been a frequent topic for this blog.  This disturbing, illegal policy continues unabated and, if anything, has accelerated and expanded to outright dismissal of […]