New Year, New EPA: How the Biden Administration Can Catalyze PFAS Action in 2021
Genna Reed, Senior Analyst | January 6, 2021, 1:53 pm EDT
During the past four years, awareness about per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) has been heightened, but not because of notable government successes. Instead, communities across the country have worked with scientists, legal teams, nonprofit organizations, members of Congress, and even film production companies to raise awareness about the need for remedies. With their leadership, there has been progress made, with dozens of pieces of PFAS legislation introduced and the passage of PFAS provisions in the 2020 and 2021 defense authorization bills, but there’s much more work to do to help us understand the extent of the PFAS public health threat, limit current PFAS pollution, and require polluters to pay for cleanup of legacy contamination.
Commentary: Angela Logomasini - Dangerous consequences of junk science
Angela Logomasini
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Author Richard Weaver was certainly correct when he asserted that “ideas have consequences” in his 1948 book by the same name. It’s also true that misinformation can have consequences often seriously dangerous ones. Consider the effect of one faulty government study, which unleashed a chain of events that undermined medical supplies during the early part of the COVID-19 crisis and continues to be a problem.
Back in 2016, an Environmental Protection Agency program known as the Integrated Risk Information System released a report that made absurd claims about the risk of ethylene oxide. Ethylene oxide is a gas that is naturally produced in the environment by plants and via combustion and is a byproduct of human metabolism. It’s also essential to the sterilization of more than half of all U.S. medical supplies masks, syringes, ventilators and more and there are
Wednesday, December 16, 2020
On November 9, 2020, EPA’s Office of Research and Development (ORD) released its long-awaited draft handbook that details the office’s process for developing chemical hazard assessments for its Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) Program. The ORD Staff Handbook for Developing IRIS Assessments (IRIS Handbook) gives useful insight into ORD’s process to develop its IRIS assessments, which provide important toxicological information that federal and state environmental agencies consider when making regulatory and cleanup decisions under multiple statutory programs. EPA will accept comments on the draft handbook and charge questions until March 1, 2021.
Background
EPA established the IRIS Program in 1985, with the goal of creating a database of human health assessments for chemicals found in the environment to ensure that evaluation of chemical toxicity was consistent across the Agency. Today, EPA’s public IRIS website provides mor
TSCA/ FIFRA/ TRI, RCRA/ CERCLA/ CWA/ CAA/ PHMSA/ SDWA, COVID-19, FDA, NANOTECHNOLOGY and more: Recent Regulatory Developments Wednesday, December 16, 2020
TSCA/FIFRA/TRI
EPA Proposes SNURs For Certain Chemical Substances: On November 16, 2020, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published proposed significant new use rules (SNUR) for certain chemical substances that are the subject of premanufacture notices (PMN). 85 Fed. Reg. 73007. The proposed SNURs would require persons to notify EPA at least 90 days before commencing manufacture (defined by statute to include import) or processing of any of these chemical substances for an activity that is designated as a significant new use. The proposed SNURs would further require that persons not commence manufacture or processing for the significant new use until they have submitted a significant new use notice (SNUN), and EPA has conducted a review of the notice, made an appropriate determination on the notice unde