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Saturday, October 21, 2017 7:08:20 PM
Why Has the E.P.A. Shifted on Toxic Chemicals?
An Industry Insider Helps Call the Shots
"Inside the Network Funding GMO Propaganda and PR to Cover Up Toxic Chemical Risks"
A scientist who worked for the chemical industry now
shapes policy on hazardous chemicals. Within the
E.P.A., there is fear that public health is at risk. (At right,
a signing ceremony for new rules on toxic chemicals.)
[it's a gif]
By ERIC LIPTON OCT. 21, 2017
WASHINGTON — For years, the Environmental Protection Agency has struggled to prevent an ingredient once used in stain-resistant carpets and nonstick pans from contaminating drinking water .. https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/supporting-documents-drinking-water-health-advisories-pfoa-and-pfos .
The chemical, perfluorooctanoic acid .. https://www.epa.gov/assessing-and-managing-chemicals-under-tsca/risk-management-and-polyfluoroalkyl-substances-pfass , or PFOA, has been linked to .. https://www.epa.gov/pfas/basic-information-about-and-polyfluoroalkyl-substances-pfass#tab-3 .. kidney cancer, birth defects, immune system disorders and other serious health problems.
So scientists and administrators in the E.P.A.’s Office of Water were alarmed in late May when a top Trump administration appointee insisted upon the rewriting of a rule to make it harder to track the health consequences of the chemical, and therefore regulate it.
The revision was among more than a dozen demanded by the appointee, Nancy B. Beck, after she joined the E.P.A.’s toxic chemical unit in May as a top deputy. For the previous five years, she had been an executive at the American Chemistry Council .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4113586-EPA-and-Toxic-Chemical-Rules.html#document/p156/a382948 , the chemical industry’s main trade association.
Related Coverage
The E.P.A.’s Top 10 Toxic Threats, and Industry’s Pushback OCT. 21, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/21/us/epa-toxic-chemicals.html
Chemical Industry Ally Faces Critics in Bid for Top E.P.A. Post SEPT. 19, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/19/science/epa-chemical-industry-dourson.html
E.P.A. Chief, Rejecting Agency’s Science, Chooses Not to Ban Insecticide MARCH 29, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/29/us/politics/epa-insecticide-chlorpyrifos.html
E.P.A. Promised ‘a New Day’ for the Agriculture Industry, Documents Reveal AUG. 18, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/us/politics/epa-agriculture-industry.html
The changes directed by Dr. Beck may result in an “underestimation of the potential risks to human health and the environment” caused by PFOA and other so-called legacy chemicals no longer sold on the market, the Office of Water’s top official warned in a confidential internal memo .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4113586-EPA-and-Toxic-Chemical-Rules.html#document/p11/a382932 .. obtained by The New York Times.
Dr. Beck testifying at a Senate hearing in March. She joined the E.P.A. in May after working as an executive at the
American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry’s main trade association. Credit U.S. Senate Committee Channel
The E.P.A.’s abrupt new direction on legacy chemicals is part of a broad initiative by the Trump administration to change the way the federal government evaluates health and environmental risks associated with hazardous chemicals, making it more aligned with the industry’s wishes.
It is a cause with far-reaching consequences for consumers and chemical companies, as the E.P.A. regulates some 80,000 different chemicals, many of them highly toxic and used in workplaces, homes and everyday products. If chemicals are deemed less risky, they are less likely to be subjected to heavy oversight and restrictions.
The effort is not new, nor is the decades-long debate .. https://www.epa.gov/risk/about-risk-assessment .. over how best to identify and assess risks, but the industry has not benefited from such highly placed champions in government since the Reagan administration. The cause was taken up by Dr. Beck and others in the administration of President George W. Bush, with some success, and met with resistance during the Obama administration. Now it has been aggressively revived under President Trump by an array of industry-backed political appointees and others.
Dr. Beck, who has a doctorate in .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4110221-Risk-amp-EPA-a-Two-Decade-Battle.html#document/p9/a381879 .. environmental health .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4113586-EPA-and-Toxic-Chemical-Rules.html#document/p9/a382931 , comes from a camp — firmly backed by the chemical industry — that says the government too often directs burdensome rules at what she has called “phantom risks .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4113586-EPA-and-Toxic-Chemical-Rules.html#document/p227/a382955 .”
Other scientists and administrators at the E.P.A., including Wendy Cleland-Hamnett, until last month .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4113586-EPA-and-Toxic-Chemical-Rules.html#document/p341/a382968 .. the agency’s top official overseeing pesticides .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4113586-EPA-and-Toxic-Chemical-Rules.html#document/p163/a382949 .. and toxic chemicals, say the dangers are real and the pushback is often a tactic for deflecting accountability — and shoring up industry profits at the expense of public safety.
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Document
E.P.A.’s Decision Not to Ban Chlorpyrifos
The New York Times requested copies of email correspondence related to the March 2017 decision by the E.P.A. to reject a decade-old petition to ban chlorpyrifos, a widely used pesticide that research suggests may cause developmental delays in children exposed to it in drinking water or in farming communities. Here are those documents.
OPEN Document - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/21/us/document-EPA-Chlorpyrifos-FOIA-Emails-to-NYT.html
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Since Mr. Trump’s election, Dr. Beck’s approach has been unabashedly ascendant, according to interviews with more than two dozen current and former E.P.A. and White House officials, confidential E.P.A. documents, and materials obtained through open-record requests.
In March, Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A. chief, overrode the recommendation of Ms. Hamnett and agency scientists .. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/29/us/politics/epa-insecticide-chlorpyrifos.html .. to ban the commercial use of the pesticide chlorpyrifos .. https://www.epa.gov/ingredients-used-pesticide-products/chlorpyrifos , blamed for developmental disabilities in children .. https://www.mailman.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news/prenatal-exposure-insecticide-chlorpyrifos-linked-alterations-brain-structure .
The E.P.A.’s new leadership also pressed agency scientists to re-evaluate a plan to ban certain uses of two dangerous chemicals that have caused dozens of deaths or severe health problems: methylene chloride .. https://www.osha.gov/Publications/osha3144.html , which is found in paint strippers, and trichloroethylene .. https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-12/documents/prepubcopy_tce-aerosolspotting_nprm_frdocument_2016-12-06.pdf , which removes grease from metals and is used in dry cleaning.
“It was extremely disturbing to me,” Ms. Hamnett said of the order she received to reverse .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4112113-EPA-Chlorpyrifos-FOIA-Emails-to-NYT.html#document/p32/a382351 .. the proposed pesticide ban. “The industry met with E.P.A. political appointees. And then I was asked to change the agency’s stand.”
The E.P.A. and Dr. Beck declined repeated requests to comment that included detailed lists of questions.
“No matter how much information we give you, you would never write a fair piece,” Liz Bowman, a spokeswoman for the E.P.A., said in an email .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4113586-EPA-and-Toxic-Chemical-Rules.html#document/p368/a382972 . “The only thing inappropriate and biased is your continued fixation on writing elitist clickbait trying to attack qualified professionals committed to serving their country.”
Before joining the E.P.A., Ms. Bowman was a spokeswoman for the American Chemistry Council.
The conflict over how to define risk in federal regulations comes just as the E.P.A. was supposed to be fixing its backlogged and beleaguered chemical regulation program. Last year, after a decade of delays, Congress passed bipartisan legislation that would push the E.P.A. to determine whether dozens of chemicals were so dangerous that they should be banned or restricted.
The chemical safety law was passed .. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/08/us/politics/senate-approves-update-of-toxic-chemical-regulations.html .. after Congress and the chemical industry reached a consensus that toxic chemical threats — or at least the fear of them — were so severe that they undermined consumer confidence in products on the market.
But now the chemical industry and many of the companies that use their compounds are praising the Trump administration’s changed direction, saying new chemicals are getting faster regulatory reviews and existing chemicals will benefit from a less dogmatic approach to determining risk.
[...]
“You are never going to have 100 percent certainty on anything,” Ms. Hamnett said. “But when you have a chemical that evidence points to is causing fatalities, you err more on the side of taking some action, as opposed to ‘Let’s wait and spend some more time and try to get the science entirely certain,’ which it hardly ever gets to be.”
The divergent approaches and yearslong face-off between Ms. Hamnett and Dr. Beck parallel the story of the chemical industry’s quest to keep the E.P.A.’s enforcement arm at bay.
The two women, one a lawyer from New Jersey, the other a scientist from Long Island, have dedicated their lives to the issue of hazardous chemicals. Each’s expertise is respected by her peers, but their perspectives couldn’t be more dissimilar.
Ms. Hamnett, 63, spent her entire 38-year career at the E.P.A., joining the agency directly from law school as a believer in consumer and environmental protections. Dr. Beck, 51, did a fellowship at the E.P.A., but has spent most of her 29-year career elsewhere: in a testing lab at Estée Lauder, as a toxicologist in the Washington State Health Department, as a regulatory analyst in the White House and most recently with the chemical industry’s trade group.
Ms. Hamnett in Falls Church, Va. Last month, she retired as the top official overseeing pesticides and toxic chemicals at the E.P.A.
“I had become irrelevant,” she said about changes there under the Trump administration. Credit Jared Soares for The New York Times
[The face says much of a person, doesn't it.]
Before Mr. Trump’s election, Ms. Hamnett would have been regarded as the hands-down victor in their professional tug of war. Her decision to retire in September amounted to a surrender of sorts, a powerful acknowledgment of the two women’s reversed fortunes under the Trump administration.
“I had become irrelevant,” Ms. Hamnett said.
Her farewell party in late August was held in the wood-paneled Map Room on the first floor of the E.P.A. headquarters, the same room where Mr. Trump had signed .. https://twitter.com/kevinbogardus/status/846771791603400704 .. an executive order backed by big business that called for the agency to dismantle environmental protections.
Dr. Beck was among those who spoke. She thanked Ms. Hamnett for her decades of service. “I don’t know what I am going to do without her,” she said, according to multiple people who attended the event.
Ms. Hamnett, in an interview, said she had little trouble envisioning the future under the new leadership. “It’s time for me to go,” she said. “I have done what I could do.”
‘Unreasonable Risk of Injury’
Chemical regulation was not part of the E.P.A.’s original mission. But several environmental disasters in the early 1970s prompted Congress to extend the agency’s authority.
Industrial waste, including highly toxic PCBs, led to fish kills in the Hudson River .. http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/09/nyregion/river-reclaimed-reversing-pollution-s-toll-first-twoarticles-shaking-off-man-s.html . Chemicals from flame retardants were detected in livestock in Michigan, contaminating food across the state .. https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Poisoning_of_Michigan.html?id=QlgoAQAAIAAJ&hl=en . And residents in Niagara Falls, N.Y., first started .. https://tinyurl.com/ydebdtxv .. to notice a black, oily liquid .. https://www.health.ny.gov/environmental/investigations/love_canal/lcreport.htm .. in their basements, early hints of one of the worst environmental disasters in United States history: Love Canal .. http://www.nytimes.com/1978/08/02/archives/upstate-waste-site-may-endanger-lives-abandoned-dump-in-niagara.html .
President Gerald R. Ford signed the Toxic Substances Control Act .. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=6445 .. in October 1976, giving the E.P.A. the authority to ban or restrict chemicals it deemed dangerous. It was hailed as a public health breakthrough.
“For the first time, the law empowers the federal government to control and even to stop production or use of chemical substances that may present an unreasonable risk of injury to health or environment,” a federal report said .. https://www.slideshare.net/whitehouse/august-1977-the-eighth-annual-report-of-the-council-on-environmental-quality .
[...]
When the proposed lead paint rule came along in 2006, Dr. Beck, in her White House role, pressed Ms. Hamnett and others in the E.P.A. to revise the language to diminish the link .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4109384-2007-5-17-OMB-Changes-to-the-Draft-Economic.html .. to cardiovascular disease in adults, Ms. Hamnett recalled, before letting the rule go into effect.
That was one marker in Dr. Beck’s journey to redefine the way the government evaluates risk. Though they repeatedly found themselves on opposite sides, Ms. Hamnett said that, in a way, she admired Dr. Beck’s effort during those years.
She described Dr. Beck as a voracious reader of scientific studies and agency reports, diving deep into footnotes and scientific data with a rigor matched by few colleagues. She combed through thousands of comments submitted on proposed rules. And she had a habit of reading the Federal Register, the daily diary of new federal rules.
All of it made Dr. Beck an intimidating and confident adversary, Ms. Hamnett recalled. “She’s very smart and very well informed,” she said.
But there was a destructive side to that confidence, others said. In particular, Dr. Beck was seen as an enemy of scientists and risk assessors at the E.P.A., willing to challenge the validity of their studies and impose her own judgment, said Robert M. Sussman, a lawyer who represented chemical industry clients during the Bush administration and later became an E.P.A. lawyer and policy adviser under the Obama administration.
“Her goal was to throw sand in the gears to stop things from going forward,” said Mr. Sussman, who now is counsel to Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, a coalition of consumer and environmental groups.
Jack Housenger, a biologist who served as the director of the E.P.A.’s pesticide program, had a more positive recollection. He said Dr. Beck asked reasonable questions about his findings related to a wood preservative used in playgrounds and outdoor decks that was being pulled from the market.
“She wanted us to present the uncertainties and ranges of risk,” said Mr. Housenger, who retired this year. “She was trying to understand the methodology.”
Paul Noe .. http://www.afandpa.org/docs/default-source/default-document-library/paul-noe.pdf?sfvrsn=0; , a lawyer who worked with Dr. Beck during the Bush administration, also said her critics got her wrong.
“What you really want to do as a government is to set priorities,” he said. “If you don’t have a realistic way of distinguishing significant risks from insignificant ones, you are just going to get bogged down and waste significant resources, and that can impede public health and safety.”
One of the harshest criticisms of Dr. Beck’s tenure in the Bush White House came in 2007 from the nonpartisan National Academy of Sciences, which examined a draft policy she helped write .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4113586-EPA-and-Toxic-Chemical-Rules.html#document/p20/a382935 .. proposing much stricter controls over the way the government evaluates risks.
“The committee agrees that there is room for improvement in risk assessment practices in the federal government,” the review said .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4113586-EPA-and-Toxic-Chemical-Rules.html#document/p46/a382936 , but it described Dr. Beck’s suggestions as “oversimplified” and “fundamentally flawed.” It recommended her proposal be withdrawn.
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Document
E.P.A. and Toxic Chemical Rules
An internal struggle has broken out in the Environmental Protection Agency over how to regulate toxic chemicals. These documents tell the backstory of the tension, which emerged after the Trump administration named an industry insider as a top agency regulator.
OPEN Document - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/21/us/document-EPA-and-Toxic-Chemical-Rules.html
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Dr. Beck was so aggressive in second-guessing E.P.A. scientists that she became central to a special investigation by the House Committee on Science and Technology .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4113586-EPA-and-Toxic-Chemical-Rules.html#document/p94/a382944 .
The committee obtained copies of her detailed emails to agency officials and accused her of slowing progress in confirming drinking-water health threats presented by chemicals like perchlorate, used in rocket fuel. “Suppression of Environmental Science by the Bush Administration’s Office of Management and Budget,” the committee wrote in 2009, before describing Dr. Beck’s actions.
The opposition became so intense that Dr. Beck’s efforts started to get shut down.
[...]
E.P.A. and government-funded academic researchers were raising serious health questions about the safety of a range of chemicals, including flame retardants in furniture and plastics in water bottles and children’s toys. Consumer confidence in the industry .. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/01/business/commonly-used-chemicals-come-under-new-scrutiny.html .. was eroding.
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[ INSERT: More Toxic Chemicals Damaging Children's Brains, New Study Warns
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=97347034 ]
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Some state legislatures, frustrated by the E.P.A.’s slow response and facing a consumer backlash, moved to increase their own authority to investigate and act on the problems — threatening the chemical industry with an unwieldy patchwork of state rules and regulations.
Dr. Beck and other chemical industry representatives were dispatched to the E.P.A. and Congress to press for changes to the federal regulatory system that would standardize testing of the most worrisome existing chemicals and improve and accelerate the evaluation of new ones.
The resulting law .. https://www.epa.gov/assessing-and-managing-chemicals-under-tsca/frank-r-lautenberg-chemical-safety-21st-century-act .. passed last year with Democratic and Republican support, gave both sides something they wanted. The chemical industry got pre-emption from most new state regulations, and environmentalists got assurances that new chemicals would be evaluated on health and safety risks alone, not financial considerations.
It was the most significant overhaul of the Toxic Substances Control Act .. https://www.epa.gov/laws-regulations/summary-toxic-substances-control-act .. since its enactment in the 1970s, and once again Ms. Hamnett was prepared to help shepherd it into place. The task was shaping up to be what she considered her final, crowning act at the E.P.A.
Ms. Hamnett was invited to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, a part of the White House complex, to be present as Mr. Obama signed the bill into law .. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/06/22/remarks-president-bill-signing-frank-r-lautenberg-chemical-safety-2st . She was so excited that she arrived early and sneaked up to the stage to look at the papers Mr. Obama would be signing.
President Barack Obama signing a chemical safety bill in June last year. Credit Zach Gibson for The New York Times
“Protecting people and the environment for decades to come,” she said, recalling her thoughts, as she excitedly stood on the stage. “At least, that is what we planned.”
Turning the Tables
[...]
Dr. Beck then spent her first weeks on the job pressing agency staff to rewrite the standards to reflect, in some cases, word for word .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4113586-EPA-and-Toxic-Chemical-Rules.html#document/p337/a382966 , the chemical industry’s proposed changes, three staff members involved in the effort said. They asked not to be named for fear of losing their jobs.
Dr. Beck had unusual authority to make it happen.
When she was hired by the Trump administration, she was granted the status .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4113586-EPA-and-Toxic-Chemical-Rules.html#document/p1/a382928 .. of “administratively determined” position. It is an unusual classification that means she was not hired based on a competitive process — as civil servants are — and she was also not identified as a political appointee. There are only about a dozen such posts .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4112130-2017-3-Administratively-Determined-Positions-EPA.html .. at the E.P.A., among the 15,800 agency employees, and the jobs are typically reserved for technical experts, not managers with the authority to give orders.
Crucially, the special status meant that Dr. Beck did not have to abide by the ethics agreement Mr. Trump adopted in January .. https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/28/executive-order-ethics-commitments-executive-branch-appointees , which bars political appointees in his administration from participating for two years “in any particular matter involving specific parties that is directly and substantially related to my former employer or former clients, including regulations and contracts.”
Her written offer of employment, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, also made it clear that Dr. Beck’s appointment was junior enough not to require Senate confirmation, which would have almost certainly delayed her arrival at the agency and prevented her from making changes to the rules ahead of the June deadline.
[...]
“Everyone was furious,” said Ms. Southerland, the official from the Office of Water. “Nancy was just rewriting the rule herself. And it was a huge change. Everybody was stunned such a substantial change would be made literally in the last week.”
[...]
‘Not One of My Best Days’
Environmentalists were dismayed, but Ms. Hamnett emerged from the whirlwind process with some confidence that all was not lost.
While she disagreed with a number of Dr. Beck’s changes, she trusted that the E.P.A. staff would maintain its commitment to honor Congress’s intent in the 2016 legislation. That would translate into a rigorous crackdown on the most dangerous chemicals, regardless of the changes.
But her confidence in the E.P.A.’s resolve was fragile, and it had been shaken by other actions, including the order Ms. Hamnett received to reverse course on banning the pesticide chlorpyrifos.
The order came before Dr. Beck’s arrival at the agency, but Ms. Hamnett saw the industry’s fingerprints all over it. Mr. Pruitt’s chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, instructed Ms. Hamnett to ignore the recommendation of agency scientists, she said.
The scientists had called for a ban .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4112113-EPA-Chlorpyrifos-FOIA-Emails-to-NYT.html#document/p1/a382356 .. based on research suggesting the pesticide might cause developmental disabilities in children.
Farm workers in a field picking berries. Chlorpyrifos, a pesticide blamed for developmental disabilities in children, is still widely used
in agriculture. In March, Mr. Pruitt overrode agency scientists’ recommendation to ban it. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times
To keep the pesticide on the market, under E.P.A. guidelines, the agency needed to have a “reasonable certainty .. https://www.epa.gov/pesticide-registration/about-pesticide-registration ” that no harm was being caused.
“The science and the law tell us this is the way to go,” Ms. Hamnett said of a ban.
But the reaction from her superiors was not about the science or the law, she said. Instead, they queried her about Dow Chemical, the pesticide’s largest manufacturer, which had been lobbying against a ban .. http://www.chlorpyrifos.com/ .
The clash is recorded in Ms. Hamnett notebook as well as in emails among Mr. Pruitt’s top political aides, which were obtained by The Times.
“They are trying to strong arm us,” Mr. Jackson wrote after meeting with Ms. Hamnett .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4112113-EPA-Chlorpyrifos-FOIA-Emails-to-NYT.html#document/p24/a382354 , who presented him with a draft petition to ban the pesticide.
Mr. Jackson, Ms. Hamnett’s notebook shows .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4112113-EPA-Chlorpyrifos-FOIA-Emails-to-NYT.html#document/p25/a382973 , then asked her to come up with alternatives to a ban. He asserted, her notes show, that he did not want to be “forced into a box” by the petition.
Ms. Hamnett recorded Mr. Jackson’s reaction to a pesticide ban in her notebook.
“I scared them .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4112113-EPA-Chlorpyrifos-FOIA-Emails-to-NYT.html#document/p24/a382354 ,” Mr. Jackson wrote in an email to a colleague about his demands on Ms. Hamnett and her team.
As a possible compromise, Ms. Hamnett’s team had been talking to Dow about perhaps phasing out the pesticide instead of imposing an immediate ban. But Dow, after Mr. Trump’s election, was suddenly in no mood to compromise, Ms. Hamnett recalled. Dow did not respond to requests for comment.
She now knew, she said, that the effort to ban the pesticide had been lost, something Mr. Jackson’s emails celebrated.
“They know where this is headed,” Mr. Jackson wrote.
Just over a week later, Ms. Hamnett submitted a draft order .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4112113-EPA-Chlorpyrifos-FOIA-Emails-to-NYT.html#document/p32/a382351 .. that would deny the request for a ban.
“It was hard, very hard,” she said, worrying that the pesticide would continue to harm children of farmworkers. “That was not one of my best days.”
The episode is one reason she worries the E.P.A. will defer to the chemical industry as it begins to evaluate toxic chemicals under the standards created by the new law. She became particularly concerned because of a more recent exchange with Dr. Beck over methylene chloride, which is used in paint removers.
After more than a decade of research, the agency had concluded .. https://www.epa.gov/assessing-and-managing-chemicals-under-tsca/fact-sheet-methylene-chloride-or-dichloromethane-dcm-0#consumers .. in January that methylene chloride was so hazardous that its use in paint removers should be banned.
Methylene chloride has been blamed in dozens of deaths, including that of a 21-year-old Tennessee man .. http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/local/cheatham/2017/05/04/community-raises-funds-support-hartley-family-after-son-dies-work-accident/101283588/ .. in April, who was overwhelmed by fumes as he was refinishing a bathtub.
“How is it possible that you can go to a home improvement store and buy a paint remover that can kill you?” Ms. Hamnett asked. “How can we let this happen?”
Furniture-refinishing companies and chemical manufacturers have urged the E.P.A. to focus on steps like strengthening warning labels, complaining that there are few reasonably priced alternatives.
Ms. Hamnett said Dr. Beck raised the possibility that people were not following the directions on the labels. She also suggested that only a small number of users had been injured. “Is it 1 percent?” Ms. Hamnett recalled Dr. Beck asking.
Ms. Hamnett said she was devastated by the line of questioning.
After years of successfully fending off Dr. Beck and her industry allies, the balance of power at the agency had shifted toward the industry.
[...]
Mr. Pruitt has selected a replacement for Ms. Hamnett: Michael L. Dourson .. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/19/science/epa-chemical-industry-dourson.html?_r=0 , a toxicologist who has spent the last two decades as a consultant helping businesses fight E.P.A. restrictions .. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/16/science/document-Michael-Dourson-Research-Papers-on-Chemicals.html .. on the use of potentially toxic compounds. He is already at work at the agency in a temporary post while he awaits Senate confirmation.
The American Chemistry Council, and its members, are among the top private-sector sponsors of Mr. Dourson’s research. Last year, he collaborated on a paper .. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273230016301313 .. that was funded by the trade group. His fellow author was Dr. Beck.
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Sheila Kaplan contributed reporting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/21/us/trump-epa-chemicals-regulations.html
Welcome to your new E.P.A. with relatively dangerous and dirty pro-industry policy orientation and practice.
More outed than originally planned, it would be only roughly half of a long one.
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An Industry Insider Helps Call the Shots
"Inside the Network Funding GMO Propaganda and PR to Cover Up Toxic Chemical Risks"
A scientist who worked for the chemical industry now
shapes policy on hazardous chemicals. Within the
E.P.A., there is fear that public health is at risk. (At right,
a signing ceremony for new rules on toxic chemicals.)
[it's a gif]
By ERIC LIPTON OCT. 21, 2017
WASHINGTON — For years, the Environmental Protection Agency has struggled to prevent an ingredient once used in stain-resistant carpets and nonstick pans from contaminating drinking water .. https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/supporting-documents-drinking-water-health-advisories-pfoa-and-pfos .
The chemical, perfluorooctanoic acid .. https://www.epa.gov/assessing-and-managing-chemicals-under-tsca/risk-management-and-polyfluoroalkyl-substances-pfass , or PFOA, has been linked to .. https://www.epa.gov/pfas/basic-information-about-and-polyfluoroalkyl-substances-pfass#tab-3 .. kidney cancer, birth defects, immune system disorders and other serious health problems.
So scientists and administrators in the E.P.A.’s Office of Water were alarmed in late May when a top Trump administration appointee insisted upon the rewriting of a rule to make it harder to track the health consequences of the chemical, and therefore regulate it.
The revision was among more than a dozen demanded by the appointee, Nancy B. Beck, after she joined the E.P.A.’s toxic chemical unit in May as a top deputy. For the previous five years, she had been an executive at the American Chemistry Council .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4113586-EPA-and-Toxic-Chemical-Rules.html#document/p156/a382948 , the chemical industry’s main trade association.
Related Coverage
The E.P.A.’s Top 10 Toxic Threats, and Industry’s Pushback OCT. 21, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/21/us/epa-toxic-chemicals.html
Chemical Industry Ally Faces Critics in Bid for Top E.P.A. Post SEPT. 19, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/19/science/epa-chemical-industry-dourson.html
E.P.A. Chief, Rejecting Agency’s Science, Chooses Not to Ban Insecticide MARCH 29, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/29/us/politics/epa-insecticide-chlorpyrifos.html
E.P.A. Promised ‘a New Day’ for the Agriculture Industry, Documents Reveal AUG. 18, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/us/politics/epa-agriculture-industry.html
The changes directed by Dr. Beck may result in an “underestimation of the potential risks to human health and the environment” caused by PFOA and other so-called legacy chemicals no longer sold on the market, the Office of Water’s top official warned in a confidential internal memo .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4113586-EPA-and-Toxic-Chemical-Rules.html#document/p11/a382932 .. obtained by The New York Times.
Dr. Beck testifying at a Senate hearing in March. She joined the E.P.A. in May after working as an executive at the
American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry’s main trade association. Credit U.S. Senate Committee Channel
The E.P.A.’s abrupt new direction on legacy chemicals is part of a broad initiative by the Trump administration to change the way the federal government evaluates health and environmental risks associated with hazardous chemicals, making it more aligned with the industry’s wishes.
It is a cause with far-reaching consequences for consumers and chemical companies, as the E.P.A. regulates some 80,000 different chemicals, many of them highly toxic and used in workplaces, homes and everyday products. If chemicals are deemed less risky, they are less likely to be subjected to heavy oversight and restrictions.
The effort is not new, nor is the decades-long debate .. https://www.epa.gov/risk/about-risk-assessment .. over how best to identify and assess risks, but the industry has not benefited from such highly placed champions in government since the Reagan administration. The cause was taken up by Dr. Beck and others in the administration of President George W. Bush, with some success, and met with resistance during the Obama administration. Now it has been aggressively revived under President Trump by an array of industry-backed political appointees and others.
Dr. Beck, who has a doctorate in .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4110221-Risk-amp-EPA-a-Two-Decade-Battle.html#document/p9/a381879 .. environmental health .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4113586-EPA-and-Toxic-Chemical-Rules.html#document/p9/a382931 , comes from a camp — firmly backed by the chemical industry — that says the government too often directs burdensome rules at what she has called “phantom risks .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4113586-EPA-and-Toxic-Chemical-Rules.html#document/p227/a382955 .”
Other scientists and administrators at the E.P.A., including Wendy Cleland-Hamnett, until last month .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4113586-EPA-and-Toxic-Chemical-Rules.html#document/p341/a382968 .. the agency’s top official overseeing pesticides .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4113586-EPA-and-Toxic-Chemical-Rules.html#document/p163/a382949 .. and toxic chemicals, say the dangers are real and the pushback is often a tactic for deflecting accountability — and shoring up industry profits at the expense of public safety.
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Document
E.P.A.’s Decision Not to Ban Chlorpyrifos
The New York Times requested copies of email correspondence related to the March 2017 decision by the E.P.A. to reject a decade-old petition to ban chlorpyrifos, a widely used pesticide that research suggests may cause developmental delays in children exposed to it in drinking water or in farming communities. Here are those documents.
OPEN Document - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/21/us/document-EPA-Chlorpyrifos-FOIA-Emails-to-NYT.html
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Since Mr. Trump’s election, Dr. Beck’s approach has been unabashedly ascendant, according to interviews with more than two dozen current and former E.P.A. and White House officials, confidential E.P.A. documents, and materials obtained through open-record requests.
In March, Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A. chief, overrode the recommendation of Ms. Hamnett and agency scientists .. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/29/us/politics/epa-insecticide-chlorpyrifos.html .. to ban the commercial use of the pesticide chlorpyrifos .. https://www.epa.gov/ingredients-used-pesticide-products/chlorpyrifos , blamed for developmental disabilities in children .. https://www.mailman.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news/prenatal-exposure-insecticide-chlorpyrifos-linked-alterations-brain-structure .
The E.P.A.’s new leadership also pressed agency scientists to re-evaluate a plan to ban certain uses of two dangerous chemicals that have caused dozens of deaths or severe health problems: methylene chloride .. https://www.osha.gov/Publications/osha3144.html , which is found in paint strippers, and trichloroethylene .. https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-12/documents/prepubcopy_tce-aerosolspotting_nprm_frdocument_2016-12-06.pdf , which removes grease from metals and is used in dry cleaning.
“It was extremely disturbing to me,” Ms. Hamnett said of the order she received to reverse .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4112113-EPA-Chlorpyrifos-FOIA-Emails-to-NYT.html#document/p32/a382351 .. the proposed pesticide ban. “The industry met with E.P.A. political appointees. And then I was asked to change the agency’s stand.”
The E.P.A. and Dr. Beck declined repeated requests to comment that included detailed lists of questions.
“No matter how much information we give you, you would never write a fair piece,” Liz Bowman, a spokeswoman for the E.P.A., said in an email .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4113586-EPA-and-Toxic-Chemical-Rules.html#document/p368/a382972 . “The only thing inappropriate and biased is your continued fixation on writing elitist clickbait trying to attack qualified professionals committed to serving their country.”
Before joining the E.P.A., Ms. Bowman was a spokeswoman for the American Chemistry Council.
The conflict over how to define risk in federal regulations comes just as the E.P.A. was supposed to be fixing its backlogged and beleaguered chemical regulation program. Last year, after a decade of delays, Congress passed bipartisan legislation that would push the E.P.A. to determine whether dozens of chemicals were so dangerous that they should be banned or restricted.
The chemical safety law was passed .. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/08/us/politics/senate-approves-update-of-toxic-chemical-regulations.html .. after Congress and the chemical industry reached a consensus that toxic chemical threats — or at least the fear of them — were so severe that they undermined consumer confidence in products on the market.
But now the chemical industry and many of the companies that use their compounds are praising the Trump administration’s changed direction, saying new chemicals are getting faster regulatory reviews and existing chemicals will benefit from a less dogmatic approach to determining risk.
[...]
“You are never going to have 100 percent certainty on anything,” Ms. Hamnett said. “But when you have a chemical that evidence points to is causing fatalities, you err more on the side of taking some action, as opposed to ‘Let’s wait and spend some more time and try to get the science entirely certain,’ which it hardly ever gets to be.”
The divergent approaches and yearslong face-off between Ms. Hamnett and Dr. Beck parallel the story of the chemical industry’s quest to keep the E.P.A.’s enforcement arm at bay.
The two women, one a lawyer from New Jersey, the other a scientist from Long Island, have dedicated their lives to the issue of hazardous chemicals. Each’s expertise is respected by her peers, but their perspectives couldn’t be more dissimilar.
Ms. Hamnett, 63, spent her entire 38-year career at the E.P.A., joining the agency directly from law school as a believer in consumer and environmental protections. Dr. Beck, 51, did a fellowship at the E.P.A., but has spent most of her 29-year career elsewhere: in a testing lab at Estée Lauder, as a toxicologist in the Washington State Health Department, as a regulatory analyst in the White House and most recently with the chemical industry’s trade group.
Ms. Hamnett in Falls Church, Va. Last month, she retired as the top official overseeing pesticides and toxic chemicals at the E.P.A.
“I had become irrelevant,” she said about changes there under the Trump administration. Credit Jared Soares for The New York Times
[The face says much of a person, doesn't it.]
Before Mr. Trump’s election, Ms. Hamnett would have been regarded as the hands-down victor in their professional tug of war. Her decision to retire in September amounted to a surrender of sorts, a powerful acknowledgment of the two women’s reversed fortunes under the Trump administration.
“I had become irrelevant,” Ms. Hamnett said.
Her farewell party in late August was held in the wood-paneled Map Room on the first floor of the E.P.A. headquarters, the same room where Mr. Trump had signed .. https://twitter.com/kevinbogardus/status/846771791603400704 .. an executive order backed by big business that called for the agency to dismantle environmental protections.
Dr. Beck was among those who spoke. She thanked Ms. Hamnett for her decades of service. “I don’t know what I am going to do without her,” she said, according to multiple people who attended the event.
Ms. Hamnett, in an interview, said she had little trouble envisioning the future under the new leadership. “It’s time for me to go,” she said. “I have done what I could do.”
‘Unreasonable Risk of Injury’
Chemical regulation was not part of the E.P.A.’s original mission. But several environmental disasters in the early 1970s prompted Congress to extend the agency’s authority.
Industrial waste, including highly toxic PCBs, led to fish kills in the Hudson River .. http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/09/nyregion/river-reclaimed-reversing-pollution-s-toll-first-twoarticles-shaking-off-man-s.html . Chemicals from flame retardants were detected in livestock in Michigan, contaminating food across the state .. https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Poisoning_of_Michigan.html?id=QlgoAQAAIAAJ&hl=en . And residents in Niagara Falls, N.Y., first started .. https://tinyurl.com/ydebdtxv .. to notice a black, oily liquid .. https://www.health.ny.gov/environmental/investigations/love_canal/lcreport.htm .. in their basements, early hints of one of the worst environmental disasters in United States history: Love Canal .. http://www.nytimes.com/1978/08/02/archives/upstate-waste-site-may-endanger-lives-abandoned-dump-in-niagara.html .
President Gerald R. Ford signed the Toxic Substances Control Act .. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=6445 .. in October 1976, giving the E.P.A. the authority to ban or restrict chemicals it deemed dangerous. It was hailed as a public health breakthrough.
“For the first time, the law empowers the federal government to control and even to stop production or use of chemical substances that may present an unreasonable risk of injury to health or environment,” a federal report said .. https://www.slideshare.net/whitehouse/august-1977-the-eighth-annual-report-of-the-council-on-environmental-quality .
[...]
When the proposed lead paint rule came along in 2006, Dr. Beck, in her White House role, pressed Ms. Hamnett and others in the E.P.A. to revise the language to diminish the link .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4109384-2007-5-17-OMB-Changes-to-the-Draft-Economic.html .. to cardiovascular disease in adults, Ms. Hamnett recalled, before letting the rule go into effect.
That was one marker in Dr. Beck’s journey to redefine the way the government evaluates risk. Though they repeatedly found themselves on opposite sides, Ms. Hamnett said that, in a way, she admired Dr. Beck’s effort during those years.
She described Dr. Beck as a voracious reader of scientific studies and agency reports, diving deep into footnotes and scientific data with a rigor matched by few colleagues. She combed through thousands of comments submitted on proposed rules. And she had a habit of reading the Federal Register, the daily diary of new federal rules.
All of it made Dr. Beck an intimidating and confident adversary, Ms. Hamnett recalled. “She’s very smart and very well informed,” she said.
But there was a destructive side to that confidence, others said. In particular, Dr. Beck was seen as an enemy of scientists and risk assessors at the E.P.A., willing to challenge the validity of their studies and impose her own judgment, said Robert M. Sussman, a lawyer who represented chemical industry clients during the Bush administration and later became an E.P.A. lawyer and policy adviser under the Obama administration.
“Her goal was to throw sand in the gears to stop things from going forward,” said Mr. Sussman, who now is counsel to Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, a coalition of consumer and environmental groups.
Jack Housenger, a biologist who served as the director of the E.P.A.’s pesticide program, had a more positive recollection. He said Dr. Beck asked reasonable questions about his findings related to a wood preservative used in playgrounds and outdoor decks that was being pulled from the market.
“She wanted us to present the uncertainties and ranges of risk,” said Mr. Housenger, who retired this year. “She was trying to understand the methodology.”
Paul Noe .. http://www.afandpa.org/docs/default-source/default-document-library/paul-noe.pdf?sfvrsn=0; , a lawyer who worked with Dr. Beck during the Bush administration, also said her critics got her wrong.
“What you really want to do as a government is to set priorities,” he said. “If you don’t have a realistic way of distinguishing significant risks from insignificant ones, you are just going to get bogged down and waste significant resources, and that can impede public health and safety.”
One of the harshest criticisms of Dr. Beck’s tenure in the Bush White House came in 2007 from the nonpartisan National Academy of Sciences, which examined a draft policy she helped write .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4113586-EPA-and-Toxic-Chemical-Rules.html#document/p20/a382935 .. proposing much stricter controls over the way the government evaluates risks.
“The committee agrees that there is room for improvement in risk assessment practices in the federal government,” the review said .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4113586-EPA-and-Toxic-Chemical-Rules.html#document/p46/a382936 , but it described Dr. Beck’s suggestions as “oversimplified” and “fundamentally flawed.” It recommended her proposal be withdrawn.
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Document
E.P.A. and Toxic Chemical Rules
An internal struggle has broken out in the Environmental Protection Agency over how to regulate toxic chemicals. These documents tell the backstory of the tension, which emerged after the Trump administration named an industry insider as a top agency regulator.
OPEN Document - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/21/us/document-EPA-and-Toxic-Chemical-Rules.html
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Dr. Beck was so aggressive in second-guessing E.P.A. scientists that she became central to a special investigation by the House Committee on Science and Technology .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4113586-EPA-and-Toxic-Chemical-Rules.html#document/p94/a382944 .
The committee obtained copies of her detailed emails to agency officials and accused her of slowing progress in confirming drinking-water health threats presented by chemicals like perchlorate, used in rocket fuel. “Suppression of Environmental Science by the Bush Administration’s Office of Management and Budget,” the committee wrote in 2009, before describing Dr. Beck’s actions.
The opposition became so intense that Dr. Beck’s efforts started to get shut down.
[...]
E.P.A. and government-funded academic researchers were raising serious health questions about the safety of a range of chemicals, including flame retardants in furniture and plastics in water bottles and children’s toys. Consumer confidence in the industry .. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/01/business/commonly-used-chemicals-come-under-new-scrutiny.html .. was eroding.
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[ INSERT: More Toxic Chemicals Damaging Children's Brains, New Study Warns
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=97347034 ]
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Some state legislatures, frustrated by the E.P.A.’s slow response and facing a consumer backlash, moved to increase their own authority to investigate and act on the problems — threatening the chemical industry with an unwieldy patchwork of state rules and regulations.
Dr. Beck and other chemical industry representatives were dispatched to the E.P.A. and Congress to press for changes to the federal regulatory system that would standardize testing of the most worrisome existing chemicals and improve and accelerate the evaluation of new ones.
The resulting law .. https://www.epa.gov/assessing-and-managing-chemicals-under-tsca/frank-r-lautenberg-chemical-safety-21st-century-act .. passed last year with Democratic and Republican support, gave both sides something they wanted. The chemical industry got pre-emption from most new state regulations, and environmentalists got assurances that new chemicals would be evaluated on health and safety risks alone, not financial considerations.
It was the most significant overhaul of the Toxic Substances Control Act .. https://www.epa.gov/laws-regulations/summary-toxic-substances-control-act .. since its enactment in the 1970s, and once again Ms. Hamnett was prepared to help shepherd it into place. The task was shaping up to be what she considered her final, crowning act at the E.P.A.
Ms. Hamnett was invited to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, a part of the White House complex, to be present as Mr. Obama signed the bill into law .. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/06/22/remarks-president-bill-signing-frank-r-lautenberg-chemical-safety-2st . She was so excited that she arrived early and sneaked up to the stage to look at the papers Mr. Obama would be signing.
President Barack Obama signing a chemical safety bill in June last year. Credit Zach Gibson for The New York Times
“Protecting people and the environment for decades to come,” she said, recalling her thoughts, as she excitedly stood on the stage. “At least, that is what we planned.”
Turning the Tables
[...]
Dr. Beck then spent her first weeks on the job pressing agency staff to rewrite the standards to reflect, in some cases, word for word .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4113586-EPA-and-Toxic-Chemical-Rules.html#document/p337/a382966 , the chemical industry’s proposed changes, three staff members involved in the effort said. They asked not to be named for fear of losing their jobs.
Dr. Beck had unusual authority to make it happen.
When she was hired by the Trump administration, she was granted the status .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4113586-EPA-and-Toxic-Chemical-Rules.html#document/p1/a382928 .. of “administratively determined” position. It is an unusual classification that means she was not hired based on a competitive process — as civil servants are — and she was also not identified as a political appointee. There are only about a dozen such posts .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4112130-2017-3-Administratively-Determined-Positions-EPA.html .. at the E.P.A., among the 15,800 agency employees, and the jobs are typically reserved for technical experts, not managers with the authority to give orders.
Crucially, the special status meant that Dr. Beck did not have to abide by the ethics agreement Mr. Trump adopted in January .. https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/28/executive-order-ethics-commitments-executive-branch-appointees , which bars political appointees in his administration from participating for two years “in any particular matter involving specific parties that is directly and substantially related to my former employer or former clients, including regulations and contracts.”
Her written offer of employment, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, also made it clear that Dr. Beck’s appointment was junior enough not to require Senate confirmation, which would have almost certainly delayed her arrival at the agency and prevented her from making changes to the rules ahead of the June deadline.
[...]
“Everyone was furious,” said Ms. Southerland, the official from the Office of Water. “Nancy was just rewriting the rule herself. And it was a huge change. Everybody was stunned such a substantial change would be made literally in the last week.”
[...]
‘Not One of My Best Days’
Environmentalists were dismayed, but Ms. Hamnett emerged from the whirlwind process with some confidence that all was not lost.
While she disagreed with a number of Dr. Beck’s changes, she trusted that the E.P.A. staff would maintain its commitment to honor Congress’s intent in the 2016 legislation. That would translate into a rigorous crackdown on the most dangerous chemicals, regardless of the changes.
But her confidence in the E.P.A.’s resolve was fragile, and it had been shaken by other actions, including the order Ms. Hamnett received to reverse course on banning the pesticide chlorpyrifos.
The order came before Dr. Beck’s arrival at the agency, but Ms. Hamnett saw the industry’s fingerprints all over it. Mr. Pruitt’s chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, instructed Ms. Hamnett to ignore the recommendation of agency scientists, she said.
The scientists had called for a ban .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4112113-EPA-Chlorpyrifos-FOIA-Emails-to-NYT.html#document/p1/a382356 .. based on research suggesting the pesticide might cause developmental disabilities in children.
Farm workers in a field picking berries. Chlorpyrifos, a pesticide blamed for developmental disabilities in children, is still widely used
in agriculture. In March, Mr. Pruitt overrode agency scientists’ recommendation to ban it. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times
To keep the pesticide on the market, under E.P.A. guidelines, the agency needed to have a “reasonable certainty .. https://www.epa.gov/pesticide-registration/about-pesticide-registration ” that no harm was being caused.
“The science and the law tell us this is the way to go,” Ms. Hamnett said of a ban.
But the reaction from her superiors was not about the science or the law, she said. Instead, they queried her about Dow Chemical, the pesticide’s largest manufacturer, which had been lobbying against a ban .. http://www.chlorpyrifos.com/ .
The clash is recorded in Ms. Hamnett notebook as well as in emails among Mr. Pruitt’s top political aides, which were obtained by The Times.
“They are trying to strong arm us,” Mr. Jackson wrote after meeting with Ms. Hamnett .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4112113-EPA-Chlorpyrifos-FOIA-Emails-to-NYT.html#document/p24/a382354 , who presented him with a draft petition to ban the pesticide.
Mr. Jackson, Ms. Hamnett’s notebook shows .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4112113-EPA-Chlorpyrifos-FOIA-Emails-to-NYT.html#document/p25/a382973 , then asked her to come up with alternatives to a ban. He asserted, her notes show, that he did not want to be “forced into a box” by the petition.
Ms. Hamnett recorded Mr. Jackson’s reaction to a pesticide ban in her notebook.
“I scared them .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4112113-EPA-Chlorpyrifos-FOIA-Emails-to-NYT.html#document/p24/a382354 ,” Mr. Jackson wrote in an email to a colleague about his demands on Ms. Hamnett and her team.
As a possible compromise, Ms. Hamnett’s team had been talking to Dow about perhaps phasing out the pesticide instead of imposing an immediate ban. But Dow, after Mr. Trump’s election, was suddenly in no mood to compromise, Ms. Hamnett recalled. Dow did not respond to requests for comment.
She now knew, she said, that the effort to ban the pesticide had been lost, something Mr. Jackson’s emails celebrated.
“They know where this is headed,” Mr. Jackson wrote.
Just over a week later, Ms. Hamnett submitted a draft order .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4112113-EPA-Chlorpyrifos-FOIA-Emails-to-NYT.html#document/p32/a382351 .. that would deny the request for a ban.
“It was hard, very hard,” she said, worrying that the pesticide would continue to harm children of farmworkers. “That was not one of my best days.”
The episode is one reason she worries the E.P.A. will defer to the chemical industry as it begins to evaluate toxic chemicals under the standards created by the new law. She became particularly concerned because of a more recent exchange with Dr. Beck over methylene chloride, which is used in paint removers.
After more than a decade of research, the agency had concluded .. https://www.epa.gov/assessing-and-managing-chemicals-under-tsca/fact-sheet-methylene-chloride-or-dichloromethane-dcm-0#consumers .. in January that methylene chloride was so hazardous that its use in paint removers should be banned.
Methylene chloride has been blamed in dozens of deaths, including that of a 21-year-old Tennessee man .. http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/local/cheatham/2017/05/04/community-raises-funds-support-hartley-family-after-son-dies-work-accident/101283588/ .. in April, who was overwhelmed by fumes as he was refinishing a bathtub.
“How is it possible that you can go to a home improvement store and buy a paint remover that can kill you?” Ms. Hamnett asked. “How can we let this happen?”
Furniture-refinishing companies and chemical manufacturers have urged the E.P.A. to focus on steps like strengthening warning labels, complaining that there are few reasonably priced alternatives.
Ms. Hamnett said Dr. Beck raised the possibility that people were not following the directions on the labels. She also suggested that only a small number of users had been injured. “Is it 1 percent?” Ms. Hamnett recalled Dr. Beck asking.
Ms. Hamnett said she was devastated by the line of questioning.
After years of successfully fending off Dr. Beck and her industry allies, the balance of power at the agency had shifted toward the industry.
[...]
Mr. Pruitt has selected a replacement for Ms. Hamnett: Michael L. Dourson .. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/19/science/epa-chemical-industry-dourson.html?_r=0 , a toxicologist who has spent the last two decades as a consultant helping businesses fight E.P.A. restrictions .. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/16/science/document-Michael-Dourson-Research-Papers-on-Chemicals.html .. on the use of potentially toxic compounds. He is already at work at the agency in a temporary post while he awaits Senate confirmation.
The American Chemistry Council, and its members, are among the top private-sector sponsors of Mr. Dourson’s research. Last year, he collaborated on a paper .. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273230016301313 .. that was funded by the trade group. His fellow author was Dr. Beck.
--------------
Sheila Kaplan contributed reporting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/21/us/trump-epa-chemicals-regulations.html
Welcome to your new E.P.A. with relatively dangerous and dirty pro-industry policy orientation and practice.
More outed than originally planned, it would be only roughly half of a long one.
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It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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