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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://theintercept.com/2021/11/01/epa-toxic-chemicals-reports-withheld/">theintercept.com</a>
<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">EPA Withheld Reports of Substantial Risk Posed by 1,240 Chemicals</h1>
<div class="gmail-PostByline-names"><a class="gmail-PostByline-link" rel="author" href="https://theintercept.com/staff/sharonlerner/"><span>Sharon Lerner</span></a><span class="gmail-PostByline-date"><span> - November 1 2021</span></span>
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<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div><div><p><u>The Environmental Protection Agency</u>
has withheld information from the public since January 2019 about
the dangers posed by more than 1,200 chemicals. By law, companies must
give the EPA any evidence they possess that a chemical presents “a
substantial risk of injury to health or the environment.” Until
recently, the agency had been making these reports — known as 8(e)
reports, for the section of the Toxic Substances Control Act that
requires them — available to the public. In 2017, for instance, the EPA
posted 481 substantial risk reports from industry on <a href="https://chemview.epa.gov/chemview/">ChemView</a>,
a searchable public database of chemical information maintained by the
agency. And in 2018, it added another 569 8(e) reports to the site. But
since 2019, the EPA has only posted one of the reports to its public
website.</p>
<p>During this time, chemical companies have continued to submit the
critical studies to the agency, according to two EPA staff members with
knowledge of the matter. Since January 2019, the EPA has received at
least 1,240 reports documenting the risk of chemicals’ serious harms,
including eye corrosion, damage to the brain and nervous system, chronic
toxicity to honeybees, and cancer in both people and animals. <a href="https://theintercept.com/collections/bad-chemistry/">PFAS</a> compounds are among the chemical subjects of these notifications.</p></div><div><p>An
EPA spokesperson acknowledged the problem in an emailed response to
questions from The Intercept. “Due to overarching (staff and contractor)
resource limitations, the agency was not able to continue the regular
publication of 8(e) submissions in ChemView, a very manual process,
after 1/1/2019.” The statement went on to note: “The TSCA program is
underfunded. The previous Administration never asked Congress for the
necessary resources to reflect the agency’s new responsibilities under
amended TSCA. These shortfalls have implications that matter to all
stakeholders, not just industry.” Despite the funding challenges, the
EPA pledged to try to rectify the situation.</p>
<h3>The Black Hole</h3>
<p>Not only has the agency kept all but one of these reports from the
public, but it has also made them difficult for EPA staff to access,
according to the two agency scientists, who are choosing to remain
anonymous because of concerns about possible retribution. The
substantial risk reports have not been uploaded to the databases used
most often by risk assessors searching for information about chemicals,
according one of the EPA scientists, who has worked closely with the
8(e) statements. They have been entered only into an internal database
that is difficult to access and search. As a result, little — and
perhaps none — of the information about these serious risks to health
and the environment has been incorporated into the chemical assessments
completed during this period.</p>
<p>“The fact that these studies aren’t being included means there’s a
very good chance there are some chemical assessments where we should
have reached different conclusions,” said another EPA staff member who
is familiar with the chemical assessment process. The information comes
in the wake of evidence of <a href="https://theintercept.com/series/epa-exposed/">dysfunction and corruption in the EPA’s Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics</a> that
five whistleblowers have provided to The Intercept, the EPA inspector
general, and members of Congress since July. All five remain employed by
the agency and are working with Public Employees for Environmental
Responsibility, or PEER, an organization that represents whistleblowers.</p></div><div><p>According
to the emailed response from the agency, “EPA routinely uses all
studies submitted to the agency, including 8e submissions, in TSCA new
and existing chemical risk evaluations.” The statement acknowledged the
difficulty of using the internal database, called CIS, on which the
reports were loaded. “Some aspects of navigating CIS may be cumbersome,
especially for assessors with less experience in doing so, and EPA has
developed plans and proposals for updates and modernization, but their
implementation has been hindered by a lack of resources,” it said.</p>
<p>The 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act clearly intended for the EPA to
act on the information sent in by industry. And according to an agency
spokesperson, each 8(e) submission is promptly reviewed and evaluated to
determine the degree of concern that should be attached to it as well
as recommendations for appropriate follow-up actions.</p>
<p>But the two EPA staff members who spoke with The Intercept said that
the reports do not trigger an immediate response. “I would think most
people in the public would assume that when we would get these reports,
we give them incredible scrutiny and say, ‘Oh no! What are we going to
do about this?’ But basically, they are just going into a black hole,”
said one of the two scientists. “We don’t look at them. We don’t
evaluate them. And we don’t check to see if they change our
understanding of the chemical.”</p>
<p>In its response to The Intercept, the EPA disputed the scientists’
description of the process. “This is not a factual representation of how
EPA deals with TSCA 8(e) submissions,” the agency spokesperson wrote,
going on to say that agency staff do review the submissions to determine
the “degree of concern.”</p>
<p>For decades, companies routinely claimed that much of the information
in an 8(e) report could be declared confidential business information,
allowing them to strike the name of the chemical from the report and
making it impossible to address the harm. In <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2010/01/21/2010-1105/claims-of-confidentiality-of-certain-chemical-identities-submitted-under-section-8e-of-the-toxic">2010</a>, the Obama administration changed course, <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2010/01/21/2010-1105/claims-of-confidentiality-of-certain-chemical-identities-submitted-under-section-8e-of-the-toxic">announcing</a>
that it would begin reviewing the confidentiality claims and, if they
were not legitimate, publicly post the reports along with compounds’
names.</p>
<p>The chemical industry <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21092272-2070_01202012-1">pushed back</a>
against the policy, arguing that forcing companies to reveal the names
of their compounds was a violation of their intellectual property
rights. And close observers of the industry believe that pressure from
companies that held this view was likely what led the Trump EPA to
decide to stop publicly posting the reports.</p></div><blockquote><span></span><p>“It is not easy to keep selling your chemicals when people know they likely cause cancer or other serious disease.”</p></blockquote><div><p>“It
is not easy to keep selling your chemicals when people know they likely
cause cancer or other serious disease,” said Eve Gartner, an attorney
who manages the toxic exposure and health program at Earthjustice. “It
makes perfect sense that in an EPA that was largely controlled by
industry, chemical manufacturers would lobby to get EPA to stop
releasing significant risk studies, and EPA would agree to keep this
basic health and safety information secret.”</p>
<p>Gartner said it’s harder to understand why the Biden administration,
which has repeatedly expressed its commitment to scientific integrity,
has not already fixed the problem and made this backlogged health and
safety information available to the public.</p>
<p>As the scientists who spoke with The Intercept see it, part of the
explanation may be budgeting constraints. The Biden EPA was left with a
situation that puts public health at risk and is expensive to fix. “The
Trump administration created this huge backlog for them, and then it
became just this intractable problem,” said one of the EPA scientists,
who added that several other staff members have expressed concern about
the problem.</p>
<p>In its response to The Intercept, the EPA spokesperson said the
agency is planning to address the problem. “The Biden-Harris
Administration has asked for significantly more resources for this
program in the 2022 budget request to ensure we’re meeting our
obligations under TSCA, most importantly protecting human health and the
environment. In the future, as resources allow, EPA will continue to
strive to make TSCA 8(e) reports publicly available in ChemView in the
interest of increased transparency.”</p>
<p>While the Trump EPA stopped posting the 8(e) reports, it was also
putting more resources into accommodating the companies the agency
regulates, fast-tracking the approval of chemicals they considered <a href="https://theintercept.com/2021/08/04/epa-hair-on-fire-chemicals-leaked-audio/">high priority</a>, <a href="https://theintercept.com/2021/07/02/epa-chemical-safety-corruption-whistleblowers/">pressuring risk assessors</a>
to downplay or ignore the risks presented by chemicals, and creating
digital tools to ease the regulatory experience. “Together it shows
EPA cares more about industry and getting their products out than it
does about protecting human health and the environment,” said Kyla
Bennett, director of science policy at PEER.</p></div><div><p><img src="https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2021/10/AP18201504812249-crop.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90&w=1024&h=732" alt="This photo taken Friday, June 15, 2018 near Fayetteville, N.C. shows the Chemours Company's PPA, or Polymer Processing Aid facility at the Fayetteville Works plant where the chemical known as GenX is produced. The chemical has been found in the Cape Fear River, a source of drinking water for much of the southeastern part of the state. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="445" height="318"></p><p class="gmail-caption">The
Chemours facility at the Fayetteville Works plant, where the chemical
known as GenX is produced, is seen on June 15, 2018, near Fayetteville,
N.C.</p>
<p class="gmail-caption">
Photo: Gerry Broome/AP</p></div><div><h3>Toxics, the Next Generation</h3>
<p>Even before 2019, when the EPA was making the risk reports from
industry publicly available, the agency did not always respond to the
information in them with any urgency. In 2016, The Intercept reported on
<a href="https://theintercept.com/2016/03/03/new-teflon-toxin-causes-cancer-in-lab-animals/">16 8(e) reports</a>
that DuPont submitted to the EPA between 2006 and 2013. The reports
detailed the potential dangers of GenX, a then-unknown PFAS compound
that the company had introduced to replace another chemical in the same
class, PFOA, which had been found to <a href="https://theintercept.com/series/the-teflon-toxin/">cause thyroid disease, cancers, and other health problems</a>.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2746960-GenX8eFilings.html">studies</a>
showed that the replacement compound caused many of the same health
problems in lab tests that the original chemical did, including cancer
and reproductive problems. Although the studies were in the ChemView
database, the EPA appeared to be unaware of them. The agency had made no
public announcements about the information and had taken no actions to
protect public health. As an agency employee said of the 8(e) reports to
The Intercept at the time, “A lot of them do just get filed away.”</p>
<p>In 2019, The Intercept used the ChemView database to find <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/09/19/epa-new-pfas-chemicals/">40 new PFAS</a>
compounds that had been the subject of 8(e) reports. Among the health
effects listed in the animal studies the companies sent the agency were <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6385529-89010000317-375724.html">neurotoxicity</a>; <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6385547-65545-80-4-1.html">developmental toxicity</a>; <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6386505-68298-12-4-Decreased-Conception.html">decreased conception</a>; <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6413943-Severe-Convulsions.html">severe convulsions</a>; <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6413961-Lung-Hemorrhage.html">bleeding</a> in the lungs; <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6421801-Teeth-DuPont-11-10.html">tooth problems</a>; <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6413982-Post-Natal-Loss.html">post-natal loss</a>; <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6386507-70969-47-0-Alopecia-and-Death.html">hair loss</a>; <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6414185-Depression-of-Sperm-Production.html">depression of sperm function</a>; abnormal development of <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6244606-skull-and-ribs.html">skulls, ribs, and pelvises</a>; and testicular, pancreatic, and kidney <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6386506-Testicular-Cancer-68259-11-0.html">cancers</a>. Despite the concerning reports, all 40 PFAS compounds were allowed onto the market and remain unregulated.</p>
<p>Last week, more than 15 years after DuPont submitted the first of
those reports and more than five years after The Intercept first
reported on them, the EPA took action on GenX using the 8(e) reports. On
October 25, the agency released new <a href="https://www.epa.gov/chemical-research/human-health-toxicity-assessments-genx-chemicals">toxicity assessments</a>
that found two closely related chemicals, both known as GenX, to be
very toxic. The assessments were based largely on the information that
DuPont sent the EPA in 8(e) reports years earlier. They also included
information from a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21093350-chemours-tsca-fyi-letter-3-17-2021-v2">letter</a>
Chemours sent the EPA as an 8(e) report in March, which noted that
approximately 80 percent of blood samples taken from workers at one of
its plants outside the U.S. had tested positive for one of the two GenX
compounds.</p></div><blockquote><span></span><p>In
the years between the EPA’s receipt of the information about GenX’s
toxicity and the assessment, the chemical was released into the drinking
water of more than 1 million people in North Carolina.</p></blockquote><div><p>“This
science-based final assessment marks a critical step in the process of
establishing a national drinking water health advisory for GenX
chemicals and provides important information to our partners that can be
used to protect communities where these chemicals are found,” said
Radhika Fox, EPA assistant administrator for water, when announcing the
finalized assessment.</p>
<p>Yet in the years between the EPA’s receipt of the information about
GenX’s toxicity and the assessment, the chemical was released into the
drinking water of more than 1 million people in North Carolina. As
happened with PFOA and many of the new PFAS compounds introduced after
GenX, the chemical was allowed to contaminate the environment and harm
countless people — all while the EPA sat on information about its
dangers.</p>
<h3>A Toxic Pizza Tracker</h3>
<p>In 2019, some of the EPA staff members who had been entering the 8(e)
reports into the EPA’s public database were reassigned to another
project. To help chemical companies track the progress of their products
as they move through the approval process, the agency created an online
tool that it refers to internally as a “pizza tracker,” which was
launched later that year. According to a strategic plan of the Office of
Pollution Prevention and Toxics, work on the pizza tracker is expected
to continue through 2024.</p>
<p>While acknowledging that it prioritized the chemical tracking process
and “that resources used to sanitize and post 8(e) submissions to
ChemView … were reduced and eventually stopped,” the EPA denied that
funding was “shifted specially” from posting the 8(e) reports to funding
the pizza tracker.</p>
<p>Like the <a href="https://www.dominos.com/en/pages/tracker/#!/track/order/">Domino’s app</a>,
the chemical-tracking tool is user-friendly, allowing companies to
quickly and conveniently access information about their products as they
move through the regulatory process. The two EPA scientists say that in
order to protect public health, risk assessors need to be able to see
the industry reports with the same ease. And, they say, taking resources
away from protecting the public from health and environmental hazards
while directing them toward the improvement of industry’s experience of
being regulated betrays misplaced priorities.</p>
<p>“The whole concept of a pizza tracker is that you’re delivering an
order to a customer,” said one of the EPA scientists. “But the companies
are not our clients, the public is.”</p></div></div></div></div>
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