Environmental Defense Fund Expresses Serious Concerns about EPA Chemical Assessment and Management Program

 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
 
Contact:
Richard Denison, 202-387-3500, rdenison@edf.org
Jennifer Andreassen, 202-572-3387, jandreassen@edf.org
 
(Washington, DC – September 24, 2008) EPA Assistant Administrator James Gulliford today delivered remarks at the Soap and Detergent Association’s Fall Meeting setting forth EPA’s intentions under its Chemical Assessment and Management Program (ChAMP). While the remarks acknowledge many of the concerns we and other stakeholders have raised regarding activities that are underway or proposed under ChAMP, in our view the agency’s direction still poses serious concerns.
 
Risk-Based Prioritizations for High Production Volume (HPV) Chemicals. EPA acknowledges concerns about the quality and completeness of hazard, use and exposure data it intends to use to develop its risk-based prioritizations (RBPs) for high production volume (HPV) chemicals. Yet:
§         EPA’s recently posted risk-based prioritizations (RPBs) often fail to acknowledge and clearly identify the serious gaps that remain in the underlying HPV datasets, and do not discuss any steps the agency intends to undertake to close such gaps, beyond encouraging companies to voluntarily submit more data.
§         EPA continues to obscure the extent of information it has – or has not – received under Inventory Update Rule (IUR) reporting concerning the use of and exposure to HPV chemicals. EPA has yet to make the latest IUR data public. Moreover, in its RBPs EPA does not clearly indicate for which reporting elements it a) received information which was claimed confidential, b) received information which was not claimed confidential, and c) did not receive information because the submitter maintains that the information requested is “not readily obtainable.” The public has a right to know the extent of information on which EPA is basing its risk conclusions about HPV chemicals.
§         EPA continues to overstate the number of HPV chemicals for which it has hazard data. EPA claims or implies complete screening-level hazard datasets exist for “more than 2,200 HPV chemicals.” Yet EPA does not have such datasets for hundreds of HPV chemicals, including:
o        Hundreds of HPV chemicals that reached HPV production levels after the HPV Challenge was launched and were not included in it;
o        Hundreds of chemicals for which no or only incomplete data sets have been submitted under the Challenge (or its sister Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development HPV program);
o        Numerous gaps in supposedly final HPV Challenge submissions, which are present in about one-third of those submissions for which EPA has developed hazard characterizations to date;
o        Nearly 300 “orphan” HPV chemicals that were not sponsored under the Challenge.
 
EPA promises to initiate needed action, including “regulatory control action,” on any chemical it finds to pose high priority concerns. Yet even for such high-concern chemicals, the actions EPA proposes entail only more data gathering or voluntary initiatives.
 
MPV Hazard-Based Prioritizations. Despite critical comments we submitted prior to their posting, EPA has posted MPV assessments that continue to rely on loose and unjustified “clustering” of chemicals and excessive use of “read-across” from the few tested cluster members to untested members. EPA’s documents also fail to clearly identify the enormous data gaps for MPV chemicals and draw overly broad hazard conclusions across its clusters.
 
Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Inventory Reset.   EPA proposes to initiate a “reset” of the TSCA Inventory to remove chemicals companies maintain are not in active commerce. We remain very concerned about this proposal, critical details of which have yet to be provided.
 
Based on the limited information in today’s remarks, we would highlight one concern and one positive feature:
 
EPA suggests that use of a three-year reporting window would suffice to determine which chemicals are in active commerce. Given the enormous fluctuations in chemical production over time, we have urged that EPA utilize at least a five- and ideally a 10-year window to reset the Inventory.
 
To end on a positive note, we are pleased to see EPA’s stated intent to require new chemical notification for any chemical that returns to production after being removed from the inventory via the reset. This is a critical element needed both to ensure that such chemicals are reviewed for potential health and environmental impacts, and to create a disincentive for companies that might otherwise seek to remove as many chemicals from the Inventory as possible.

See EPA’s press release: EPA Launches New Chemical Assessment and Management Efforts.

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