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Monday, May 23, 2005

OIRA Meets Regarding BART Rule
OIRA met with representatives of Pacificorp power company, the White House's Council on Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency regarding a Best Available Retrofit Technology (BART) regulation on May 16. The rule, also known as the Clean Air Visibility Rule, would seek to limit regional haze by requiring power plants and factories to install the best available retrofit technology (BART) to control sulfur dioxide and other emissions. These emissions lead to visibility impairment, which is widespread throughout the national park system. EPA's Spring 2005 Unified Agenda, released the same day as the meeting with Pacificorp, states that the agency is planning to promulgate a final rule sometime this month. EPA originally promulgated a BART rule in 1999, but the rule was vacated by the DC Circuit court. Environmental Defense and Earthjustice then sued the agency to force them to promulgate a regional haze rule. Read more here.

Posted by Genevieve Smith, 05:00:10 PM

Friday, May 20, 2005

Sneak attack on EPA turned away
If you blinked, you missed it, but what was at stake was nothing less than the ability of the federal government to do anything for the environment: during the House consideration of the appropriations bill for Interior and EPA, Rep. Todd Tiahrt pushed an amendment "to provide that no funds may be used to promulgate regulations without outside auditing to determine the authenticity of the scientific methods used to develop such regulations." It was withdrawn.

Note that just a day before, he also proposed an amendment to the Homeland Security appropriations bill to forbid DHS from "promulgat[ing] regulations without consideration of the effect of such regulations on the competitiveness of American businesses." In other words, to hold homeland security hostage to the bottom line of corporate special interests.

Expect more of these sneak attacks, if not in appropriations then later in substantive law.

Posted by Robert Shull, 05:05:29 PM

Monday, May 16, 2005

Unified Agenda out today
The semiannual Unified Agenda is available in today's Federal Register. It will eventually be available in database form on this site; until then, here are links to the PDFs of the agendas for certain key agencies:

Posted by Robert Shull, 04:56:01 PM

Sunday, May 15, 2005

New agency agendas
BNA's Daily Report for Executives (a subscription-only service) has already combed through a copy of tomorrow's edition of the Federal Register, in which the agencies are releasing their semiannual agendas for the next six months of regulatory priorities. We have some information available to help people decipher the agendas: click here for more.

Posted by Robert Shull, 02:53:03 PM

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

EPA Halts Rulemaking to Prevent Childhood Lead-Poisoning
According to a letter from several minority representatives to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, EPA has decided to stop work on a regulation to protect children and construction workers against lead poisoning from building renovation and remodeling. Instead the agency plans to allow construction companies to voluntarily comply with standards.

Lead is a known neurotoxin that particular harms children. Renovation and remodeling, which can release lead-based paint chips or dust into the air, is one of the largest sources of lead exposure. Under the Toxic Substances and Control Act, EPA is required to promulgate rules to protect children, families and construction workers from home exposure to lead. EPA may be breaking the law by failing issue this important regulatory protection. Rep. Henry Waxman and Sen. Barbara Boxer have written a letter to Johnson asking for an explanation of EPA's apparent abandonment of this regulation and encouraging EPA to resume the rulemaking. From the letter:

A briefing paper entitled "U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Lead Safety Program Voluntary Initiative, Briefing for the Deputy Administrator, May 19, 2004," reveals that [Johnson was] presented with a choice as to whether to complete the rule or to pursue an alternative approach. The alternative was a plan to merely encourage lead-safe remodeling and renovation practices through a voluntary, collaborative program for contractors engaged in remodeling and renovation in housing with lead paint. This alternative would begin with a pilot program that would involve a small number of contractors in just two cities.
After this briefing, EPA apparently stopped work on the rule in favor of the voluntary approach. EPA's next regulatory agenda, published in June 2004, dropped the renovation and remodeling rule and added a "Voluntary Program for Renovation and Remodeling." EPA's fall 2004 regulatory plan states, "As an alternative to the regulatory program, EPA is working with stakeholder to develop a voluntary program for renovations and remodeling activities." The voluntary program was supposed to "partner the Agency and national organizations together to promote an initiative which could provide incentives to participating contractors and property owners who incorporate lead safe work practices into their standard operating procedures."

Unlike a regulation which can be enforced by EPA and applies across the board, voluntary guidelines let construction companies who fail to comply off the hook. More from the letter:

In addition to violating the requirements of the law, a voluntary approach will fail to protect children from the health effects of lead. A voluntary approach is unenforceable, is unlikely to be effective, would take years to implement, and requires substantial new funding that is simply not provided for in EPA's budget.
EPA has identified lead safe work practices that will greatly reduce exposures. Under a voluntary approach, there would be no requirement to use these practices and no ability to enforce them. Given the serious and ongoing threats to children from lead poisoning in renovated homes, taking minimal protective actions should not be optional. This is why Congress required EPA to promulgate regulations to address this problem.

Protecting children's health is not a voluntary matter. Email Stephen Johnson and tell him how you feel about EPA's abandonment of this regulatory protection of childhood lead-poisoning.

Posted by Genevieve Smith, 04:24:57 PM

Friday, May 06, 2005

Swimming upstream into risky territory
Instead of hit lists and regulatory sunsets that would weaken or eliminate the protections we need, why isn’t our government doing its part to address the public’s unmet needs? Latest case in point: farm-raised fish.

Two articles appearing the same day raise concerns about the potential harms of farm-raised salmon. One article stresses the ecological harms and calls for assessments of those risks:

The substantial risk to salmon stocks posed by salmon that escape from net-pen farms argues for risk assessments of all types of marine fish farming, according to an article published in BioScience.
Rosamond Naylor of Stanford University and nine coauthors conclude in their article that without a firm policy mandate for risk assessment of escaping farm fish, aquaculture will "almost certainly lead to extensive competition between wild fish and continuously released farm fish--or widespread establishment of exotic fish species--and thus to a further decline in wild fish stocks."
Naylor and her coauthors conclude that, despite some efforts by aquaculture companies to curtail farm salmon escapes--such as using stronger net materials-- the efforts are inadequate, as monitoring and enforcement of regulations governing escapes are weak. An estimated two million farm Atlantic salmon escape each year into the North Atlantic, and millions more have escaped on the western coasts of North American and South America. Farm Atlantic salmon are more aggressive and faster-growing than native fish, with which they compete for food.
Interbreeding with native salmon stocks leads to long-term loss of fitness and productivity in wild populations and threatens their genetic diversity.
Moreover, farmed salmon appear to have transmitted parasites and infections to wild stocks. Escaped farm salmon are now successfully breeding in the wild in Norway, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and North America. Incipient feral Atlantic salmon populations have been found in rivers in British Columbia and South America.

Meanwhile, another article stresses the dangers to human health:

It’s been known that farmed salmon fish contains high levels of PCBs and PBDEs. Now a study warns that farmed salmon is also contaminated with dioxins, another cancer-causing agent.
Consumption of farm-raised salmon poses greater health risks from dioxin and dioxin-like compounds than does the consumption of wild salmon, according to a study published in the May 2005 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives.
Dioxins, pollutants associated with numerous adverse health effects (most notably cancer but also extending to suppression of the immune system, learning disabilities, increased risk of cardiovascular disease, impaired prostate development, and endometriosis), have been reported to be present at higher levels in farmed salmon, possibly resulting from the levels of dioxin-like compounds (DLCs) and other organic contaminants in the feed.
Although the study authors acknowledge recommendations from the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine and the American Heart Associations that frequent consumption of fish is beneficial, the authors suggest that the risk of cancer and other health effects may outweigh the benefits that some types of seafood offer. Women who become pregnant may be at increased risk due to the effect of the toxicants on developing fetuses.

For related information, check out Public Citizen’s work on issues related to other farm-raised seafoods.

Posted by Robert Shull, 12:03:54 PM

Thursday, May 05, 2005

Fetal harm, culture of life, and unsound science
Scientists have concluded that male fetuses exposed to very low doses of man-made estrogenic chemicals commonly found in drugs and consumer products are at risk of developing deformities in the prostate and the bladder. A study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences looked at a drug used in oral contraceptives (important because every year about 3% of women taking birth control pills unknowingly become pregnant, typically because of lapsed doses, and continue to use the pill during the first few months of pregnancy) and at bisphenol A, an estrogenic chemical used to manufacture polycarbonate plastic, some dental sealants, and the resin lining of most food and beverage cans.

Interesting note: BNA’s Daily Report for Executives interviewed one of the study’s authors, who also conducted a literature review of 115 published studies of bisphenol A. “Every single study of bisphenol A conducted with industry funds finds the softener to be safe, while nearly every study conducted without industry funds finds bisphenol A to cause problems, sometimes severe ones, Vom Saal said, comparing the situation to research on tobacco.”

The authors explained that they conducted the study with low doses rather than high ones, because it is “now well known that hormones can have opposite effects at low vs. high doses. Studies that include only very high doses of drugs or chemicals can miss unique effects that are observed only within a physiologically relevant low dose range.”

Second interesting note, from BNA:

EPA said very low doses of chemicals and pesticides would not be used routinely in laboratory analysis to detect endocrine disruption.
If chemical-specific data suggest that very low doses should be used when evaluating a particular chemical or pesticide, the agency will consider on a case-by-case basis using very low doses, said Vanessa Vu, then the director of EPA’s Office of Science Coordination and Policy.

We’ll just let that speak for itself.

More information:

Barry G. Timms, Kembra L. Howdeshell, Lesley Barton, Sarahann Bradley, Catherine A. Richter, & Frederick S. vom Saal, Estrogenic Chemicals in Plastic and Oral Contraceptives Disrupt Development of the Fetal Mouse Prostate and Urethra, 102 Proc. Nat’l Acad. Sci. 7014 (2005)
Pat Phibbs, Male Mice Harmed in Study on Bisphenol-A But No Definite Link to Humans Established, Daily Rep. Execs., May 3, 2005, at A-34.

Posted by Robert Shull, 04:04:33 PM

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