EPA Finally Admits Toxic Chemicals Pose Greater Risks for Children
laurenemylee
safer products.
Janine Gottlieb
845-856-8073
gjche...@citlink.net
EPA Finally Admits Toxic Chemicals Pose Greater Risks for Children
http://www.organicconsumers.org/school/epatoxic040605.cfm
New York Times
Environmental Groups Are Praising the E.P.A. for Updating Cancer-Risk
Guidelines
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
April 4, 2005
WASHINGTON, April 3 - A remarkable thing happened here last week: the
Environmental Protection Agency announced a set of guidelines, and
environmental groups were largely complimentary in response.
The agency's new approach to assessing chemicals that might cause
cancer won praise for replacing guidelines that were nearly 20 years
old and for taking into account, for the first time, the likelihood
that children may be more vulnerable to exposure than adults.
"These guidelines are enhanced by information that allows us to
understand how a chemical is working," said Dr. William H. Farland, the
agency's acting deputy assistant administrator for science. "They
suggest we have moved forward with the use of the best science
available."
Cancer guidelines inform agency regulators how a substance might cause
cancer in humans. When the first risk assessments were adopted in 1986,
they generally reflected research on laboratory animals, leading to
uncontroversial assumptions by agency scientists that if a substance
caused cancer in an animal, it would also cause cancer in a human. The
assessments influence new regulations on chemicals found in air, water,
pesticides, waste and former Superfund sites.
In recent years, however, a growing number of studies have refined
efforts to analyze the impact of chemicals on humans, in some cases
leading agency scientists to determine that substances harmful to
animals do not necessarily pose risks for humans. Newer studies also
show that some substances may be more harmful to humans than once
thought. Dr. Farland cited research that now suggests that benzene, a
chemical used in the manufacture of a variety of products, is a
potential threat to humans at lower levels than previous studies
showed.
The new guidelines also reflect how more recent studies show the
differences between cancer-causing chemicals in adults and young
children, recognizing the possibility that children younger than 2
might be 10 times more at risk and children from 2 to 16 might be 3
times more at risk.
"They mostly did the right thing," John Walke, the director of the
Clean Air Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said of the
new guidelines. "They're long overdue and responsible in the way they
update protections for children."
Mr. Walke's organization was one of the few environmental groups to
temper its appreciation for the new guidelines by raising concerns over
language inserted by the Office of Management and Budget that allows
outside groups to challenge scientific conclusions before they become
part of the new guidelines. Dr. Jennifer Sass, a defense council senior
scientist, said that such "expert elicitation" provides an open
invitation to the chemical industry to weaken the guidelines and to
delay their being put in place.
"The White House took what would have been strong guidelines to protect
our children from cancer and turned them into an industry punching
bag," Dr.
Sass said.
Mr. Walke also suggested that the agency's efforts to consider all
available science to reduce the risk of cancer contrast with its
approach to solving other problems, including efforts to reduce mercury
emissions from the nation's 1,300 coal-fired power plants.
The mercury regulations, announced last month, use a cap-and-trade
program as opposed to the approach used by the Clinton administration,
which forced plant operators to use the best technology available. The
cap-and-trade system, in which plant operators can buy pollution
credits from plants with emissions below a certain level, is already
under attack from nine states, including New York and New Jersey, which
sued the agency last week over the mercury rule, and from environmental
groups that have petitioned the agency to return to the Clinton
approach.
While the agency says the cap-and-trade approach would reduce emissions
by 70 percent by 2018, environmental groups say widespread use of the
best technology controls would lead to greater reductions within three
years.
"The problem," Mr. Walke said, "is that it's more expensive to
industry." Officials at the agency deny that the efforts to develop
cancer guidelines and to reduce mercury emissions reflect any
inconsistencies.
"The agency's position is that we want to use the best possible science
in all of our work," said Rich Hood, an agency spokesman. "We believe
that this approach is unquestionably a positive part of our new cancer
guidelines, and we see no conflict between the cancer guidelines
approach and the way we developed the mercury rule."