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Swordsmyth
06-11-2018, 07:04 PM
At the direction of the Trump administration, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is radically revising its method for determining health and safety risks associated with toxic chemicals, considering only the impact of exposure in the workplace and direct consumption of the toxins, but not the longer-term impact of the diffusion of such substances into the air, water and land.
A report in the Friday edition of the New York Times characterized the decision as “a big victory for the chemical industry,” which effectively guts enforcement of a law passed in 2016 requiring the EPA to evaluate hundreds of chemicals, many of them in common use, and determine if they should face new restrictions or be withdrawn from the market.
According to the Times,

“as it moves forward reviewing the first batch of 10 chemicals, the EPA has in most cases decided to exclude from its calculations any potential exposure caused by the substances’ presence in the air, the ground or water, according to more than 1,500 pages of documents released last week by the agency.”
The agency will consider possible harm caused by workplace exposure—i.e., in the manufacturing of a chemical—and by direct consumption where the chemical is normally used, as with perchloroethylene, a suspected carcinogen widely used in dry-cleaning. But the accumulating runoff of perchloroethylene into rivers and streams, into the air, or into landfills will not be studied, even though 44 states have found the chemical in drinking water.


According to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF),

“the Trump administration is systematically weakening the EPA and seeking to dismantle key new authorities and mandates Congress just gave it under the reformed Toxic Substances Control Act.”
The actions taken by EPA include an indefinite delay on bans of high-risk uses of three dangerous chemicals: methylene chloride, N-methylpyrrolidone and trichloroethylene.


The Times added, based on its review of hundreds of EPA documents, that other changes in the interests of polluters “narrow the definitions of certain chemicals, including asbestos.” The newspaper continued:

“Some asbestos-like fibers will not be included in the risk assessments, one agency staff member said, nor will the 8.8 million pounds a year of asbestos deposited in hazardous landfills or the 13.1 million pounds discarded in routine dump sites.”
All told, more than 70 lawsuits have been filed against EPA regulatory actions, nearly all of them challenging agency actions that were aligned with corporate interests and aimed at increasing the risk to the general population from toxic substances being released into the air and water or dumped into ordinary landfills rather than specially prepared sites.
Also Thursday, the EPA issued an advanced notice of proposed rule-making indicating that it was going to largely scrap any consideration of social costs and social benefits in the formulation of anti-pollution regulations, limiting rules instead to the immediate cost and benefit for the corporations involved.
A few days earlier, on June 1, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced that the agency would no longer evaluate asbestos in homes and businesses as a health risk, even though the death toll from asbestos exposure is estimated at 12,000 to 15,000 people a year in the United States alone.
The EPA has also sought to suppress a study by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that suggested much lower levels of perfluorooctanesulfonic acid and perfluorooctane acid (PFOS and PFOA) for human health and safety than suggested by the EPA. These chemicals are in widely used substances like Teflon.

More at: https://www.globalresearch.ca/trump-epa-to-shred-rules-on-toxic-pollution/5643723

Anti Federalist
06-11-2018, 07:21 PM
According to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF):

“The Trump administration is systematically weakening the EPA and seeking to dismantle key new authorities..."

I'll give "attaboys" to him, based on that fact alone.

timosman
08-07-2018, 05:03 PM
https://archpaper.com/2018/08/epa-asbestos-manufacturing/


August 6, 2018

Fast Company recently reported on the potential comeback of one of the most infamous building materials of recent memory. Asbestos is now legally allowed back into U.S. manufacturing under a serious of loopholes by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). As Fast Company reported, on June 1, the EPA authorized a “SNUR” (Significant New Use Rule) that allowed the creation of new products containing asbestos on a case-by-case basis.

According to Fast Company, the EPA’s recently released report detailing its new framework for evaluating the risk of its top prioritized substances states that the agency will “no longer consider the effect or presence of substances in the air, ground, or water in its risk assessments.”

This news comes after the EPA reviewed its first batch of 10 chemicals under the 2016 amendment to the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which requires the agency to continually reevaluate hundreds of potentially toxic chemicals in lieu of removing them from the market or placing new restrictions on their use. The SNUR greenlights companies to use toxic chemicals like asbestos without consideration about how they will endanger people who are indirectly in contact with them.

Asbestos was widely used in building insulation up until it was completely banned in most countries in the 1970s. The U.S. severely restricted its use without completely outlawing it. As Fast Company covered, the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO) revealed in April that asbestos-related deaths now total nearly 40,000 annually, with lung cancer and mesothelioma being the most common illnesses in association with the toxin.

...

https://cdn.archpaper.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Asbestos-3-645x430.jpg
Uralasbest, a Russian mining company and the world’s largest supplier of asbestos, posted a photo in June of President Trump’s face as a seal on their shipping pallets

kpitcher
08-07-2018, 11:29 PM
Of all the things I like bestest...

This should get those mesothelioma lawyers more business.