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Tom Neltner, Chemicals Policy Director. Last month, two California trade associations submitted disconcerting comments to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as the agency considers what to do with the revised Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) published in the waning days of the Trump Administration. The associations – the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA) and …

Tom Neltner, Chemicals Policy Director. Earlier this year, the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) released ground breaking guidance to help utilities in the state develop their “Complete Distribution System Materials Inventory” (CDSMI) that is due in 2025. The guidance is important because it explicitly allows utilities to use predictive tools to …

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist. Reprinted by permission from The Environmental Forum®, May/June 2021. MAY/ JUNE 2021 | 55 Copyright © 2021, Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, D.C. www.eli.org. [NOTE:  This post is my contribution to a debate on TSCA implementation published by ELI.  I wrote this piece, which ELI titled “Reversing New Chemicals …

Tom Neltner, Chemicals Policy Director. The FDA’s critical role in the COVID-19 pandemic has brought intense interest in whom President Biden will nominate to lead the agency as its new commissioner. While COVID-19 is the priority, the FDA obviously has many vital other responsibilities. Though it doesn’t get that much attention, one of the important …

Tom Neltner, J.D. is the Chemicals Policy Director. This month, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released its “Closer to Zero” action plan to reduce exposure to heavy metals in foods for babies and young children. The plan, released in response to a recent House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Reform report and the introduction …

Sam Lovell, Communications Manager.  “How many of you know, when you send your child to school, the fountain they’re drinking out of is not fed by a lead pipe?” That stark question was posed by President Biden in a briefing following the announcement of the American Jobs Plan. The President’s historic infrastructure package includes $45 …

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist. Part 2 of a 2-part series (see Part 1 here) Last week’s announcement by EPA about improvements it is making to EPA’s reviews of new chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) indicated it will begin by reversing two of the most damaging policy changes the Trump …

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist. Part 1 of a 2-part series (see Part 2 here) With last week’s announcement by EPA that it intends to reverse two of the most damaging policy changes the Trump EPA made to EPA’s reviews of new chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), there is hope …

Lindsay McCormick, Program Manager and Richard Denison, Ph.D., Lead Senior Scientist When Congress reformed the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) in 2016, it authorized EPA to require companies to pay fees to help defray the agency’s costs of administering this extensive new law.  EPA finalized the first “fee rule” in 2018 to establish the payment …

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist. Part 4 of a 4-part series – see Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 here This series of blog posts is looking ahead toward opportunities to advance a more robust and holistic vision for implementing the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) as reformed in 2016. We discussed …

Dr. Tamarra James-Todd’s interest in human health dates back to her childhood, when she would go into work with her mom, who was a microbiologist, on the odd weekend at the Kansas City VA Hospital. Now an epidemiologist at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, Dr. James-Todd has focused her career on understanding the …

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist. Part 3 of a 4-part series – see Part 1, Part 2, and Part 4 here This series of blog posts is looking ahead toward opportunities to advance a more robust and holistic vision for implementing the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) as reformed in 2016. In the …

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist. Part 2 of a 4-part series – see Part 1, Part 3, and Part 4 here After our look back in Part 1 of this series at the damage done over the past four years, the remainder of the series will look ahead and explore opportunities to advance …

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist. Part 1 of a 4-part series – see Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 here It wasn’t that long ago, June 2016, when there was hope that our nation was at last embarking on the enormous task of reinvigorating and greatly strengthening our chemical safety system, 40 years …

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist. Today the Environmental Protection Agency announced it is conducting a thorough review of its policies and procedures for assessing the safety of new chemicals prior to allowing their entry into commerce. EPA’s announcement flags two immediate changes it is making to restore and realign the program’s practices with …

This post originally appeared on EDF+Business.  Alissa Sasso, Project Manager, EDF+Business. Anyone who’s recently purchased a personal care item knows how overwhelming the experience can be. From price and aesthetics to brands, there are many factors to consider. Now add the safety and impact of the ingredients, whether or not it’s  “clean”, and the decision becomes …

Joanna Slaney, Legislative Director, and Sam Lovell, Project Manager. As Congress looks to various infrastructure priorities in the coming months to get the country back on track, funding replacement of lead pipes should be an essential part of that effort. Recent polling from Black Millennials for Flint, BlueGreen Alliance and EDF demonstrates that there is …

EDF's Clean Beauty Roadmap for Retailers gives brands the ground rules for executing a responsible and credible clean beauty program, with a focus on ingredient safety.

Introduced by Krishnamoorthi, Cárdenas, Klobuchar, and Duckworth, the bill has a framework to drive down lead, cadmium, arsenic, and mercury in baby food.

Companies are vastly behind in making progress on sustainability according the Business of Fashion's Sustainability Index.

Reports indicate that the Environmental Protection Agency will be moving forward the long-delayed assessment of formaldehyde by the agency’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS).

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist. You know how sometimes you know something is going on behind closed doors, but you just can’t prove it?  Well, this isn’t one of those cases. At numerous points in recent years, we heard tell of secret meetings that Trump EPA political appointees were holding with the chemical …

A new poll released today by Black Millennials for Flint, BlueGreen Alliance, and Environmental Defense Fund reveals voters strongly support funding the replacement of lead pipes in water systems across the country.

Sam Lovell, Project Manager. Across the country, over 9 million homes still get their water through a lead pipe, called a lead service line (LSL). Fully replacing LSLs poses a myriad of challenges – cost chief amongst them – but replacement is critical to protecting the public from the harms posed by lead exposure. It …

Earlier this month, McDonald’s became the latest major food company to announce a commitment to remove all added fluorinated chemicals from its food packaging that is served to customers. As the world’s largest fast food restaurant chain, McDonald’s new global commitment is a vital step towards improving food safety and protecting consumer health. McDonald’s announcement …