Safer Chemicals policy watch: January 2019
- A running list of how President Trump is changing environmental policy - National Geographic is maintaining an abbreviated timeline of the Trump Administration’s environmental actions and policy changes, as well as reactions to them. They will update this article as news develops.
- Mercury is toxic. Andrew Wheeler’s proposed rollback is even worse. - EPA took aim at its own Mercury and Air Toxics Standard (MATS), disregarding its own estimates that its MATS rule would prevent 11,000 premature deaths and over 100,000 asthma and heart attacks each year, as a result of the co-benefits of the reduction in particulate matter pollution that occurs when plants reduce their mercury emissions. The new proposal’s bottom line: Regulating hazardous air pollution from power plants is just too costly.
- Trump’s EPA Is undermining new law to regulate chemicals roughly 30,000 pounds of chemicals are produced per person, per year in the United States. The Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) is a federal safety net that is meant to ensure these chemicals don’t cause harm to humans or the environment. Unfortunately, this net has a lot of holes. Central to the TSCA’s many flaws was the fundamental premise that it wasn’t up to chemical manufacturers to prove their chemicals were safe before they entered the market — it was up to regulators to prove that chemicals were unsafe. A new law passed by the Obama administration in 2016 called for the systematic review of chemicals already in the marketplace, as well as all new chemicals. But recent modifications made by EPA to the law threaten to undo these critical new protections.
- EU Commission adopts phthalates restriction decision The European Commission has adopted a decision to restrict the use of the phthalates, DEHP, BBP, DBP and DIBP in consumer products on the European Union market. The commission's adoption will complement the existing restriction on three other phthalates – DINP, DIDP and DNOP – in toys and childcare articles. Plasticized materials containing the substances are used in a wide variety of everyday products, from cables to coated fabrics and sports equipment.
