The Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on June 21, 2019 after a massive fire was contained. Xinhua / Liu Jie via Getty Images
The sprawling Philadelphia Energy Solutions oil refinery has poisoned the Greys Ferry neighborhood for 150 years, and continues to do so even after it closed in 2019 following numerous explosions, Reuters reports.
<p>The scale of the toxic legacy left by the East Coast's oldest and largest refinery — including poisonous waste fuels poured onto the ground and even buried rail cars — is staggering, and cleanup operations continue to inflict pollution on the predominantly Black neighborhood nearby. </p>
<p>As many as 3,000 tanks and vessels will need to be removed from the site and, "There's enough pipeline to connect you from here to Florida, and the majority of that pipeline today is wrapped in asbestos," said Roberto Perez, CEO of the Chicago-based Hilco Redevelopment Partners that bought the property in June. </p>
<p>Despite the obvious hazards, local residents feel shut out of the remediation process. It was also unclear how or if those residents who have endured decades of toxic pollution will benefit from the hotel and restaurant Hilco is reportedly considering building on the site.</p>
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Waste is found dumped at a marsh near the mouth of Neshaminy Creek to the Delaware river in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, on Feb. 6, 2019. Bastiaan Slabbers / NurPhoto / Getty Images
By Melanie Benesh, Legislative Attorney
From the beginning, the Trump administration has aggressively slashed environmental regulations. A New York Times analysis identified 100 environmental protections that have been reversed or are in the process of getting rolled back. The administration's record on chemical safety has been especially hazardous for the health of Americans, especially children.
<p><a href="https://www.ewg.org/planet-trump/2018/01/trump-s-toxic-wake-8-ways-president-made-chemicals-less-safe-2017" target="_blank">One year into President Trump's term,</a> EWG detailed how the Trump administration has stacked the Environmental Protection Agency with industry lawyers and lobbyists, undermined worker safety and cooked the books on chemical safety assessments. <a href="https://www.ewg.org/news-and-analysis/2018/05/13-ways-pruitt-s-epa-has-made-your-life-more-toxic" target="_blank">Midway through his second year,</a> we reported how the EPA reversed a ban on a brain-damaging pesticide, delayed chemical bans and killed a rule to protect kids from toxic PCBs in schools. <a href="https://www.ewg.org/news-and-analysis/2019/08/10-ways-trump-has-undermined-chemical-safety" target="_blank">Last year,</a> we reported that the EPA had rescinded safety rules at chemical plants, rubber-stamped untested new chemicals and silenced researchers.</p><p>As Trump's first term nears its end, things are even worse. Here are 10 more ways the Trump administration has continued to make life more toxic for Americans.</p>
1. Failed to Aggressively Regulate Toxic ‘Forever Chemicals’
<p>The toxic fluorinated chemicals known as PFAS contaminate <a href="https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps/pfas_contamination/" target="_blank">more than 2,200 sites</a> across the nation. Because they never break down in the environment, PFAS are often called "<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/these-toxic-chemicals-are-everywhere-and-they-wont-ever-go-away/2018/01/02/82e7e48a-e4ee-11e7-a65d-1ac0fd7f097e_story.html" target="_blank">forever chemicals</a>." They build up in our bodies and are linked to cancer, reproductive and developmental harms and reduced effectiveness of vaccines. Even though the EPA has known about the risks from PFAS chemicals <a href="https://www.ewg.org/epa-pfas-timeline/" target="_blank">since at least 1998</a>, they remain virtually unregulated.</p><p>In February 2019, the EPA released a toothless PFAS "action plan" that lacked deadlines for action and failed to address the use of PFAS in everyday products, contamination from PFAS air emissions or disposal of PFAS waste, among other concerns. A year and a half later, key goals from the plan, including regulating PFAS under the Superfund law and setting drinking water standards, remain unfulfilled.</p><p>When Congress stepped in and sought to designate PFOA and PFOS – the two most notorious and well-studied PFAS – as "hazardous substances" and to set deadlines for agency action, Trump <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/SAP_HR-535.pdf" target="_blank">threatened a veto</a>. Trump's EPA also <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/07/27/2020-13738/long-chain-perfluoroalkyl-carboxylate-and-perfluoroalkyl-sulfonate-chemical-substances-significant" target="_blank">weakened a rule</a> designed to regulate <a href="https://www.ewg.org/news-and-analysis/2020/06/final-decision-epa-fails-protect-public-toxic-forever-chemicals-consumer" target="_blank">PFAS in consumer products</a>.</p>2. Allowed a Rocket Fuel Chemical to Stay in Drinking Water
<p>Perchlorate is a component of rocket fuel that also frequently contaminates drinking water sources. Perchlorate can interfere with thyroid function, which can also harm <a href="https://www.ewg.org/news-and-analysis/2017/11/kids-still-risk-rocket-fuel-chemical-food-and-water" target="_blank">childhood brain development</a>.</p><p><a href="https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-02-11/html/2011-2603.htm" target="_blank">Almost a decade ago,</a> the EPA determined that these harms warranted regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The agency then dragged its feet for years. In 2016, the <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/media/2016/160218" target="_blank">Natural Resources Defense Council sued</a> to force the EPA to finally set a legal limit for perchlorate in drinking water. In a <a href="https://www.freshlawblog.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/15/2016/12/Doc-38-Consent-Decree.pdf" target="_blank">court-approved consent decree</a>, the EPA agreed to propose a standard by October 2018 and finalize it by 2019. However, the EPA sought extensions and failed to meet these deadlines.</p><p>The <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/06/26/2019-12773/national-primary-drinking-water-regulations-perchlorate" target="_blank">EPA finally proposed a drinking water standard</a> in June 2019 but also suggested that it might not regulate perchlorate after all. <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/07/21/2020-13462/drinking-water-final-action-on-perchlorate" target="_blank">A year later, </a>the EPA withdrew its decision to regulate perchlorate in drinking water.</p>3. Allowed Scores of New Chemicals, Including New Toxic PFAS, Onto the Market Without Adequate Oversight
<p>In 2016, Congress substantially changed the way new chemicals are approved under the <a href="https://www.ewg.org/enviroblog/2016/05/new-tsca-bill-falls-short-protecting-americans-toxic-chemicals#.WwLUddMvwWo" target="_blank">Toxic Substances Control Act</a>, or TSCA.</p><p>Under the old law, chemicals were frequently approved by default, often <a href="https://www.ewg.org/research/off-the-books-ii-more-secret-chemicals/new-chemicals" target="_blank">without any health and safety information</a>. As a result, unsafe chemicals were allowed to be used for years or decades before the health and environmental hazards came to light. Inadequate oversight of new chemicals can also lead to <a href="https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/harmful-chemicals-removed-from-products-often-replaced-with-something-as-bad-or-worse/" target="_blank">regrettable substitution</a> – when chemicals are finally found to be unsafe, they are often replaced by unstudied chemicals that may be just as or even more toxic.</p><p>The 2016 update was supposed to fix the new chemicals program by requiring the EPA to make an affirmative safety finding on new chemicals and restrict use if industry failed to provide sufficient safety data. Nonetheless, the Trump EPA has approved scores of new chemicals in a process that <a href="http://blogs.edf.org/health/2019/12/09/when-will-epa-fully-explain-and-legally-justify-its-reviews-of-new-chemicals-under-tsca/" target="_blank">lacks transparency</a> and <a href="https://earthjustice.org/sites/default/files/files/20200317_comms_pc_tsca_english_final.pdf" target="_blank">contravenes the 2016 law</a>. The EPA has also <a href="https://www.edf.org/blog/2018/09/05/trumps-epa-flouting-law-when-approving-new-chemicals-here-are-3-examples" target="_blank">ignored known health concerns</a>, <a href="http://blogs.edf.org/health/2019/02/21/the-trump-epa-is-throwing-workers-facing-risks-from-new-tsca-chemicals-under-the-bus/" target="_blank">limited its consideration of worker risks</a> and <a href="http://blogs.edf.org/health/2019/06/03/the-trump-epa-is-illegally-denying-requests-for-public-files-on-new-chemicals/" target="_blank">denied requests for public files</a> in the new chemicals program.</p><p>The EPA has also exploited loopholes in the new law to quickly approve new chemicals, including toxic PFAS. <a href="http://blogs.edf.org/health/2020/07/28/greasing-the-skids-the-trump-epa-is-green-lighting-dozens-of-new-pfas-under-tsca/" target="_blank">A recent investigation</a> found that the EPA has been quietly approving new PFAS chemicals, through a provision known as the low volume exemption in the new chemicals program. As a result, the EPA is greenlighting new PFAS chemicals on an expedited basis, without public scrutiny. One PFAS, <a href="http://blogs.edf.org/health/2020/01/27/what-connects-cross-country-skiing-and-chemical-safety/" target="_blank">used in ski wax</a>, was approved despite a finding that the chemical could "waterproof the lungs," resulting in severe health impacts.</p><p>Since the law was updated in 2016, the EPA has reviewed more than <a href="https://www.epa.gov/reviewing-new-chemicals-under-toxic-substances-control-act-tsca/statistics-new-chemicals-review" target="_blank">3,000 new chemicals</a> submissions. More than 1,000 of these chemicals have been approved through the low volume exemption, and since 2016, manufacturers have begun producing at least 900 new chemicals, many without adequate safety data. Environmental groups have <a href="https://earthjustice.org/sites/default/files/files/final_filed_complaint.pdf" target="_blank">sued the EPA</a> over its failures to protect the public and the environment from risks from new chemicals. </p>4. Failed to Protect Workers From a Deadly Paint-Stripping Chemical
<p>Methylene chloride is a highly toxic chemical used in paint strippers that is responsible for <a href="https://saferchemicals.org/us-deaths-from-methylene-chloride/" target="_blank">more than 60 deaths</a> since 1980. In the final days of the Obama administration, the <a href="https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=EPA-HQ-OPPT-2016-0231-0001" target="_blank">EPA proposed a ban</a> on "methylene chloride for consumer and most types of commercial paint and coating removal."</p><p>After significant pressure from <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/epa-reconsiders-ban-on-potentially-lethal-paint-stripper-chemical-methylene-chloride/" target="_blank">families who lost loved ones</a> due to methylene chloride exposure, the Trump EPA eventually issued a final rule in 2019. However, the <a href="https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-bans-consumer-sales-methylene-chloride-paint-removers-protecting-public" target="_blank">EPA narrowed the rule</a> so that it would apply only to consumer<em> uses</em> of methylene chloride, not commercial uses. That means workers are not protected, even though a <a href="https://publicintegrity.org/inequality-poverty-opportunity/workers-rights/epa-restricts-sales-of-deadly-paint-strippers-after-years-of-delays/" target="_blank">Center for Public Integrity investigation</a> found that most deaths from methylene chloride take place at work.</p><p>A <a href="https://www.epa.gov/assessing-and-managing-chemicals-under-tsca/final-risk-evaluation-methylene-chloride" target="_blank">separate EPA evaluation</a> of methylene chloride found that manufacturing, disposal and several other uses of methylene chloride pose no "unreasonable risk." Environmental groups have filed lawsuits challenging <a href="https://earthjustice.org/news/press/2019/trump-s-epa-sued-for-leaving-workers-exposed-to-deadly-chemical-in-paint-strippers" target="_blank">the rule</a> and the <a href="https://earthjustice.org/news/press/2020/trumps-epa-sued-over-understating-risks-of-deadly-chemical" target="_blank">recent evaluation</a>.</p>5. Cooked the Books on the “Civil Action” Chemical
<p>Trichloroethylene is a chemical solvent made infamous by the book and movie "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3PHjIly2N0" target="_blank">A Civil Action</a>." The EPA considers it to be a known carcinogen, and it is one of the primary contaminants that sickened scores of veterans who served at <a href="https://psmag.com/environment/what-happened-at-camp-lejeune" target="_blank">Camp Lejeune</a>, in North Carolina.</p><p>As with methylene chloride, in the final days of the Obama administration, the EPA proposed banning three uses of TCE: <a href="https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=EPA-HQ-OPPT-2016-0163-0001" target="_blank">spot cleaning, aerosol degreasing</a> and <a href="https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=EPA-HQ-OPPT-2016-0387-0001" target="_blank">vapor degreasing</a>. In December 2017, the Trump EPA <a href="https://www.ewg.org/release/trump-epa-indefinitely-delays-bans-deadly-chemicals" target="_blank">shelved these proposed bans</a>, claiming that it would study those uses in a separate ongoing risk evaluation of TCE.</p><p>However, the EPA dramatically rewrote the accepted science on TCE in the <a href="https://www.epa.gov/assessing-and-managing-chemicals-under-tsca/draft-risk-evaluation-trichloroethylene" target="_blank">draft risk evaluation</a> released in February. As <a href="https://www.ewg.org/news-and-analysis/2018/06/industry-s-behest-epa-caves-banning-civil-action-carcinogen-lays-ground" target="_blank">EWG warned</a> in 2018, the solvents industry aggressively lobbied the EPA to ignore a key <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1241384/" target="_blank">2003 study</a> finding that TCE causes heart deformities in developing fetuses. TCE's connection with fetal heart defects was an important basis for the Obama EPA's decision to ban three uses of TCE. An <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0890623816303240#bib0190" target="_blank">independent review</a> of the EPA's science found that "prenatal exposure to TCE can cause human cardiac defects" and that the study "remains a valid choice" for assessing risk.</p><p>The lobbyists succeeded. The EPA's draft risk evaluation questioned the study's design and minimized its significance. An <a href="https://www.revealnews.org/article/epa-scientists-found-a-toxic-chemical-damages-fetal-hearts-the-trump-white-house-rewrote-their-assessment/" target="_blank">investigation by Reveal News</a> compared the draft risk evaluation with a leaked earlier draft. It found that the earlier draft had relied extensively on the 2003 study and used it as a benchmark for the risk calculations. Reveal also reported that then-EPA chemicals safety chief Nancy Beck – "<a href="https://www.ewg.org/planet-trump/2017/05/scariest-trump-appointee-you-ve-never-heard" target="_blank">the scariest Trump appointee you've never heard of</a>" – ordered that the risk evaluation be rewritten to downplay the risks of TCE. With the EPA giving significantly less weight to risks from fetal heart deformities, it's unlikely the agency will finalize the proposed bans.</p>6. Pressured EPA Scientists to Drop Evaluations of Toxic Chemicals – Including Formaldehyde
<p>The Trump EPA is undermining the work of independent scientists within the Integrated Risk Information System program, known as IRIS. The program's work is supposed to be impartial and non-political. Its scientific assessments are intended to support the work of other EPA program offices and regional offices. IRIS is a <a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/02/03/epa-iris-toxic-chemicals/" target="_blank">frequent target of chemical industry attacks</a> because its independent safety assessments often don't align with industry objectives.</p><p>In 2018, the Trump EPA tried to <a href="https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3534381/Combined.pdf" target="_blank">defund</a> the IRIS program. EPA leadership also pressured IRIS to drop critical health assessments. In March 2019, <a href="https://www.gao.gov/assets/700/697212.pdf" target="_blank">a Government Accountability Office report</a> disclosed that EPA leadership directed agency offices to limit the number of chemicals they wanted IRIS to review, and cut in half the number of IRIS's ongoing or upcoming assessments.</p><p>One of the halted assessments was IRIS's decades-long review of formaldehyde, a widely used chemical and <a href="https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ntp/roc/content/profiles/formaldehyde.pdf" target="_blank">known human carcinogen</a>. This is surprising because former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt indicated to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in January 2018 that the report was complete and <a href="https://www.markey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Pruitt%20Letter%20formaldehyde%20assessment.pdf" target="_blank">ready for release</a>. However, answering <a href="https://www.eenews.net/assets/2019/01/29/document_pm_02.pdf" target="_blank">questions for the record</a> following a 2019 Senate hearing, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said formaldehyde was "not a top priority."</p><p>Instead of releasing the IRIS study on formaldehyde to the public, the EPA has instead decided that the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention – under the leadership of Nancy Beck – should <a href="https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-finalizes-list-next-20-chemicals-undergo-risk-evaluation-under-tsca" target="_blank">conduct its own assessment</a> of formaldehyde. As with TCE, this action will give the agency an opportunity to distort the science and minimize risks. Because these reviews take years, it will also significantly delay any EPA regulatory action on formaldehyde.</p>7. Rolled Back Clean Water Protections
<p>Industrial chemical pollutants are often discharged into drinking water supplies. But the Trump administration has made it a priority to roll back the<a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2015/06/29/2015-13435/clean-water-rule-definition-of-waters-of-the-united-states" target="_blank"> Clean Water Rule,</a> which more clearly defined which kinds of bodies of water are subject to the Clean Water Act. EWG's analysis found that the Clean Water Rule, if implemented as proposed by the Obama administration, would have protected drinking water sources for more than <a href="https://www.ewg.org/research/trump-plan-gut-stream-protections-imperils-tap-water-117-million-americans" target="_blank">117 million Americans</a>.</p><p>The <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/31/politics/epa-science-board/index.html" target="_blank">EPA's own science advisors</a> have opposed the rollback of the Clean Water Rule, but the Trump administration <a href="https://www.ewg.org/release/trump-completes-repeal-clean-water-rule-imperiling-drinking-water-sources-117m-people" target="_blank">repealed</a> it in 2019, <a href="https://www.ewg.org/release/trump-administration-finalizes-repeal-pollution-rule-threatening-drinking-water-sources-117" target="_blank">proposed its own rule</a> in January and <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/04/21/2020-02500/the-navigable-waters-protection-rule-definition-of-waters-of-the-united-states" target="_blank">finalized it</a> in April. The new rule covers far fewer bodies of water and would leave 234,000 miles of small streams unprotected. EWG estimates that at least 72 million Americans draw at least half their drinking water from small streams.</p><p>Because of the repeal, those bodies of water will no longer be subject to pollution limits. Protection for small and seasonal streams and wetlands is important because they often flow into larger bodies of water, including sources of drinking water. Polluted drinking water sources <a href="https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/agriculture/2017/03/17/judge-dismisses-water-works-nitrates-lawsuit/99327928/" target="_blank">strain municipal water utilities</a> tasked with filtering out contaminants regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act, and risk exposing the public to more <a href="https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/state-of-american-drinking-water.php" target="_blank">contaminants that aren't regulated</a> under the act.</p>8. Cooked the Books on Asbestos
<p>Asbestos is a highly toxic, naturally occurring chemical linked to a particularly deadly form of cancer called <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/mesothelioma/symptoms-causes/syc-20375022" target="_blank">mesothelioma</a>. An estimated <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/search?authors=Jukka%20Takala&orcid=0000-0001-5722-7052" target="_blank">40,000 Americans</a> die every year from asbestos-related diseases. Although the toxicity of asbestos is well understood, the EPA has never actually banned most uses. The EPA attempted a ban in 1989, but most of the rule was overturned by <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=6165892895625819539&q=corrosion+proof+fittings+v+epa&hl=en&as_sdt=20006" target="_blank">the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1991.</a></p><p>After Congress reformed TSCA in 2016, the EPA announced that asbestos would be one of the <a href="https://www.ewg.org/research/under-new-safety-law-epa-picks-first-10-chemicals-review" target="_blank">first 10 chemicals</a> reviewed under the new law. Many hoped that this time, the EPA would finally ban asbestos.</p><p>Instead, when the EPA released its <a href="https://www.epa.gov/assessing-and-managing-chemicals-under-tsca/draft-risk-evaluation-asbestos" target="_blank">draft risk evaluation</a> in May, it found that several uses of asbestos, including import of asbestos and asbestos-containing products and distribution of asbestos-containing products, did not pose an unreasonable risk. The EPA made its risk determinations by ignoring exposure from "legacy" uses of asbestos, such as old insulation and building tiles. Although in November the <a href="https://www.ewg.org/release/court-trump-epa-acted-unlawfully-refusing-consider-legacy-use-asbestos-lead" target="_blank">Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals</a> ordered the EPA to fix this error, it has yet to do so.</p><p>Instead of banning asbestos, in April 2019 the EPA <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/04/25/2019-08154/restrictions-on-discontinued-uses-of-asbestos-significant-new-use-rule" target="_blank">published a rule</a> requiring notice and approval before manufacturers could resume using it in some applications the agency considered abandoned. However, <a href="https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/815-e-p-a-memos-on-asbestos/12c87a96be998db10048/optimized/full.pdf#page=1" target="_blank">leaked documents</a> show that more than a dozen EPA staffers urged an outright ban on asbestos instead.</p>9. Proposed a Loophole for Toxic Air Pollution
<p>In July 2019, the <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/07/26/2019-14252/reclassification-of-major-sources-as-area-sources-under-section-112-of-the-clean-air-act" target="_blank">Trump EPA proposed to reverse</a> a longstanding policy requiring large power plants, refineries and other industrial polluters to always meet certain strict controls, even after reducing emissions. The new rule creates a loophole in the Clean Air Act regulations that would allow large industrial facilities to <a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2018-02/documents/reclassification_of_major_sources_as_area_sources_under_section_112_of_the_clean_air_act.pdf" target="_blank">reclassify themselves</a>, from "major sources" of air pollution to "area sources."</p><p>That change would allow them to opt out of strict pollution control standards, called "maximum achievable control technology," and substantially increase their emissions of dangerous air pollutants. EPA's own data shows that more than <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2019-07-26/pdf/2019-14252.pdf" target="_blank">3,900 large facilities</a> that <a href="https://www.epa.gov/haps/initial-list-hazardous-air-pollutants-modifications" target="_blank">emit pollutants like mercury and benzene</a> could take advantage of this loophole. <a href="http://blogs.edf.org/climate411/2020/02/19/epa-data-emphasizes-danger-of-trump-administrations-air-toxics-loophole/?conversion_pg=www.momscleanairforce.org%2Fthe-racism-of-the-epa-agenda%2F" target="_blank">The Environmental Defense Fund</a> estimates the loophole could increase toxic air emissions by as much as 480 percent, or almost 50 million pounds per year. </p><p>This rollback is especially alarming in the midst of the global coronavirus pandemic. Studies have found that people who live in areas with <a href="https://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2020/07/17/why-air-pollution-is-linked-to-severe-cases-of-covid-19/" target="_blank">high levels of air pollution</a> are at greater risk for severe cases of COVID-19.</p>10. Continuing Its Quest to Censor Science
<p>In 2018, the EPA <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/04/30/2018-09078/strengthening-transparency-in-regulatory-science" target="_blank">proposed a disastrous rule</a> significantly limiting the kinds of science the agency can rely on to justify environmental regulations. The rule would have prohibited the agency from using studies that don't make their underlying data publicly available or whose results can't be replicated. That change would prevent the EPA from including in its future risk assessments most <a href="https://www.aaas.org/news/scientific-medical-academic-groups-urge-epa-drop-transparency-rule" target="_blank">human health studies</a>, because personal medical data must remain confidential. The rule would undermine studies that are foundational to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/11/climate/epa-science-trump.html" target="_blank">clean air regulations</a>.</p><p>The proposal sparked enormous opposition from scientists, academics and environmental health advocates. More than 600,000 public comments were submitted to the agency, the vast majority in opposition. In September 2019, the EPA dropped the proposal from its regulatory agenda. </p><p>But the Trump EPA is at it again. In March, the agency issued a <a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2020-03/documents/supplemental_notice_of_strengthening_transparency_in_regulatory_science.pdf" target="_blank">supplemental proposal</a> that is actually <a href="https://www.ewg.org/testimony-official-correspondence/ewg-comments-epa-strengthening-transparency-regulatory-science" target="_blank">worse than</a> the original proposal. The 2018 proposal applied to all "dose response" studies, but the new proposal applies to all studies. The new proposal also applies retroactively, which means the EPA could use it to gut existing regulations.</p><p>As these actions – and dozens of others – show, the Trump EPA has aggressively worked to erode and eliminate vital environmental and public health protections. The public needs an EPA that will prioritize people and planet over polluters and profit.</p>From Your Site Articles
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Looking for ways to cut down on single-use plastic while grocery shopping? You may already have eco-friendly shopping bags, but bringing your own reusable produce bags is another easy swap.
According to the UN Environment Program, up to 5 trillion single-use plastic bags are used globally each year, and because of the material they're made from, most municipal recycling centers don't accept them (more on this below).
The most sustainable option is to skip the bag altogether. You can also make your own reusable produce bags out of old T-shirts. But if you'd rather purchase them new, here are our recommendations for the best reusable produce bags on the market today.
<p><em>Each product featured here has been independently selected by the writer. If you make a purchase using the links included, we may earn commission.</em></p>
<h2>Why make the switch to reusable produce bags?<br/></h2><p>According to the <a href="https://www.unep.org/interactive/beat-plastic-pollution/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">UN</a>, humans produce 300 million tons of plastic waste each year, and about 60% of the plastic produced since the early 1950s has ended up in a landfill or the natural environment.</p><p>Plastic grocery bags and produce bags are made from low-density polyethylene (LDPE). Technically, this type of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/plastic-recycling-myth-2647706452.html" target="_self">plastic can be recycled</a>. However, in practice, plastic bags easily clog recycling machinery, so <a href="https://millerrecycling.com/ldpe-out-of-landfills" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">most municipal recycling centers</a> do not accept this type of material.</p><p>A <a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2018-07/documents/smm_2015_tables_and_figures_07252018_fnl_508_0.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">study by the EPA</a> showed that only about 6% of the LDPE generated in 2015 was recycled. Other types of plastic, by comparison, were recycled at 18% and 10% rates.</p>Although some <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/vancouvers-grocery-store-plastic-bags-2638807121.html" target="_self">grocery stores</a> offer plastic bag recycling, the easiest way to get around this is to refuse plastic bags in the first place. Many cities have instituted <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/new-york-plastic-bag-ban-begins-2645319695.html" target="_self">plastic bag bans</a>, but more often than not, it's up to individuals to choose to make the switch to reusable grocery bags in their day-to-day lives.<p><br/></p><p><em><em><strong><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/about-ecowatch-2641507575.html?rebelltitem=47#rebelltitem47" target="_self">Melissa Smith</a> </strong>is an avid writer, scuba diver, backpacker, and all-around outdoor enthusiast. She graduated from the University of Florida with degrees in journalism and sustainable studies. Before joining EcoWatch, Melissa worked as the managing editor of Scuba Diving magazine and the communications manager of The Ocean Agency, a non-profit that's featured in the Emmy award-winning documentary Chasing Coral.</em></em></p><em><em></em></em>
Best Reusable Produce Bag Set: Eco Joy Cotton Reusable Produce Bags
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTcxOTAxNS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzODE2MDIyNH0.qyiKrnX8T4CRp8Y5Kn_cW1oaSF7vDci2gmKEXxJfQmE/img.jpg?width=980" id="8db60" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="d39a705e9f90fc1369a1806bc6d4e016" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="400" data-height="400" />Eco Joy
<p>If you're making the switch to more sustainable shopping bags and want a variety of products to use, the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Reusable-Sandwich-Biodegradable-Eco-Drawstring/dp/B003PK4W3I/ref=sr_1_36?crid=3TDUCB8ZOM7WI&dchild=1&keywords=produce+bags+grocery+reusable&qid=1613484643&sprefix=produce+bags%2Caps%2C189&sr=8-36" target="_blank">Eco Joy Cotton Reusable Produce Bags</a> set is a great place to start. The set comes with three mesh drawstring bags, three muslin drawstring bags, a large mesh tote and a zippered sandwich-size pouch.</p><p>Each product is made with organic, non-GMO cotton that's ethically sourced in accordance with Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production (WRAP) standards. The cotton comes from India and Turkey, and the bags are hand-assembled in Canada by the owner of Eco Joy, so you can feel good about supporting a small business while reducing your environmental impact.</p><p><strong>Customer rating:</strong> 4.7 out of 5 stars with over 300 Amazon reviews</p><p><strong>Why buy: </strong>Zero-waste; Handmade in Canada; WRAP compliant; Machine washable</p>
$13
Best Mesh Bags: Organic Cotton Mart Reusable Cotton Mesh Produce Bags
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTcxOTE0OC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1MTQyNDQ5MX0.E6MFCOXZ-3EvKDK0MIv34EJO3oE6WMWxiFZBR5aNU_w/img.jpg?width=980" id="ba5c7" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="91a9dd3d18f7b4a41fae606ff4d1204b" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="400" data-height="400" />Organic Cotton Mart
<p>Some shoppers prefer to use mesh bags when shopping for fruits and veggies. We recommend checking out <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Best-Reusable-Produce-Organic-Cotton/dp/B07CK2TJKL/ref=sr_1_16?crid=10A7NM0LQ0B7E&dchild=1&keywords=mesh+produce+bags&qid=1613483897&s=home-garden&sprefix=mesh+pro%2Cgarden%2C162&sr=1-16" target="_blank">Organic Cotton Mart's Reusable Cotton Mesh Produce Bags</a> if you're in this camp, as they're made with Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) certified cotton.</p> <p>Mesh reusable produce bags can make the checkout process easier than muslin bags since you can see what's inside them without having to open them up. Plus, the tare weight (i.e., the weight of the empty bag that should be subtracted from the total weight of your produce to make sure you don't pay extra for using your bag) is printed right on the label of Organic Cotton Mart's bags, making everything that much more convenient.</p> <p><strong>Customer rating:</strong> 4.6 out of 5 stars with nearly 1,000 Amazon reviews</p><strong>Why buy:</strong> GOTS certified; Machine washable; Biodegradable
$16
Best Muslin Bags: Simple Ecology Reusable Produce Bags
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTcxOTE1OS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyNjY3NDE3N30.f2sAcYTGhqq4ytlNGSyzZexPwqH2SpqpTwsX2fvph10/img.jpg?width=980" id="f90b3" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="e95c082f9b831bf11004e12b73ae8263" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="400" data-height="400" />Simple Ecology
<p>On the other hand, if you just want to purchase muslin bags, we like <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Ecology-Reusable-Organic-Shopping/dp/B004UJ0U0C" target="_blank">Simple Ecology's Reusable Produce Bags</a>, which are also made with GOTS-certified organic cotton. Simple Ecology also has a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N6AUMBG/ref=sspa_dk_detail_2?psc=1&pd_rd_i=B01N6AUMBG&pd_rd_w=MA3ZS&pf_rd_p=cbc856ed-1371-4f23-b89d-d3fb30edf66d&pd_rd_wg=hVunQ&pf_rd_r=G6RTQ1Z5DKEY325MAJZ9&pd_rd_r=5d298b3a-1be7-4ebd-a9e1-d5d672a40497&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUExMzc4RVAxWjNLOTdCJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwNTc0NTAwMzBDMjFYOVJPTUpWSCZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwNjYyOTM4M0s4Vk81SVBPS1NFSyZ3aWRnZXROYW1lPXNwX2RldGFpbF90aGVtYXRpYyZhY3Rpb249Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU=" target="_blank">starter kit</a> that comes with several reusable grocery bags if you're looking for more variety.</p> <p>The benefit of using muslin reusable produce bags is that, unlike mesh, there are no holes for small items to slip through. This means that in addition to larger produce, you can use them to purchase bulk foods like lentils, beans and rice — or even powders like flour or spices — without worrying about anything leaking. They're also best for keeping leafy greens fresh.</p> <p><strong>Customer rating:</strong> 4.7 out of 5 stars with nearly 1,500 Amazon reviews</p><strong>Why buy:</strong> GOTS certified; Machine washable; Biodegradable; Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) certified packaging when purchased from manufacturer
$16
Best String Bags: ECOBAGS Market Collection Reusable Bag Set
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTcxOTE2Ny9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1NTkzMDc5Mn0.v_aTdf8TPuA39wgpmS2Dgb_88t2jfcbXDJkC9wf5CrE/img.png?width=980" id="c42d2" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ada50990c5c2520886afd23fcca522a4" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="752" data-height="628" />ECOBAGS
<p>Whether you're buying bread, fresh flowers, produce or all of the above, the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/ECOBAGS-Market-Collection-Reusable-Natural/dp/B08KFGPGN5" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">ECOBAGS Market Collection Reusable Bag Set</a> is ideal for <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/farmers-markets-coronavirus-safety-2645581711.html" target="_self">farmers market</a> shopping or large grocery hauls. The netted bags are durable, flexible, and pack down small so they're easy to keep in your car or purse.</p> <p>ECOBAGS is a woman-owned certified B Corp, which means it uses sound social and environmental practices. These bags come in packs of three or five and have a few different handle lengths and color options, but they're all made with GOTS-certified organic cotton.</p> <p><strong>Customer rating: </strong>Not applicable</p><p><strong>Why buy:</strong> GOTS certified; Machine washable; Biodegradable; Certified B Corp; SA8000 certified for the protection of basic human rights of workers</p>
$36
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Asbestos, Ubiquitous and Unavoidable, Is a Deadly Threat to Our Kids
12 February 2020
Insights + Opinion
View of asbestos warning signs at the Turner Construction project in downtown Bellevue, Washington in December 2019. Colleen Michaels / iStock Editorial / Getty Images
By Derrick Z. Jackson
In the U.S., gun violence kills nearly 40,000 people a year and has killed nearly 40,000 or so children and teenagers since 1999, and yet the nation is still without serious gun control. Another 40,000 people die each year in traffic accidents, including 1,200 children 14 and under. Yet we eschew policies used abroad that could cut the toll by half.
<p>As the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) documents in its new report, <a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/endangering-generations" target="_blank"><em>Endangering Generations: How the Trump Administration's Assault on Science is Harming Children's Health</em></a>, asbestos is a lesser known, but no less potent member of the American annual "<a href="https://www.asbestosdiseaseawareness.org/newsroom/blogs/adao-announces-new-findings-show-asbestos-related-deaths-estimated-double-previously-reported-united-states/" target="_blank">40,000</a> <a href="https://blog.ucsusa.org/derrick-jackson/as-asbestos-toll-mounts-trumps-epa-ignores-it" target="_blank">Death Club</a>." The current attempt by the Trump administration to severely limit research on asbestos exposure may create a whole new class of victims: today's children who attend crumbling old schools and breathe in poisonous fibers from damaged asbestos boiler and pipe insulation and floor and ceiling tiles.</p>
<p class=""><em>Derrick Z. Jackson is a UCS Fellow in climate and energy and the Center for Science and Democracy. He is an award-winning journalist and co-author and photographer of <em>Project Puffin: The Improbable Quest to Bring a Beloved Seabird Back to Egg Rock,</em> published by Yale University Press (2015).</em></p><p><em>Reposted with permission from the <a href="https://blog.ucsusa.org/derrick-jackson/asbestos-is-killing-our-kids?_ga=2.152329776.821918874.1581088098-261021692.1565969924" rel="noopener noreferrer">Union of Concerned Scientists</a>.</em></p>
<p><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/asbestos">Asbestos</a> is a carcinogenic mineral now banned in more than 60 nations. But it has never been fully prohibited in the U.S. even after asbestos makers were exposed in the 1970s for having covered up the potentially lethal effects of their products in manufacturing, building insulation, and fireproofing. Raw asbestos is no longer mined in the U.S. But it is still being imported, primarily for the chlorine industry. It is also still found in automotive brakes and some building roofing and ceiling tile.</p><p>Like cigarettes, asbestos is a time bomb causing disease in victims decades after exposure — in this case lung cancer and mesothelioma. Historically, the people at risk from asbestos-related disease were those who worked with asbestos in the 20th century, primarily men in the construction trades, miners, millers, auto mechanics, and ship builders. But today the toll is broadening out. As sure as our unchecked proliferation of guns haunts us with school shootings and teen carnage among the poor, the failure to ban asbestos has resulted in widespread and potentially deadly chronic risks that reach down to our youngest citizens and their teachers.</p>
First Responders, Maintenance Workers, Women
<p>The first mesothelioma deaths have now occurred among 9/11 first responders who worked in toxic clouds at Ground Zero after the collapse and fires of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 2001. Also, a <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6608a3.htm" target="_blank">2017 report</a> by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that exposure continues today to workers involved in the maintenance, demolition, and remediation of buildings with asbestos. "Contrary to past projections, the number of malignant mesothelioma deaths has been increasing," the report said.</p><p>In 2018, the New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/14/business/baby-powder-asbestos-johnson-johnson.html?module=inline" target="_blank">obtained memos</a> under the Freedom of Information Act that exposed that officials at Johnson & Johnson were aware in the 1970s that the company's iconic baby powder talc could be contaminated with asbestos and yet worked to discredit or silence research that suggested contamination. Two years ago, a St. Louis jury awarded $4.7 billion to 22 women who claimed their ovarian cancer was caused by the baby powder, often used as a feminine hygiene product. Five months ago, Johnson & Johnson recalled 33,000 bottles of baby powder after the Food and Drug Administration <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/business/johnson-johnson-baby-powder-recall.html" target="_blank">found trace</a> amounts of asbestos in samples.</p><p>Will we soon be adding children and teachers to the toll? Nowhere in America is the wholesale disintegration of asbestos installed decades ago as evident as in the nation's schools.</p>The Threat to Schoolchildren
<p>The UCS report notes that school buildings built from 1946 to 1972 likely contain asbestos, with the highest proportion of unacceptable structures being found in low-income communities and districts where most students are of color. All of that is on unconscionable display in Philadelphia where the teachers' union is suing the city's school board for hazardous levels of asbestos dust in decrepit buildings.</p><p>In 2018, the Philadelphia Inquirer conducted an <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/news/inq/asbestos-testing-mesothelioma-cancer-philadelphia-schools-toxic-city-20180510.html#loaded" target="_blank">investigation</a> of many schools, finding levels of asbestos dust on school surfaces 11 to 1,700 times higher than the levels mandated by federal cleanup requirements for apartments near Ground Zero. The newspaper also found unacceptably elevated levels of lead.</p><p>By spring of 2019, when the Inquirer was <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/news/toxic-city-inquirer-pulitzer-finalist-20190415.html" target="_blank">named a finalist</a> for the Pulitzer Prize for its exposé, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf announced more than $100 million in emergency lead cleanup and general hazardous cleanup funds for Philadelphia schools. Last month, Wolf <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/news/gov-tom-wolf-asbestos-lead-schools-1-billion-20200129.html" target="_blank">proposed</a> $1 billion for statewide remediation of asbestos and lead in schools.</p><p>But that could not contain the crisis in a system with $4.5 billion of documented <a href="https://www.philasd.org/capitalprograms/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2017/06/2015-FCA-Final-Report-1.pdf" target="_blank">deficiencies</a> in its school buildings. This school year, seven schools have been closed for extensive asbestos damage. One <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/education/a/mesothelioma-philadelphia-school-district-lea-dirusso-cancer-20191121.html" target="_blank">teacher,</a> who worked in a 90-year-old building and often swept up dust from flaking heating pipe insulation and busted ceiling tiles before class, is undergoing chemotherapy for mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer triggered by asbestos.</p>Environmental Injustice
<p>In at least one school closure, the stench of race and class environmental injustice was on vivid display. Ben Franklin High School, comprised almost entirely of youth of color who qualify as poor, <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/education/ben-franklin-sla-school-construction-asbestos-inequity-privilege-20191011.html" target="_blank">was not closed until</a> after it also became the home of a magnet school that is 38 percent white, with half of those students above the poverty line. As Ben Franklin teacher told the Philadelphia Inquirer, "When it was us, the district didn't feel like they needed to have any immediacy."</p><p>The lack of immediacy has existed for decades. Jerry Roseman, chief environmental science and public health expert since 1985 for the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, said it galls him that his sense of outrage and disbelief in school conditions is the same today as it was <em>35 years ago</em>. In an interview with the Union of Concerned Scientists, he said he had just inspected an overcrowded school where playful children were literally banging into damaged asbestos pipe insulation, damaging the asbestos even more, calling it a systemic failure including school district leadership and politicians.</p><p>"What is clear across the country is that school boards neither understand facility conditions and leave them alone to deteriorate and definitely don't understand the impacts on the health, safety, and welfare of children and staff," Roseman said. He noted how parents and teachers are taking things into their own hands with a <a href="http://www.phillyhealthyschools.org/" target="_blank">mobile app</a> to photograph and report disintegrating infrastructure. "You can have great teachers and great principals," he added, "but you do not get great or safe education if you do not take care of a foundational need—the facility."</p><p>Nationally, the threat of toxic school buildings has barely been studied despite the 1986 Asbestos Hazardous Emergency Response Act (AHERA) to address airborne asbestos in schools. A <a href="https://www.markey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2015-12-Markey-Asbestos-Report-Final.pdf" target="_blank">2015 report</a> commissioned by senators Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Barbara Boxer of California found that two-thirds of the school districts in 15 responding states had asbestos. Thirty states did not respond to the inquiry at all. Noting that the Environmental Protection Agency had not seriously analyzed school asbestos since 1984, the Markey-Boxer report said the carcinogen remains "ubiquitous" in schools, with the extent "unknown."</p><p>The EPA, under flat funding for most of the last decade, conducts so few inspections under AHERA that a 2018 Inspector General <a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2018-09/documents/_epaoig_20180917-18-p-0270.pdf" target="_blank">report</a> said, "The EPA has not documented that the risk of asbestos exposure in schools has diminished significantly under AHERA."</p>Reinvestment, Then Divestment Again
<p>President Obama worked with Congress to try to strengthen scrutiny of toxics like asbestos with the 2016 <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?411615-1/president-obama-signs-chemical-safety-bill" target="_blank">Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act</a>. But, when it comes to asbestos, the Trump administration attempted to gut the act by trying to exclude asbestos already installed in places like schools ("legacy use") from calculations of risk assessment. Never mind that the White House understands quite well that asbestos is a major health threat. Last summer it conducted $250,000 asbestos <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-21/white-house-relocates-top-aides-for-asbestos-abatement-project" target="_blank">abatement</a> in the West Wing office areas occupied by President Trump's daughter Ivanka, presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway, policy adviser Stephen Miller, and economic adviser Larry Kudlow.</p><p>Environmental groups, including the Union of Concerned Scientists, joined with labor unions and family advocacy groups to challenge the EPA and a host of chemical industry groups and the US Chamber of Commerce in court. In November, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals declared the administration's attempt to exclude legacy use was <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/tsca-opinion-20191114.pdf" target="_blank">unlawful,</a> agreeing that workers face major risks when "equipment or structures are demolished, repaired, or refurbished."</p><p>That ruling, combined with a science-minded federal government, should easily be applied to children who currently go to schools that should have long ago been demolished, repaired, or refurbished. As it is now, Linda Reinstein, co-founder of the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, which was a co-petitioner against the EPA's attack on legacy use, says America is rolling the dice by letting children study and play in asbestos dust. As Reinstein notes, health effects will not manifest themselves until these children are well into adulthood and long since removed from the source school of their disease. Reinstein lost her husband Alan to mesothelioma and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/15/opinion/asbestos-epa-trump.html" target="_blank">an asbestos ban bill</a> has been filed in Congress in his name.</p><p>"Even though the latency period is long, I've seen parents tearful and terrified," Reinstein told UCS, "worried that every cough is a precursor of something worse about to happen. If you're a student and you know you've been exposed, you lie with the fear the rest of your life that you've been exposed to something that is life changing. . .The fact that we haven't been studying legacy exposure should be a crime."</p><p>In 1984, the EPA found that, of the 2,600 schools testing positive for asbestos in its sample, only 500 had a plan to deal with it. Today, the Trump administration is trying to avoid testing for legacy installations altogether, in the obvious effort not to be responsible for a remediation plan. That effort was ruled illegal, but given the spiteful nature of this administration, it is more likely to respond by dragging its feet rather than leaping to protect children. That leaves the time bomb ticking, with the risk of asbestos exposure today exploding in the lungs of today's children tomorrow.</p><p>For more on this and other threats to children's health, including what you can do about them, you can read the new UCS storybook — <em><a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/breathe-smog-drink-lead" target="_blank">Breath in the Smog, Drink in the Lead: A Grim Scary Tale for People Who Care about Kids</a> </em>— and its accompanying <a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/protecting-childrens-health-and-safety" target="_blank">resource guide</a> and report, <a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/endangering-generations" target="_blank"><em><u>Endangering Generations: How the Trump Administration's Assault on Science is Harming Children's Health</u></em></a>.</p>From Your Site Articles
- Asbestos Contamination Found in More Claire's Cosmetics: New ... ›
- Claire's Cosmetics Test Positive for Asbestos, FDA Warns - EcoWatch ›
- EPA Is Failing to Protect School Children From Asbestos, Internal ... ›
- EPA Places Children's Health Leader on Unexplained Leave ... ›
- Johnson & Johnson to Stop Selling Talc Baby Powder in U.S. and Canada - EcoWatch ›
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Johnson & Johnson Recalls 33,000 Baby Powder Bottles After FDA Finds Asbestos
21 October 2019
Health + Wellness
Mike Mozart / Flicker / CC BY 2.0
Pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson recalled 33,000 bottles of baby powder on Friday after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found trace amounts of asbestos in one of its bottles.
<p>While the recall pertains to a single lot of baby powder, it is unwelcome news for the company, which faces thousands of lawsuits claiming that its talc-based baby powder caused cancer, as <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/johnson-johnson-recalling-33000-bottles-of-baby-powder-after-u-s-regulators-found-asbestos/" target="_blank">CBS News</a> reported. </p>
<p>Anyone with a bottle of Johnson's Baby Powder from lot #22318RB, should not use it and can <a href="https://www.johnsonsbaby.com/contact-us" target="_blank">contact the company</a> for a refund, according to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/18/health/johnson-and-johnson-baby-powder-recall-bn-trnd/index.html" target="_blank">CNN</a></p>
<p>This is the first time that Johnson & Johnson has needed to recall its baby powder over asbestos concerns. Even though the company reported nearly $82 billion in sales last year, and its products line store shelves and pharmacy counters with brands like Tylenol and Band-Aid, it is facing over 100,000 lawsuits questioning the safety of its products, according to the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/business/johnson-johnson-baby-powder-recall.html" target="_blank">New York Times</a>. </p>
<p>"I understand today's recall may be concerning to all those individuals who may have used the affected lot of baby powder," Acting FDA Commissioner Dr. Ned Sharpless <a href="https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/baby-powder-manufacturer-voluntarily-recalls-products-asbestos" target="_blank">said in a statement</a> on Friday, as <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/18/health/johnson-and-johnson-baby-powder-recall-bn-trnd/index.html" target="_blank">CNN</a> reported. "I want to assure everyone that the agency takes these concerns seriously and that we are committed to our mandate of protecting the public health."</p>
<p>"The FDA continues to test cosmetic products that contain talc for the presence of asbestos to protect Americans from potential health risks," Sharpless said, according to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/18/health/johnson-and-johnson-baby-powder-recall-bn-trnd/index.html" target="_blank">CNN</a>.</p>
<p>More than 15,000 of those are from litigants who say baby powder and other talc-based products caused them to develop cancer. Several plaintiffs suffer from mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer that is the hallmarks of asbestos exposure, according to the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/business/johnson-johnson-baby-powder-recall.html" target="_blank">New York Times</a>.</p>
<p>However, Johnson & Johnson issued a statement that vigorously defended their practices and the safety of its products.</p>
<p>"[J&J] has a rigorous testing standard in place to ensure its cosmetic talc is safe and years of testing, including the FDA's own testing on prior occasions — and as recently as last month — found no asbestos," the company said in a <a href="https://www.jnj.com/johnson-johnson-consumer-inc-to-voluntarily-recall-a-single-lot-of-johnsons-baby-powder-in-the-united-states" target="_blank">statement</a>, as <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/johnson-johnson-recalling-33000-bottles-of-baby-powder-after-u-s-regulators-found-asbestos/" target="_blank">CBS News</a> reported. </p>
<p>"Thousands of tests over the past 40 years repeatedly confirm that our consumer talc products do not contain asbestos. Our talc comes from ore sources confirmed to meet our stringent specifications that exceed industry standards," the <a href="https://www.jnj.com/johnson-johnson-consumer-inc-to-voluntarily-recall-a-single-lot-of-johnsons-baby-powder-in-the-united-states" target="_blank">statement</a> added. </p>
<p>The company noted that the amount of asbestos detected was minuscule and it is looking at how any could get into its supply. In fact, the levels found were smaller than 0.00002 percent of the bottles content. Johnson & Johnson is investigating to see if the bottle is counterfeit, if the plastic safety seal was broken, or where any cross-contamination may have occurred, according to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/18/health/johnson-and-johnson-baby-powder-recall-bn-trnd/index.html" target="_blank">CNN</a>.</p>
<p>"FDA will be working with Johnson & Johnson to facilitate further investigation to substantiate that the product is authentic. At this time, there is no indication that the product is counterfeit. Additionally, FDA is not aware of any records pointing to counterfeit Johnson's baby powder in the US market," FDA spokeswoman Lyndsay Meyer wrote in an email to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/18/health/johnson-and-johnson-baby-powder-recall-bn-trnd/index.html" target="_blank">CNN</a>.</p>
<p>Johnson & Johnson has already settled some claims over its role in the opioid crisis. It is fighting others. Earlier this month, the company was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/health/johnson-and-johnson-risperdal-verdict.html?module=inline" target="_blank">ordered to pay $8 billion</a> for playing down the risks associated with Risperdal, an anti-psychotic drug. And, last week, one day before the baby powder recall, the company agreed to pay $117 million in a settlement over deceptive marketing of transvaginal pelvic mesh implants, as the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/business/johnson-johnson-baby-powder-recall.html" target="_blank">New York Times</a> reported.</p>
<p>"I can't imagine an attorney for Johnson & Johnson standing up in front of a jury now and saying with a straight face that the product is safe," said David Noll, a law professor at Rutgers University, to the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/business/johnson-johnson-baby-powder-recall.html" target="_blank">New York Times</a>. He added that "if people come to associate the company's signature product with deadly diseases, there will be huge spillover effects for its ability to market other products."</p>
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Former astronaut Buzz Aldrin shakes President Trump's hand as Vice President Mike Pence watches on July 19 in DC.
SHEALAH CRAIGHEAD
By Elliott Negin
On July 19, President Trump hosted Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins and their families, along with the family of their deceased colleague Neil Armstrong, at a White House event to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first manned landing on the moon.
<p>"Tomorrow will represent 50 years from the time we planted a beautiful American flag on the moon," Trump <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/watch-trump-meets-with-apollo-11-astronauts-buzz-aldrin-and-michael-collins" target="_blank">said</a>. "And that was an achievement, possibly one of the great, considered one of the great achievements ever."</p><p>Trump's fractured syntax notwithstanding, the Apollo program was indeed a stunning triumph of federal science, <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA" target="_blank">involving</a> more than 34,000 National Aeronautics and Space Administration employees and 375,000 industry and university contractors. It was one of many spectacular <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dont-take-federal-science_b_4146736" target="_blank">achievements</a> by federal and federally funded scientists over the last half-century, such as the creation of the internet, fiber optics and magnetic resonance imaging technology, not to mention the role those scientists played in providing the technical underpinning for health and environmental <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/environmental-protections-save-lives-create-jobs-and_b_58dc4a1ee4b04ba4a5e25098" target="_blank">standards</a> that save lives and protect critical ecosystems and <a href="http://ecowatch.com/tag/wildlife" rel="noopener noreferrer">wildlife</a> habitats.</p><p>Trump's lauding of the Apollo 11 mission rang a particularly discordant note given the lengths to which his administration has gone to destroy federal science by censoring scientific findings, gagging agency scientists and fostering a hostile working environment. Since taking office, the administration has launched more than <a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/center-science-and-democracy/attacks-on-science" target="_blank">100 attacks on science</a>, according to my organization, the <a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/" target="_blank">Union of Concerned Scientists</a> — more than the George W. Bush administration <a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/center-science-and-democracy/promoting-scientific-integrity/abuses-science-case-studies" target="_blank">amassed</a> over its two four-year terms.</p><p>Just a day before Trump's Apollo photo op, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/18/climate/epa-chlorpyrifos-pesticide-ban.html" target="_blank">announced it would reject</a> <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17116700" target="_blank">scientific evidence</a> and the recommendation of its own staff scientists by not banning <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/chlorpyrifos" target="_self">chlorpyrifos</a>, the widely used agricultural pesticide shown to hamper childhood brain development. It was the agency's second scientifically indefensible chemical-related decision of the year. In April, it overruled <a href="https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/815-e-p-a-memos-on-asbestos/12c87a96be998db10048/optimized/full.pdf#page=1" target="_blank">the advice</a> of its own scientists who urged the agency to follow the example of <a href="https://tinyurl.com/y5x2k32p" target="_blank">55 other countries</a> in completely banning <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/asbestos" target="_self">asbestos</a>, a known carcinogen.</p>
Sidelining Science
<div id="a0046" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="KTL07A1576661585"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1164145122381950977" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">“By allowing chlorpyrifos to stay in our fruits and vegetables, Trump’s @EPA is breaking the law and neglecting the… https://t.co/DCZpzQKdi9</div> — On Capitol Hill (@On Capitol Hill)<a href="https://twitter.com/EarthjusticeDC/statuses/1164145122381950977">1566388800.0</a></blockquote></div><p>Today's EPA offers a stark example of the Trump administration's crusade to dismantle science-based agencies. Nearly 1,600 employees <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/with-a-shrinking-epa-trump-delivers-on-his-promise-to-cut-government/2018/09/08/6b058f9e-b143-11e8-a20b-5f4f84429666_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.580c7cd37b13" target="_blank">left the EPA</a> during the first year and a half of the EPA administration, while only 400 were hired, according to data obtained by The Washington Post through a Freedom of Information Act request. Of 1,600 employees <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/epa-workers-trump-administration-2603730765.html">who left</a>, at least 260 were scientists, 185 were "environmental protection specialists" and 106 were engineers. The <a href="https://www.epa.gov/planandbudget/budget" target="_blank">total number of employees</a> at the agency today — 14,172 — is the lowest in 30 years.<br></p><p>Besides chopping staff, the EPA has dramatically reduced the role of outside science advisers. Last fall, EPA Administrator <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/andrew-wheeler">Andrew Wheeler</a>, a former coal industry lobbyist, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/11/climate/epa-disbands-pollution-science-panel.html" target="_blank">disbanded</a> a 20-member scientific advisory committee on particulate matter, <a href="https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060102455" target="_blank">failed</a> to convene a similar panel on ozone, and <a href="https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060102455" target="_blank">packed</a> a seven-member advisory committee on air quality standards with industry-friendly participants.</p><p>The EPA is not the only agency pushing scientists out the door. The same day the EPA made its chlorpyrifos announcement, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/07/18/many-usda-workers-quit-research-agencies-move-kansas-city-brain-drain-we-all-feared/?utm_term=.c549e94ec861" target="_blank">announced</a> that nearly two-thirds of 395 Washington, D.C.-based employees in its Economic Research Service, which provides analyses on a range of issues, and National Institute of Food and Agriculture, which oversees $1.7 billion in scientific funding, will quit rather than relocate to Kansas City.</p><p>The department's dubious rationale for moving the Research Service and National Institute is placing researchers closer to farmers and <a href="https://www.aaea.org/UserFiles/file/Report-MovingUSDAResearchersWillCostTaxpayers-AAEAReport2019june19final.docx.pdf" target="_blank">cutting costs</a>, but its ulterior motive is to hollow out their staffs, hindering their ability to carry out their missions. Mick Mulvaney, acting White House chief of staff, acknowledged as much during a <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?463060-1/mick-mulvaney-addresses-south-carolina-republican-party-gala&start=2412" target="_blank">speech</a> he gave at an Aug. 2 Republican fundraiser in South Carolina.</p><p>"You've heard about 'drain the swamp.' What you probably haven't heard is what we are actually doing," he said. "I don't know if you saw the news the other day, but the USDA just tried to move, or did move, two offices out of Washington, D.C…. Guess what happened? More than half the people quit…. What a wonderful way to sort of streamline government, and do what we haven't been able to do for a long time."</p>Capitol Hill Science Defenders
<p>Some members of Congress are fighting back. Late last month, for example, the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress — a temporary committee with an equal number of Democrats and Republicans — <a href="https://federalnewsnetwork.com/modernizing-congress/2019/07/house-modernization-committee-recommends-bringing-back-office-of-technology-assessment/" target="_blank">unanimously approved</a> a recommendation to resurrect the Office of Technology Assessment, a congressional watchdog agency that then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich <a href="https://ota.fas.org/2012/01/31/gingrich-said-to-decimate-congressional-expertise/" target="_blank">killed</a> in the mid-1990s.</p><p>The select committee's recommendation comes on the heels of a draft House <a href="https://appropriations.house.gov/news/press-releases/appropriations-committee-releases-fiscal-year-2020-legislative-branch-funding" target="_blank">spending bill</a> for the 2020 fiscal year that includes $6 million to jumpstart the agency, which provided Congress with <a href="https://ota.fas.org/otareports/" target="_blank">analyses</a> on a range of topics, from acid rain to <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/">climate change</a> to <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/renewable-energy/" rel="noopener noreferrer">renewable energy</a>, from 1972 to 1995.</p><p>Meanwhile, House Democrats and Republicans alike voiced their support for protecting federal science during a recent Science, Space and Technology Committee <a href="https://eos.org/articles/hearing-garners-bipartisan-support-for-scientific-integrity" target="_blank">hearing</a> on scientific integrity. <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/administration/eop/ostp/library/scientificintegrity" target="_blank">Two dozen</a> federal agencies have adopted scientific integrity policies since 2010, but they are inconsistent and difficult to enforce, so some members of Congress want to codify protections in a law.</p><p>"Allowing political power or special interests to manipulate or suppress federal science hurts, and hurts all of us," <a href="https://eos.org/articles/hearing-garners-bipartisan-support-for-scientific-integrity" target="_blank">said</a> New York Rep. Paul Tonko at the July 17 hearing. "It leads to dirtier air, unsafe water, toxic products on our shelves, and chemicals in our homes and environment. And it has driven federal inaction in response to the growing climate crisis."</p><p>Earlier this year, Tonko introduced the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1709/text?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22scientific+integrity+act%22%5D%7D&r=1&s=1" target="_blank">Scientific Integrity Act</a>, which would guarantee federal scientists the right to share their findings with the public, ensure the accuracy of government science-related communications, and protect scientific research from political interference.</p><p>Federal science has taken an unprecedented beating during the Trump administration and remains a long way from its glory days half a century ago when it landed men on the moon. Tonko recognizes that protecting scientific integrity is a critical first step to rebuilding American scientific enterprise and that it deserves bipartisan support.</p><p>"Scientific integrity is a longstanding concern that transcends any one party or political administration," Tonko <a href="https://eos.org/articles/hearing-garners-bipartisan-support-for-scientific-integrity" target="_blank">said</a>. "The abuses directed by this president and his top officials have brought a new urgency to the issue, but the fact remains whether a Democrat or Republican sits in the [House] speaker's chair or the Oval Office, we need strong scientific integrity policies."</p>From Your Site Articles
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Asbestos Contamination Found in More Claire's Cosmetics: New FDA Report
10 June 2019
Health + Wellness
A Claire's store in Waterbury, Connecticut. Mike Mozart / CC BY 2.0
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has found more asbestos in make-up sold at Claire's, an accessory store geared towards young teenagers.
<p>The store voluntarily recalled its Claire's JoJo Siwa Makeup Set after FDA testing turned up traces of the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/cancer" target="_self">cancer</a>-causing material, the <a href="https://www.fda.gov/cosmetics/cosmetics-recalls-alerts/fda-advises-consumers-stop-using-certain-cosmetic-products" target="_blank">agency announced Thursday</a>. Beauty Plus Global also recalled its Beauty Plus Global Contour Effects Palette 2 for the same reason.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Today, the FDA is releasing new results from its continued testing of cosmetic products for asbestos & is warning consumers to not use 2 additional products that have tested positive for asbestos & have been recalled <a href="https://t.co/p4AACHd9y8">https://t.co/p4AACHd9y8</a> <a href="https://t.co/DYtSelENEj">pic.twitter.com/DYtSelENEj</a></p>— U.S. FDA (@US_FDA) <a href="https://twitter.com/US_FDA/status/1136758750256271365?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 6, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<p>"Claire's Stores, Inc. has voluntarily recalled the JoJo Cosmetic Kit out of an abundance of caution after testing by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration indicated the possible presence of trace amounts of asbestos fibers in the powder eyeshadow element of the kit," a company spokesperson told <a href="https://www.today.com/style/claire-s-recalls-jojo-siwa-makeup-set-after-fda-finds-t155829?fbclid=IwAR3K9UwyoYXLG7kKUiuDY2Yq4Tj6XS2PxsOGLCchwJG39Lw1b5BkuLsqzEI" target="_blank">TODAY Style</a>.</p>
<p>The FDA gave the full product details of both cosmetics and urged anyone who owned them to stop using them. They are:</p><ol><li>Beauty Plus Global Contour Effects Palette 2, Batch No. S1603002/PD-C1179</li><li>Claire's JoJo Siwa Makeup Set, SKU #888711136337, Batch/Lot No. S180109</li></ol>
<p>The news comes <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/claires-cosmetics-test-positive-for-asbestos-fda-warns-2630826087.html" target="_self">three months</a> after the FDA warned customers to avoid three Claire's products that had also tested positive for asbestos. The alarm was first raised about the company's make-up in 2017, when a Rhode Island mother had her daughter's make-up kit tested for asbestos. The results prompted the store to recall 17 products.<br></p><p>Personal care products can become contaminated with asbestos because the mineral occurs next to talc, a common cosmetics ingredient. Asbestos can end up mixed in with the talc if the talc is not mined carefully. A similar problem occurred with <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/asbestos" target="_self">Johnson & Johnson's</a> talcum baby-powder, something the company knew about and covered up for decades.</p><p>In its statement to Today Style, Clarie's said its products were safe and that it had taken steps to avoid future contamination.</p><p>"Claire's stands behind the safety of this item and all other Claire's cosmetic items, as such small trace amounts are considered acceptable under European and Canadian cosmetic safety regulations," a spokesperson told Today Style. "In addition, last year Claire's moved to talc-free cosmetic manufacturing to prevent any further concerns about talc contamination. Claire's also supports <a href="https://www.today.com/style/what-clean-beauty-understanding-what-s-your-beauty-products-t121228" target="_blank">increased FDA oversight of personal care products</a>. We will provide a full refund to any customers who purchased the product."</p><p>The incidents have prompted lawmakers to call for better labeling for cosmetic products. After the March discovery of asbestos in Clarie's make-up, Michigan Democratic Representative Debbie Dingell and Illinois Democratic Representative Jan Schakowsky introduced legislation requiring that all make-up marketed to children come with a warning if it had not been tested for asbestos, <a href="https://www.michiganadvance.com/blog/dingell-introduces-bill-requiring-warning-label-for-childrens-cosmetics/" target="_blank">Michigan Advance reported</a>.</p><p>"Asbestos in children's cosmetics is simply unacceptable. It is so basic we shouldn't need legislation to ban it but we do," Dingell said in a Friday statement <a href="https://www.michiganadvance.com/blog/fda-advises-cosmetics-recall-over-asbestos-after-outcry-from-dingell-tlaib/" target="_blank">reported by Michigan Advance</a>. "Yet again, retailers like Claire's and Beauty Plus are removing products from their shelves after asbestos was found in their cosmetics. This so despicable; all of us need to be outraged. Congress must pass strong legislation so all cosmetics – especially cosmetics marketed toward children – contain proper warning labels alerting people of dangerous toxins."</p><p>The law governing FDA oversight of cosmetics has not been updated since 1938, and does not require that the agency test cosmetics before they are sold to customers. Democratic California Senator Dianne Feinstein and Republican Maine Senator Susan Collins <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/michelle-pfeiffer-safer-cosmetics-2638043856.html?rebelltitem=2#rebelltitem2" target="_self">have introduced</a> the <a href="https://cdn3.ewg.org/sites/default/files/u352/Personal%20Care%20Products%20Safety%20Act%20of%202019.pdf?_ga=2.93952157.1275460450.1558705834-862620896.1558705834" target="_blank">Personal Care Product Safety Act</a> to strengthen the FDA's regulation of cosmetics and empower it to recall make-up products that it considers unsafe.</p><p>Asbestos itself is not fully banned in the U.S. The <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/epa-asbestos-rule-2634944150.html" target="_self">most recent regulation</a> from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (<a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/epa" target="_self">EPA</a>) requires companies to get EPA approval before manufacturing or importing asbestos for any of 15 discontinued uses as well as any new use. Public health advocates have warned that the rule could actually open the door to more future uses of the material that <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/asbestos-us-epa-trump-2597804155.html" target="_self">kills between</a> 12,000 and 39,275 Americans a year.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">‘Companies Should Not Be Allowed to Use Hazardous Ingredients in Products People Use’: Michelle Pfeiffer Speaks Up for Safer <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Cosmetics?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Cosmetics</a> <a href="https://t.co/ewryqqiYLq">https://t.co/ewryqqiYLq</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/health?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#health</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/transparency?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#transparency</a></p>— Earth Accounting (@EarthAccounting) <a href="https://twitter.com/EarthAccounting/status/1132289735987064834?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 25, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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‘Companies Should Not Be Allowed to Use Hazardous Ingredients in Products People Use’: Michelle Pfeiffer Speaks Up for Safer Cosmetics
24 May 2019
Politics
Tim P. Whitby / 21st Century Fox / Getty Images
The beauty products we put on our skin can have important consequences for our health. Just this March, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned that some Claire's cosmetics had tested positive for asbestos. But the FDA could only issue a warning, not a recall, because current law does not empower the agency to do so.
Michelle Pfeiffer wants to change that.
The actress and Environmental Working Group (EWG) board member was spotted on Capitol Hill Thursday lobbying lawmakers on behalf of a bill that would increase oversight of the cosmetics industry, The Washington Post reported.
<div id="917ff" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ODN24G1576662486"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1131608182080638979" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Today in celebrity spotting on the Hill: Michelle Pfeiffer https://t.co/zg0xVN2zAJ</div> — Tal Kopan (@Tal Kopan)<a href="https://twitter.com/TalKopan/statuses/1131608182080638979">1558631389.0</a></blockquote></div><p>Pfeiffer was there to promote the <a href="https://cdn3.ewg.org/sites/default/files/u352/Personal%20Care%20Products%20Safety%20Act%20of%202019.pdf?_ga=2.93952157.1275460450.1558705834-862620896.1558705834" target="_blank">Personal Care Product Safety Act</a>, a bi-partisan effort co-sponsored by Democratic California Senator Dianne Feinstein and Republican Maine Senator Susan Collins to update cosmetic regulations that have remained largely unchanged since 1938.</p><p>"Thanks to Sens. Feinstein and Collins and other congressional leaders for taking on such an important and overdue cause to clean up the cosmetics industry," Pfeiffer said in an <a href="https://www.ewg.org/release/ewg-board-member-michelle-pfeiffer-urges-congress-reform-outdated-cosmetics-law" target="_blank">EWG press release</a>. "Companies should not be allowed to use hazardous ingredients in products people use and apply to their skin every day. As a parent, I am particularly concerned about the ingredients in products marketed toward infants and children. Parents and expectant parents deserve to know that the soaps, lotions and other products they put on their kids' skin is free of toxic <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/chemicals" target="_self">chemicals</a>."</p><p>Currently, as <a href="https://www.ewg.org/personalcareproductsafetyact" target="_blank">EWG explained</a>, cosmetic manufacturers do not have to:</p><ol><li>Register their products with the FDA</li><li>Submit ingredients lists</li><li>Follow safe manufacturing standards</li><li>Share safety records</li><li>Report hospitalizations or other health impacts</li></ol>
<p>Food and medical products, on the other hand, are subject to all or most of these controls. The act supported by Pfeiffer would close these loopholes and empower the FDA to recall products if a company refuses to do so voluntarily, according to <a href="https://cdn.ewg.org/sites/default/files/report/Summary%20of%20the%20Personal%20Care%20Products%20Safety%20Act%20116th.pdf?_ga=2.265002127.1275460450.1558705834-862620896.1558705834" target="_blank">EWG's bill summary</a>.</p><p>Pfeiffer has long been concerned with the safety of cosmetics, particularly perfume, <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90354943/michelle-pfeiffer-fights-for-regulations-on-beauty-products" target="_blank">Fast Company noted</a>. In addition to lobbying for change, she has also launched her own brand of perfume called <a href="https://henryrose.com/" target="_blank">Henry Rose</a> that limits its ingredient pool to 250 out of the 3,000 used by most perfumers. Hers is the first perfume to earn the <a href="https://www.ewg.org/ewgverified/" target="_blank">EWG VERIFIED™</a> mark, the group said.</p><p>"Michelle first found EWG after doing her own research about what products were the safest for her family, and no one is more committed to seeing these much-needed reforms by Sens. Feinstein and Collins become law," EWG President Ken Cook, who joined Pfeiffer on Capitol Hill Thursday, said in the press release. "EWG has advocated for new federal cosmetics industry standards for nearly 20 years, and it feels like the moment is upon us."</p>
<div id="d948c" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="0ZMHRI1576662486"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1131630879191658496" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">"@EWG has advocated for new federal #cosmetics industry standards for nearly 20 years, and it feels like the moment… https://t.co/UxQdFWXPzA</div> — Monica (@Monica)<a href="https://twitter.com/MonicaAmarelo/statuses/1131630879191658496">1558636800.0</a></blockquote></div><p>Pfeiffer isn't the first celebrity to team up with EWG for safer cosmetics. Last year, Kourtney Kardashian attended a Senate briefing on the bill at EWG's invitation, The Washington Post reported.</p>
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Trending
Trump EPA Ignored Its Own Scientists' Calls to Ban Asbestos, 'Bombshell' Report Shows
09 May 2019
Health + Wellness
Bronwyn8 / iStock / Getty Images Plus
By Jessica Corbett
In a report that elicited calls for congressional action, The New York Times revealed Wednesday that "senior officials at the Environmental Protection Agency disregarded the advice of their own scientists and lawyers in April when the agency issued a rule that restricted but did not ban asbestos."
<p>Asbestos is a group of fibrous, heat-resistant minerals <a href="https://www.epa.gov/asbestos/learn-about-asbestos#find" target="_blank">used</a> in manufactured goods, particularly building materials. <a href="http://www.who.int/ipcs/assessment/public_health/asbestos/en/" target="_blank">According to</a> the World Health Organization, "All types of asbestos cause lung <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/cancer">cancer</a>, mesothelioma, cancer of the larynx and ovary, and asbestosis (fibrosis of the lungs)."</p><p><a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/epa" target="_self">EPA</a> Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in a <a href="https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-strengthens-regulation-asbestos-close-loophole-and-protect-consumers" target="_blank">statement</a> last month that the agency's new rule "gives us unprecedented authorities to protect public health" and block certain products from the market. However, environmental and public health advocates <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/climate/epa-asbestos-rule.html?module=inline" target="_blank">raised concerns</a> at the time about loopholes that remain, with one critic calling the regulation "toothless."</p><p>Criticism of the rule resurfaced Wednesday when the Times reported on a pair of internal EPA <a href="https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/815-e-p-a-memos-on-asbestos/12c87a96be998db10048/optimized/full.pdf#page=1" target="_blank">memos</a> from last August, in which more than a dozen agency experts wrote:</p><blockquote>Rather than allow for (even with restrictions) any new uses for asbestos, EPA should seek to ban all new uses of asbestos because the extreme harm from this chemical substance outweighs any benefit — and because there are adequate alternatives to asbestos.</blockquote>
<p>Melanie Benesh, legislative attorney at the Environmental Working Group (EWG), was among those who demanded action from federal lawmakers following the "<a href="https://twitter.com/jwalkenrdc/status/1126101410590986240" target="_blank">bombshell</a>" report.</p><p>"The sheer number of lives cut short and families destroyed from asbestos exposure demand nothing less than an outright ban," Benesh <a href="https://www.ewg.org/release/house-panel-considers-bill-ban-deadly-asbestos" target="_blank">said</a> in a statement. "I can't think of an easier vote for members of Congress to cast than for a bill that bans a substance responsible for the deaths of so many."</p><p>The reporting came as a subcommittee of the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce held a <a href="https://energycommerce.house.gov/committee-activity/hearings/hearing-on-ban-asbestos-now-taking-action-to-save-lives-and-livelihoods" target="_blank">hearing</a> Wednesday morning to consider legislation that would amend the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) "to prohibit the manufacture, processing, and distribution in commerce of asbestos and asbestos-containing mixtures and articles."</p><p>"If Administrator Wheeler and the Trump administration won't act," said Benesh, "then Congress must by passing this critical piece of legislation that finally bans asbestos."</p><p>Sharing a link to the Times article on Twitter, Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.), the committee's chairman, said, "This is exactly why we need to ban asbestos and why my committee is holding a hearing today on legislation that would fully ban this toxic material."</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">This is exactly why we need to ban asbestos and why my Committee is holding a hearing today on legislation that would fully ban this toxic material. <a href="https://t.co/QAgNBqFCut">https://t.co/QAgNBqFCut</a></p>— Rep. Frank Pallone (@FrankPallone) <a href="https://twitter.com/FrankPallone/status/1126120255229767680?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 8, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<p>During the committee <a href="https://energycommerce.house.gov/newsroom/press-releases/pallone-remarks-at-legislative-hearing-on-bill-to-ban-asbestos" target="_blank">hearing</a>, Pallone noted that it has been 40 years since the EPA started its work to ban asbestos under the TSCA, 30 years since the agency finalized its ban, and 28 years since the ban was struck down in court — and yet, "asbestos is still being imported into the United States, it is still being used in this country, and it is still killing about 40,000 Americans every year."</p><p>"Twenty-eight years of frustration, of sickness, and loss," he said. "We have known the dangers of asbestos for decades. Enough is enough."</p><p>The hearing centered on <a href="https://energycommerce.house.gov/sites/democrats.energycommerce.house.gov/files/documents/BILLS-116hr1603ih.pdf" target="_blank">H.R. 1603</a> — also known as the Alan Reinstein Ban Asbestos Now Act of 2019. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.), the bill's sponsor, took to Twitter Wednesday to highlight a testimony from the widow of the legislation's namesake.</p><p>After Alan Reinstein was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2003, Linda Reinstein and Doug Larkin co-founded the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO). Alan Reinstein and <a href="https://www.asbestosdiseaseawareness.org/archives/43970" target="_blank">Larkin</a> both died in the years that followed, but Linda Reinstein remains ADAO's president and CEO.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Chairman <a href="https://twitter.com/FrankPallone?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@FrankPallone</a> was right when he said at the beginning of today's hearing that “enough is enough… We don’t have time for more legal maneuvering in a drawn-out court battle while tens of thousands of people are dying.” We must <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BanAsbestosNow?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BanAsbestosNow</a>.</p>— Suzanne Bonamici (@RepBonamici) <a href="https://twitter.com/RepBonamici/status/1126160134164631552?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 8, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<p>"I'm honored to have H.R. 1603 named after my husband," Linda Reinstein told lawmakers Wednesday, "but it's really for the hundreds of thousands of Alans who have paid a price for this man-made disaster with their lives."</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Great article by <a href="https://twitter.com/EcoWatch?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@EcoWatch</a>: Why <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Asbestos?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Asbestos</a> Is Still a Major Public Health Threat in the U.S. by <a href="https://twitter.com/orosane?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@orosane</a>. <a href="https://twitter.com/EPA?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@EPA</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/EPAAWheeler?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@EPAAWheeler</a>, Stop Imports and Use. Asbestos Kills. <a href="https://t.co/2aJ1vXjEOp">https://t.co/2aJ1vXjEOp</a></p>— Linda Reinstein (@Linda_ADAO) <a href="https://twitter.com/Linda_ADAO/status/1032031260477075456?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 21, 2018</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/05/08/bombshell-report-internal-memos-show-trump-epa-ignored-agency-scientists-calls-ban" target="_blank">Common Dreams</a>.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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John Keeble / Getty Images
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning Tuesday urging customers not to use certain Claire's cosmetics products that may be contaminated with asbestos.
<p>FDA testing turned up tremolite asbestos in the following products, the agency said:</p><ol class="ee-ol"><li>Claire's Eye Shadows – Batch No/Lot No: 08/17</li><li>Claire's Compact Powder – Batch No/Lot No: 07/15</li><li>Claire's Contour Palette – Batch No/Lot No: 04/17</li></ol><p>Claire's, which markets jewelry and makeup to teens and pre-teens, told the FDA that it did not believe the products in question were still for sale in its stores, but the FDA urged anyone who still had these products at home to stop using them.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-twitter_embed">
</p><div id="d3302" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="CQ5YD91576662488"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1103021250249703425" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">#WARNING: FDA is advising consumers NOT to use certain @claires eye shadows, compact powder, & contour powder produ… https://t.co/8jHDCrlHkp</div> — FDA Cosmetics (@FDA Cosmetics)<a href="https://twitter.com/FDACosmetics/statuses/1103021250249703425">1551815733.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p></p><p>Reports that Clare's cosmetics contained tremolite asbestos first emerged in 2017, <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/05/health/claires-asbestos-fda-cosmetics/index.html" target="_blank">CNN reported</a>, and the retailer took nine makeup products off of the shelf in response. The FDA then tested the products as a response to those concerns. </p><p>"Each day, cosmetic products are sold to consumers across the U.S. – some to children under the age of 18, still in the formative years of development. These products are used as part of daily beauty and cleansing routines, often times on the skin's most sensitive areas, like the face, eyelids and lips. That's why it's so important that cosmetic products are safe, properly labeled and free of contamination," outgoing FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb and Director of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition Susan Mayne said in a <a href="https://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm632736.htm" target="_blank">statement about the test results</a>.<br></p><p>Claire's, which filed for bankruptcy in March 2018 and only emerged last October, disputed the FDA's results. </p><p>"The recent test results the FDA have shared with us show significant errors. Specifically, the FDA test reports have mischaracterized fibers in the products as asbestos, in direct contradiction to established EPA and USP criterion for classifying asbestos fibers. Despite our efforts to discuss these issues with the FDA, they insisted on moving forward with their release," the company said in a statement.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-twitter_embed">
</p><div id="d52df" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="PITD351576662488"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1103303881776422912" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">At Claire’s, customer safety is paramount, and we pride ourselves on providing our customers with the highest quali… https://t.co/qyacKoOYRU</div> — Claire's (@Claire's)<a href="https://twitter.com/claires/statuses/1103303881776422912">1551883118.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p></p><p>Claire's further claimed that tests conducted by independent, accredited laboratories in 2018 had shown that the products followed safety guidelines.<br></p><p>"Out of an abundance of caution, we have removed the three products identified by the FDA from our stores, and are also removing any remaining talc-based cosmetic products," company spokeswoman Melanie Berry told <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/05/business/claires-cosmetics-asbestos-fda.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&fbclid=IwAR2cr91hu8NdKn8dk5UKGTdntNNVcAWjsRogH9ZKc6qLWmpe743A02sVy9A" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>. "There is no evidence that any products sold by Claire's are unsafe."</p><p>Asbestos can end up in makeup products because it is found near talc, a common cosmetics ingredient. Because of this, talc can end up being contaminated with asbestos if not mined carefully, the FDA explained. Late last year, a Reuters investigation revealed that <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/asbestos" target="_blank">Johnson & Johnson had known</a> about asbestos contamination in its talcum baby powder for decades. Asbestos is a known carcinogen that has been linked to many health problems including mesothelioma, an aggressive <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/cancer" target="_blank">cancer</a>. </p><p>In their statement, Gottlieb and Mayne explained that the law governing the FDA's oversight of cosmetics had not been updated since 1938 and does not require the FDA to test cosmetics products before they are sold to customers. </p><p>"[W]hen it comes to cosmetics," they said, "our authority hasn't changed in many years even as the industry has undergone rapid evolution. Right now, when it comes to cosmetics, companies and individuals who market these products in the U.S. hold the responsibility for the safety and labeling of their products."</p><p>Gottlieb and Mayne announced various steps they would take to help ensure cosmetics sold in the U.S. are safe, including</p><p>1. Ask cosmetics manufacturers for information on how they make sure their products are safe, especially concerning how they ensure talc is asbestos free.</p><p><span></span>2. Ask companies to voluntarily register their products and list their ingredients with the FDA's <a href="https://www.fda.gov/Cosmetics/RegistrationProgram/default.htm" target="_blank">Voluntary Cosmetic Registration Program (VCRP)</a>.</p><p><a href="https://www.fda.gov/Cosmetics/RegistrationProgram/default.htm" target="_blank"></a>3. Continue to respond to concerns about particular ingredients, and use science to assess if any should be banned or monitored more closely.</p><p><span></span>4. Continue work on keeping talc safe from asbestos specifically.</p><p><span></span>5. Work with Congress to update the ways that the FDA is empowered to regulate cosmetics.</p><p>The 2017 testing also showed asbestos in Justice makeup products, and the FDA's testing confirmed its presence in one Justice cosmetic, but the product in question was recalled in December 2017. While Clarie's has withdrawn the products, it has refused to recall them, the FDA said.</p><p>"We understand how concerning this finding is for any consumer and parents whose children may have used one of these products. We take these concerns, and our obligation to protect consumers, seriously. Because of the health risks posed by asbestos, which are well-documented by other government agencies, we want to reassure all parents and consumers that the FDA is dedicated to exploring new ways to better protect Americans from this and other public health risks and preventing consumers from being exposed to similar risks from cosmetics," Gottlieb and Mayne said. </p>
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Johnson & Johnson Knew About Asbestos in Baby Powder for Decades, Reuters Investigation Finds
17 December 2018
Health + Wellness
A container of Johnson's baby powder sits on a table. Justin Sullivan / Getty Images
By Jessica Corbett
A Reuters investigation published Friday charges that Johnson & Johnson, a multi-billion dollar company known for its healthcare products, knew for decades that its iconic talcum baby powder "was sometimes tainted with carcinogenic asbestos," but concealed the information from regulators and the public.
<p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-twitter_embed">
</p><div id="a8205" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="DJJZK01576662488"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1073616354991894528" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Johnson & Johnson knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder https://t.co/iK51sDGSBS via @ReutersTV… https://t.co/s1LDDF2KCt</div> — Reuters (@Reuters)<a href="https://twitter.com/Reuters/statuses/1073616354991894528">1544805060.0</a></blockquote></div>
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<p>Asbestos, "the name given to six minerals that occur naturally in the environment as bundles of fibers," has been used in North America's automotive, construction and shipbuilding industries since the late 1800s, <a href="https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/substances/asbestos/asbestos-fact-sheet" target="_blank">according to</a> the National Cancer Institute. The World Health Organization (WHO) <a href="http://www.who.int/ipcs/assessment/public_health/asbestos/en/" target="_blank">warns</a> that "all types of asbestos cause lung cancer, mesothelioma, cancer of the larynx and ovary, and asbestosis (fibrosis of the lungs)."<br></p><p>Because asbestos sometimes occurs in the earth along with talc, <a href="https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/talcum-powder-and-cancer.html" target="_blank">contamination</a> is possible. Reuters<em>—</em>along with attorneys for more than 11,000 plaintiffs currently suing Johnson & Johnson, claiming the company's products caused their <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/cancer">cancer</a>—examined memos, internal reports, and other confidential documents as well as deposition and trial testimony.</p><p>That mountain of evidence, according to Reuters, revealed:</p><blockquote>... that from at least 1971 to the early 2000s, the company's raw talc and finished powders sometimes tested positive for small amounts of asbestos, and that company executives, mine managers, scientists, doctors, and lawyers fretted over the problem and how to address it while failing to disclose it to regulators or the public.<br>The documents also depict successful efforts to influence U.S. regulators' plans to limit asbestos in cosmetic talc products and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/johnsonandjohnson-cancer/#johnson-research-sidebar" target="_blank">scientific research</a> on the health effects of talc.<br></blockquote><p>While, over the past two decades, some legal challenges claiming that Johnson & Johnson products were tainted with asbestos and caused cancer have been unsuccessful, three recent developments seem to signal a shift. A pair of cases in New Jersey and California saw significant awards for mesothelioma patients, and a "watershed" verdict in St. Louis expanded the company's potential liability.</p><p>Outlining the St. Louis case, Reuters explained:</p><blockquote>The 22 plaintiffs were the first to succeed with a claim that asbestos-tainted Baby Powder and Shower to Shower talc, a longtime brand the company sold in 2012, caused ovarian cancer, which is much more common than mesothelioma. The jury awarded them $4.69 billion in damages. Most of the talc cases have been brought by women with ovarian cancer who say they regularly used J&J talc products as a perineal antiperspirant and deodorant.<br></blockquote><p>"When people really understand what's going on," said Mark Lanier, an attorney for one of the plaintiffs, "I think it increases J&J's exposure a thousand-fold."</p><p>Johnson & Johnson, as Reuters noted, "has dominated the talc powder market for more than 100 years, its sales outpacing those of all competitors combined ... And while talc products contributed just $420 million to J&J's $76.5 billion in revenue last year, Baby Powder is considered an essential facet of the healthcare-products maker's carefully tended image as a caring company—a 'sacred cow,' as one 2003 internal email put it."</p><p>Another attorney who's not tied to the cases against Johnson & Johnson <a href="https://twitter.com/CivilTrial/status/1073592173482991617" target="_blank">concluded on Twitter</a> that the 1970s memos mentioned in Reuters' report are "on par with key docs uncovered in the tobacco litigation."</p><p>Journalist Eoin Higgins, also responding <a href="https://twitter.com/EoinHiggins_/status/1073626878454480897" target="_blank">on Twitter</a>, simply said: "What a story. What the fuck."</p><p>Johnson & Johnson, meanwhile, has vowed to appeal all verdicts against it and maintains that its products are safe. The company's vice president of global media relations, Ernie Knewitz, wrote in an email to Reuters:</p><blockquote>Plaintiffs attorneys out for personal financial gain are distorting historical documents and intentionally creating confusion in the courtroom and in the media ... This is all a calculated attempt to distract from the fact that thousands of independent tests prove our talc does not contain asbestos or cause cancer. Any suggestion that Johnson & Johnson knew or hid information about the safety of talc is false.<br></blockquote><p>Following the report, the publicly traded company's shares <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/14/johnson--johnson-shares-drop-on-reuters-report-that-the-company-knew-for-decades-of-asbestos-in-its-baby-powder.html?__source=twitter%7Cmain" target="_blank">plummeted</a> by more than 11 percent.</p>
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</p><div id="67b34" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="18E26D1576662489"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1073608347436298240" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Johnson & Johnson shares on track to post their biggest percentage drop in more than a decade after @Reuters report… https://t.co/lvVTe2RXGu</div> — Reuters (@Reuters)<a href="https://twitter.com/Reuters/statuses/1073608347436298240">1544803151.0</a></blockquote></div>
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<p><em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/12/14/borrowing-big-tobaccos-playbook-johnson-johnson-knew-about-asbestos-baby-powder" target="_blank">Common Dreams</a>.</em><br></p>
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L: Michael Coghlan / Flickr R: Coloured chest X-ray of a male patient showing evidence of a mesothelioma lung cancer, which is usually associated with exposure to asbestos. Zephyr / Science Photo Library / Getty Images
The Environmental Working Group Action Fund, the political arm of the Environmental Working Group (EWG), released a first-ever report that scores how each member of the U.S. House of Representatives voted on chemical policy and safety.
The scorecard shows that 140 House members voted against chemical safeguards every time, while 149 members consistently voted for chemical safety protections.
<p style="">
"While no president has ever done as much to weaken safeguards for toxic chemicals as
<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/trump">Donald Trump</a>, too many members of Congress have collaborated with the Trump administration or cast votes in favor of policies that reversed or delayed chemical bans, gutted chemical safety rules, rejected sound science, weakened worker and consumer protections, and denied justice to asbestos victims," the <a href="https://www.ewgaction.org/protectyourhealth/toxiccomrades.html" target="_blank">report</a> said.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-twitter_embed">
</p><div id="63690" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="GKLI201576683798"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="996391819305861120" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">#Trump Admin. Blocked Toxic Chemicals Study Fearing 'Public Relations Nightmare': EcoWatch https://t.co/gyyl1WYE2W</div> — EcoInternet (@EcoInternet)<a href="https://twitter.com/EcoInternetDrGB/statuses/996391819305861120">1526393296.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p></p><p style="">The report specifically focused on
<a href="https://www.ewgaction.org/protectyourhealth/billsummaries.html" target="_blank">17 bills and amendments</a> that were up for a vote during the 115th and 114th Congresses.<br></p><p style="">
The EWG Action Fund also <a href="https://www.ewgaction.org/protectyourhealth/toxiccomrades.html" target="_blank">singled out</a> several lawmakers, including Rep. Jason Lewis (R-Minn.), Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas), Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas), Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.) and Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.), who the action fund says introduced or co-sponsored measures that weaken existing chemical safety laws.</p><div id="0fcef" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="KY5PHG1576683799"><blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-version="4" style=" background:#FFF; border:0;
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<div style=" background:url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAACwAAAAsCAMAAAApWqozAAAAGFBMVEUiIiI9PT0eHh4gIB4hIBkcHBwcHBwcHBydr+JQAAAACHRSTlMABA4YHyQsM5jtaMwAAADfSURBVDjL7ZVBEgMhCAQBAf//42xcNbpAqakcM0ftUmFAAIBE81IqBJdS3lS6zs3bIpB9WED3YYXFPmHRfT8sgyrCP1x8uEUxLMzNWElFOYCV6mHWWwMzdPEKHlhLw7NWJqkHc4uIZphavDzA2JPzUDsBZziNae2S6owH8xPmX8G7zzgKEOPUoYHvGz1TBCxMkd3kwNVbU0gKHkx+iZILf77IofhrY1nYFnB/lQPb79drWOyJVa/DAvg9B/rLB4cC+Nqgdz/TvBbBnr6GBReqn/nRmDgaQEej7WhonozjF+Y2I/fZou/qAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC);
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<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BUS8nLOBLer/" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif;
font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;
word-wrap:break-word;" target="_top">@aguawater1394 on Instagram: “Resist! Organize! Vote! #beatjason2018 #beatjason #repjasonlewis #resist #saveobamacare #mn02 #mndfl #minnesota #minnesotadfl #politics…”</a></p>
</div></blockquote></div><p style="">"Over and over, too many legislators voted to support President Trump's agenda to eliminate toxic chemical safeguards," said Scott Faber, speaking on behalf of EWG Action Fund, in a statement received by EcoWatch.<br></p><p>
<span></span>"Too many members of Congress have collaborated with the Trump administration to advance policies that reject sound science and weaken worker and consumer protections," Faber added. "And many more stood by silently when Trump's EPA reversed or delayed chemical bans or gutted chemical safety rules."
</p><p style="">
Most Republican members of Congress were graded poorly in the report. However, the action fund praised the lawmakers that bucked their party to vote for chemical safety, including Reps. Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J.), John Duncan (R-Tenn.), Walter Jones (R-N.C.) and others who
<a href="http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2017/roll148.xml" target="_blank">voted</a> to protect asbestos victims.</p><div id="dd89d" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="DZ528S1576683799"><blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-version="4" style=" background:#FFF; border:0;
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</div></blockquote></div><p style="">The action fund also noted that Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) voted for funding chemical reviews and against a farm bill that included pesticide safety loopholes. Florida Reps. Carlos Curbelo and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen voted against efforts to weaken agency science, and Illinois Republican Rep. Rodney Davis voted against toxic <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/air-pollution">air pollution</a> loopholes.<br></p>
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EPA Is Failing to Protect School Children From Asbestos, Internal Watchdog Agency Says
18 September 2018
Health + Wellness
An asbestos cleanup crew before the demolition of Moorpark High School in CA in 1996. Carlos Chavez / LA Times / Getty Images
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) isn't doing enough to protect the 50 million school children and seven million teachers and staff who spend time in U.S. private and public schools from asbestos exposure.
That's the conclusion of a report released Monday by the EPA's Office of Inspector General (OIG), the agency's internal watchdog.
<p>The report assessed the EPA's compliance with the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act (AHERA) of 1986, an amendment to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) that requires local education agencies to inspect schools for asbestos, make asbestos management plans and carry out actions to reduce or prevent asbestos exposure. </p><p>"Even though the EPA was responsible for conducting AHERA compliance inspections for the majority of states, it conducted fewer inspections overall than the states responsible for their own inspections," the report found. </p><p>Between 2011 and 2015, the EPA conducted only 13 percent of inspections required under AHERA, while states in charge of their own inspections conducted 87 percent. </p><p>The report further found that only one EPA region had a strategy for monitoring compliance under TSCA, and five of 10 regions only inspected for asbestos when there was a complaint. </p><p>"Without compliance inspections, the EPA cannot know whether schools pose an actual risk of asbestos exposure to students and personnel," the report said.</p><p>The OIG recommended that the EPA mandate that regions incorporate asbestos monitoring into TSCA monitoring plans generally and tell local education agencies that they must work with regional offices to establish asbestos management plans that are maintained and to make sure the plans are being followed.</p><p>Trump's EPA blamed the Obama administration for the lax enforcement, and it is true that the period highlighted by the study coincides with the Obama presidency. </p><p>"The previous administration did not do enough to provide adequate protections to children from asbestos exposure. The Trump administration is taking proactive steps to reduce asbestos exposure, which includes a new proposed regulation that, for the first time, would prohibit the currently unregulated former uses of asbestos," EPA spokesman Michael Abboud said in a statement reported by <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/407063-gov-watchdog-epa-failed-to-properly-monitor-asbestos-at-schools" target="_blank">The Hill</a>. </p><p>The <a href="https://www.epa.gov/asbestos/federal-register-notice-proposed-snur-asbestos" target="_blank">proposed regulation</a> in question, the Significant New Use Rule (SNUR) for asbestos, would require manufacturers to gain EPA approval before starting importing, manufacturing or processing of asbestos.</p><p>But public health advocates, and some EPA staffers, have <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/epa-asbestos-trump-2594546540.html" target="_self">expressed concerns</a> that the SNUR could actually be used to expand the use of asbestos in the U.S. by allowing companies to petition for uses on a case-by-case basis. </p><p>Trump's EPA has also been criticized for saying it will <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/epa-limited-risk-assessment-2576231762.html" target="_self">not consider</a> the health risk posed by asbestos already in the environment when it evaluates it as one of the first 10 chemicals it will study for a potential ban under a 2016 amendment to TSCA. </p><p>President <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/donald-trump" target="_self">Donald Trump</a> has famously praised asbestos, and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/russian-company-trump-asbestos-2585711084.html" target="_self">his image</a> was stamped by a Russian asbestos company on plastic wrap containing their product. </p><p>Significant amounts of asbestos were used in American schools from 1946 to 1972, the OIG report said. </p><p>It was commonly used as insulation and flame retardant, and can be found in older schools in vinyl flooring, textured paint and patching on walls and steam and water pipes. </p><p>Asbestos is a carcinogen that causes as many as 15,000 deaths a year in the U.S., according to an <a href="https://www.ewg.org/" target="_blank">Environmental Working Group</a> (EWG) <a href="http://www.asbestosnation.org/new-estimate-finds-asbestos-kills-12000-15000-americans-a-year/" target="_blank">study</a>. </p><p>Children and teachers in schools can be exposed when asbestos is disturbed by construction or remodeling, the OIG said. </p><p>"Asbestos exposure risk is higher in children because they are more active, breathe at higher rates and through the mouth, and spend more time closer to the floor where asbestos fibers can accumulate," the report said.</p>
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</p><div id="b1556" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="1K3MAX1576662489"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1032111911545069568" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Sixty-five countries currently ban #asbestos which was once widely used as an insulator and flame retardant in buil… https://t.co/koY3eGWh3L</div> — Save the U.S. EPA (@Save the U.S. EPA)<a href="https://twitter.com/SavetheUSEPA/statuses/1032111911545069568">1534909630.0</a></blockquote></div>
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