"EPA whistleblowers have provided evidence that agency officials avoided calculating the health risks posed by hundreds of new chemicals."
"Scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency have provided The Intercept with new information showing that senior staff have made chemicals appear safer — sometimes dodging restrictions on their use — by minimizing the estimates of how much is released into the environment.
The EPA gauges the potential risk posed by a chemical using two measures: how toxic the agency considers it and how much of the substance the public will likely be exposed to. Whistleblowers from the EPA’s New Chemicals Division have already provided The Intercept with evidence that managers and other officials were pressuring them to assess chemicals to be less toxic than they actually are — and sometimes removing references to their harms from chemical assessments.
Now new documents, including meeting summaries, internal emails, and screenshots from the EPA’s computer system, along with interviews with whistleblowers and other EPA scientists, show that the agency’s New Chemicals Division has avoided calculating the exposure to — and thus the risk posed by — hundreds of chemicals and have repeatedly resisted calls to change that policy even after scientists have shown that it puts the public at risk."
Sharon Lerner reports for The Intercept September 18, 2021.
SEE ALSO:
Part 1: "Whistleblowers Expose Corruption in EPA Chemical Safety Office" (The Intercept)
Part 2: "Leaked Audio Shows Pressure to Overrule Scientists in “Hair-on-Fire” Cases" (The Intercept)
