California and EPA to Work Together on Green Chemistry Promotion

The USEPA and the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) have signed a formal Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to cooperate on the development of green chemistry.  The MOU is designed to use the combined resources of these two agencies to promote green chemistry and reduce the amounts of chemicals considered "toxic" in consumer products.  According to the DTSC press release:

This formal agreement outlines principles by which DTSC and U.S. EPA will cooperate to reduce toxic chemicals in consumer products, create new business opportunities in the emerging safer consumer products economy, and reduce the burden on consumers and businesses struggling to identify what’s in the products they buy for their families and customers.

More information about the cooperative MOU can be found in the DTSC press release.

The MOU itself can be read here.

New California Study Shows High Incidence of Chemicals in Pregnant Women

A study published online today in Environmental Health Perspectives shows widespread evidence of many common chemicals in pregnant women.  The authors, who are at the University of California in San Francisco, "analyzed biomonitoring data from the National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey (NHANES) to characterize both individual and multiple chemical exposures in U.S. pregnant women."  Data for a total of 268 women were examined for 163 chemical analytes in 12 chemical classes.  According to the abstract,

We calculated the number of chemicals detected within the following chemical classes; polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), perfluorinated compounds (PFCs), organochlorine pesticides, and phthalates, and across multiple chemical classes. 

Results showed that "the percent of pregnant women with detectable levels of an individual chemical ranged from 0 to 100 percent."  For "certain PCBs, organochlorine pesticides, PFCs, phenols, PBDEs, phthalates, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and perchlorate" there was detection in "99 to 100% of pregnant women."  Interestingly, while much is being said about levels in pregnant women, the authors report that these levels were "similar or lower than levels in non-pregnant women."

Needless to say, the fact that pregnant women can be exposed to, and have detected, multiple chemicals raises the risk of transferring those chemicals to the growing fetus.  Other studies have demonstrated that umbilical cord blood and newborns often may already carry a body burden of chemicals.  Advocacy groups like Safer Chemicals Healthy Families were quick to jump on the results, saying:

"These findings should be a call to action for Congress and the Administration." said Andy Igrejas, director of the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families coalition. "We've known for years that exposures in the womb to toxic chemicals have a profound effect on the health of children. Here we have confirmation that pregnant women are carrying these chemicals around in their bodies." 

TSCA reform bills, of course, were introduced in the last Congress and are expected to be ignored by the newly elected Congress, though both industry and advocacy groups hope that the new House leadership will make some effort to modernize the 34 year old law.  All parties seem to agree that a new law is needed; the questions now are what such a law would look like, and more fundamentally, whether any action will be taken at all given the divided Congress.

It's January 1st, where is California's Green Chemistry Law?

Not in California.  At least not yet.  The California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) has missed the January 1, 2011 deadline for issuing its final Safer Chemical Product Alternatives (SCPA) regulations - aka, the green chemistry regs.  The regulations remained unfinalized in part because of severe criticism that the draft regulations didn't go far enough.  Even the primary legislative sponsor of the green chemistry bill, Assemblyman Mike Fleuer, felt the rules were not strict enough.  Many critics felt the proposed rules had been watered down so much that they would actually reverse progress that had already been made to control chemicals.

The plan is to revisit SCPA this month (or so) and try to beef them up.  One major concern is that the proposed regulations would make it easier for manufacturers to replace chemicals that were identified as harmful with other chemicals in which no determination of safety had even been made at all.  Hardly the best option, as the world is full of examples of unintended consequences when eliminating one hazard without adequate assessment of the substitutes.

So it is back to the drawing board with an eraser and a thicker pencil.  The goal seems to be to "get it right" instead of just get it done by the deadline.  The delay also shifts the burden to the incoming Democratic Governorship of Jerry Brown, though outgoing Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had also supported the green chemistry initiative.

Whatever form the final SCPA regulations take could have far-reaching ramifications.  As has happened in the past, as California goes, so often go other states and/or federal level regulations.  While certainly not a universal truth, the state does tend to be a trendsetter in this regard, in large part because the size of its economy requires companies that want access to its market must comply or lose out.  And companies much prefer to have one set of rules to live by, not 50 individual sets of (often conflicting) rules.

Happy New Year!

American Cleaning Institute Finds Fault with California "Safer Products" Regulations

The American Cleaning Institute (ACI; formerly the Soap and Detergent Association) has filed comments to the California Department of Toxic Substances stating that the new regulations are "bureaucratic, punitive, and adversarial."  In their press release, ACI states:

California’s proposed regulations for “safer consumer product alternatives” are bureaucratic in the extreme, resource intensive for California government and the regulated community, punitive and adversarial, according to the American Cleaning Institute. 

ACI's detailed comments (93 pages, including attachments) urge the California DTSC to work with stakeholders to address proposals in need of "significant revision" as the current proposal would not accomplish "the goals
of the state’s Green Chemistry Initiative."  ACI complained about many parts of the proposed regulations, including their overly broad scope, a "flawed" chemical prioritization process, onerous reporting requirements, and what they see as "disincentives" to the development of safer consumer productes.

The full ACI comments can be read here.

California OEHHA to Hold Public Workshop on Green Chemistry

As I noted last week, California EPA's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) issued a "pre-regulatory draft" of a hazards traits document. Now they have announced that next week, Monday, August 23, 2010, OEHHA will hold a workshop to discuss the draft, which is called "Green Chemistry Hazard Traits, Endpoints, and Other Relevant Data."

According to OEHHA, the draft document:

"identifies and defines the hazard traits; lists general categories of endpoints and other relevant data for each toxicological and environmental hazard trait; provides general methods for determining whether or not a chemical has a toxicological hazard trait; and provides specific methods for determining whether or not a chemical has carcinogenicity, developmental toxicity or reproductive toxicity hazard traits." 

The workshop will take place at the California EPA headquarters in Sacramento.  For more information on the workshop, timing and directions go to the OEHHA page.

California Dept Toxic Substances Control Announces Green Chemistry Initiative Symposium

The California Department of Toxic Substances Control announces that it will hold a symposium to "explore the alternative analysis process of chemicals in consumer products through case studies from experts actively engaged in various segments of the marketplace."

The event, called "Alternative Analysis Symposium II - Case Studies from the Field," will be held in Sacramento and be webcast live on July 28, 2010.

Presenters include:

George Thompson, Ph.D., Chemical Compliance Systems

Thomas Carter, The Wercs

Margaret Whittaker, Ph.D., Toxservices

Teresa McGrath, NSF International

Pam Palitz, Environment California

Helen Holder, Hewlett-Packard Company

Michael Schmeida, Tremco Inc.

Dennis McGavis, Shaw Industries

More information and an agenda will be available at the event web site.

Green chemistry gains another proponent in California

Green chemistry has been a hot topic in the last few years, with California, the EPA, the EU, and others pushing to encourage safer, more health and environmentally friendly, and sustainable chemicals. Toward this end, last week saw the formal opening of the Green Products Innovation Institute (GPII) in San Francisco, a non-profit organization founded to promote the cradle-to-cradle (C2C) concept.

The idea of C2C was first developed by architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart. The process looks at the entire life cycle of a product, from its initial extraction from virgin ore to its disposal, or actually, to its reuse or recycling. From their web site, www.gpinnovation.org:

The Green Products Innovation Institute (GPII) is a non-profit organization created to bring about a large scale transformation in the way we make the things we make.

Rather than focusing on how industry can become "less bad," the GPII is set up to be a resource for those who aspire to do "more good". We promote an innovation-oriented model for eliminating toxic chemicals and other negative environmental impacts. The GPII prescribes a set of design principles, based on the laws of nature, to help businesses create products that are safe for people and the environment. This rethinking of how we design, manufacture, use and reuse materials will spur a new era of innovation, simultaneously driving economic, ecological and social prosperity.

GPII plans to work with academia, NGOs, government, and industry to establish a product rating system. Products meeting the criteria will receive a C2C certification mark.

While the founders hope to expand internationally, locating the headquarters in California is no accident as the state has been working to implement a green chemistry philosophy. Indeed, Governor Schwarzenegger attended the opening and reiterated GPII's mantra that the "time is now for us to go beyond simply being 'less bad' and to lead the world in the invention and innovation of 'more good,' which he sees as a way to a "prosperous Cradle-to-Cradle economy."

Initially, funding of GPII is from private donations from organizations and individuals, but once established they expect to be funded through training and product registration fees.

Recession Delaying California Biomonitoring Program Implementation

As people following this blog no doubt have noticed, biomonitoring seems to be playing a significant part in the discussions for reform of the Toxic Substances Chemical Act (TSCA). California always seems to lead the pack when it comes to making changes that protect the environment, but the current recession has caused some problems for the watershed biomonitoring program already signed into law in 2006.

Like many states hard hit by the recession, California has recently had to furlough some staff at the California EPA, which along with the California Department of Public Health, administers the biomonitoring program and that has meant a delay in issuing a mandatory report to the state legislature on the status of the program. But the furloughs seem to be more of the tip of the iceberg, the mass of which is related to the overall deficiency in funding for the program.

The realities of the economy are that money is tight, especially with the state and federal agencies that are responsible for administering the various human and environmental health protections. Evidence seems to show that the economy is picking up and that 2010 will be a better year for most industries, including the chemical industry, but government agencies are likely to see continued cost containment for quite some time. The ramifications of this are two-fold. First, the recovering, though still fairly weak, economy may be used as an excuse not to "put additional regulatory burdens on industry." But it also demonstrates why industry, and not governments, should be responsible for demonstrating the safety of chemicals and products put on the market. Currently the system requires EPA to find significant harm, something they can't easily do given TSCA's lack of requirement to provide test data. The new system will almost certainly require test data, or other relevant and defensible data, to be submitted before new chemicals go on the market and to keep existing chemicals on the market.

The testing issue raises some additional questions related to animal welfare and the extrapolation of animal data to human effects. I'll try to address this aspect in future posts. Let me know if there are specific questions or issues that you would like me to discuss.

Schwarzenegger's Climate Summit Bags Some White House Staff

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will reprise the tradition he started last year and host the second annual “Governors' Global Climate Summit 2” in Los Angeles from September 30 to October 3, 2009. This year he will boast some representatives from the current Administration in Washington, DC. The summit is being held in partnership with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).

Obama EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and White House Council on Environmental Quality Chairwoman Nancy Sutley are expected to attend. Jackson will be keynote speaker. Joining them are expected to be UNICEF Executive Director Ann Veneman, UN Assistant Secretary-General Olav Kjørven, journalist and author Thomas Friedman (Hot, Flat and Crowded), and former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.

This second annual summit is being co-hosted by Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle (D), Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D), New York Gov. David Paterson (D) and Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell (R). Doyle also co-hosted last year's event, but the others are new as the other 2008 sponsors have moved on (Florida's Governor Crist to a run for a Senate seat, Kansas Governor Sebelius to Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Illinois Governor Blagojevich to talk radio [and perhaps jail])

The summit in part aims to gain UN recognition for so-called “sub-national” agreements between states and developing countries meant to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Featured discussions and announcements at the summit are expected to include: reaching a new global deal in Copenhagen; the essential role of progressive states and provinces; urban area contributions and solutions to climate change; forestry solutions and recommendations to negotiators in Copenhagen; global strategies to address the inevitable impacts of climate change; and climate leadership in driving technological innovation and economic growth.