Posted on February 1, 2021
On February 3, 2021, ADAO will participate in the “US EPA: Chrysotile Asbestos Risk Evaluation and Management” public webinar. This is an opportunity for stakeholders to provide their perspectives on the risk management process for asbestos under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Stakeholders can also weigh in on next steps following completion of the final risk evaluation for Asbestos Part 1: Chrysotile Asbestos and the announced Part 2 evaluation, which will be focused on the risks of ongoing use and disposal of legacy asbestos in millions of structures across the country.
Although registration for oral comments has closed, you can still register to listen. Joining me in making oral comments about risk management are Dr. Christine Oliver, Dr. Barry Castleman, Brent Kynoch, Bob Sussman, and others.
EPA is at a critical juncture in the long fight to ban asbestos and the pressure is on the Agency to finally step up and deliver.
Asbestos continues to kill nearly 40,000 people each year and represents one of the largest preventable health threats that our population faces. In contrast to nearly 70 other countries, the US has not banned asbestos and its importation and use remain largely unrestricted.
Scientists and public health advocates have long called for a ban on asbestos but progress has been disappointing. The current EPA efforts to address asbestos are the latest chapter in a long and frustrating process that began in the 1980s.
Enacted in 1976, TSCA is the federal law that provides EPA with authority to assess and regulate the risks of chemicals to health and the environment. After years of research and analysis, in 1989, EPA issued a comprehensive and groundbreaking rule prohibiting most asbestos uses. Unfortunately, following an industry legal challenge, the rule was overturned in 1991. The court’s decision did not reject the massive evidence of the link between asbestos and serious disease, but was based on certain rigid requirements in TSCA that EPA had not satisfied despite the overwhelming documentation of asbestos’ serious risks to health.
In 2016, TSCA was reformed, and there was a bipartisan recognition that asbestos was a poster child for TSCA’s failure to protect public health, and that any new law needed to ensure that EPA could finally do its job and ban asbestos. Following the TSCA amendments, many in Congress and the public hoped EPA would use its expanded authority to reinstate the 1989 asbestos ban. However, four years after asbestos was selected as one of the first 10 substances to undergo risk evaluations under the new law, the outlook for effective regulation remains highly uncertain.
The Trump EPA issued its Final Risk Evaluation (FRE) for Asbestos on December 30, 2020. Described by EPA as a “Part 1” evaluation, the FRE did not address numerous aspects of asbestos exposure and risk. ADAO and many leading scientists had criticized the gaps and omissions in the March 2020 draft risk evaluation (DRE) and expressed concern that it understated the risks of asbestos and failed to account for numerous pathways of exposure and risk. EPA’s Independent Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals (SACC) agreed with these concerns in its review of the DRE. In its lengthy August 28, 2020 report, the SACC concluded that: “Overall, EPA’s environmental and human health risk evaluation for asbestos was not considered adequate and resulted in low confidence in the conclusions.” However, the FRE generally ignored the SACC concerns and failed to implement its recommendations.
Deficiencies in the Part 1 evaluation include:
- Failure to address the contribution of legacy uses to overall exposure and risk;
- Failure to address all fiber types and instead focus only on chrysotile;
- Failure to address asbestos contamination of talc-based products and other ores like taconite;
- Exclusion of Libby amphibole;
- Lack of consideration of asbestosis and other non-cancer effects of asbestos;
- Failure to consider carcinogenic effects of asbestos other than lung cancer and mesothelioma;
- Lack of consideration of environmental sources of exposure to asbestos (drinking water and air emissions) and oral and dermal routes of exposure;
- Failure to examine aggregate risks from multiple sources of exposure;
- Lack of consideration of additional asbestos-containing products for which there is evidence of importation and use;
- Failure to address risks to potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulations (PESSs), such as
- Individuals exposed to asbestos across multiple routes and pathways or at increased risk because of smoking history or underlying lung disease; and
- Determination that importation and distribution of raw asbestos do not pose an unreasonable risk of injury.
The Agency has said that it will undertake a future “Part 2” evaluation focused on legacy asbestos but has provided no specifics about how it would be conducted and failed to set a schedule for completing it. ADAO strongly believes there must be a transparent science-based process and enforceable deadline for the Part 2 evaluation and it should comprehensively address all aspects of asbestos use and exposure ignored in the Part 1 evaluation.
The shortcomings of the final asbestos evaluation were underscored in the December 22, 2020 decision by U.S. District Court Judge Edward J. Chen, who ruled EPA has unlawfully failed to use its TSCA authority to obtain basic information on asbestos use and exposure needed for a sound risk evaluation. Judge Chen ordered EPA to amend its TSCA reporting rules to require submission of this information by industry. EPA must move quickly to comply with this order and must consider the exposure and use information it obtains both in the Part 2 evaluation and the risk management process.
Despite its limitations, the final risk evaluation does conclude that six current asbestos uses present an unreasonable risk of injury to human health. ADAO supports these findings and urges EPA to ban these uses under TSCA in the risk management phase of its work. As we will emphasize at the Webinar, there is no safe level of exposure to asbestos and restrictions that allow continued importation and use will not eliminate the unreasonable risk. As EPA recognized in 1989, the prevention of exposure is the only effective way to protect public health and this cannot be accomplished unless importation of raw asbestos and asbestos-containing products are prohibited. It would be a tragic step backward if, under a new law intended to authorize an asbestos ban, the current EPA provides less public health protection than the George H.W. Bush administration sought to achieve in 1989.
ADAO looks forward to participating in the webinar and providing our recommendations to the new Biden Administration EPA for fixing the failed FRE and banning asbestos uses during risk management. The Biden/Harris team has made it clear that they take the dangers of asbestos exposure seriously. We urge the new EPA leadership to listen to expert analysis and opinions on the Trump-era FRE, close the potentially fatal loopholes currently found in the evaluation and prevent asbestos exposure and risk during risk management.
We also urge the 117th Congress to pass the Alan Reinstein Ban Asbestos Now (ARBAN) Act, as the only way to truly protect Americans from asbestos is to ban imports and use of the known carcinogen.
Linda Reinstein,