A national study that enrolled a highly diverse group of pregnant women over a 12-year period found rising exposure to chemicals from plastics and pesticides that may be harmful to development. Many of the chemicals that the women had been exposed to were replacement chemicals: new forms of chemicals that have been banned or phased … Continue reading Long-term Study of Pregnant Women Finds Increasing Chemical Exposure
In the recent ProPublica article, “She’s Supposed to Protect Americans from Toxic Chemicals. First, She Has to Fix Trump’s Mess and Decades of Neglect,” Dr. Michal Freedhoff, PhD, EPA’s head of the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP) said: “You can’t ask companies to spend a bunch of money producing data that already … Continue reading EPA can require chemical companies to provide data on PFAS risks. Why isn’t it?
Extreme heat is a burgeoning health threat unleashed by our climate crisis and predicted to get worse amid increasing global warming. But current approaches to health care have generally overlooked exposure to extreme heat in the treatment and prevention of illness. We sought to address this problem. Heat waves have already become more extreme and … Continue reading Surviving Extreme Heat: A climate crisis project
One of the key issues that the scientific community, EPA’s own Scientific Advisory Committee on Chemicals (SACC), and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) had with EPA’s original systematic review method (TSCA Method) to evaluate chemical risks under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), was how EPA evaluated the quality of the … Continue reading Where did all the evidence go?
When reviewing long, technical EPA science documents it helps to have an idea of what to look for. If you begin on page 1 and read everything in order, you may never get to some of the most critical content. The buried details can ultimately determine whether EPA’s actions will protect people’s health or leave … Continue reading EPA needs to fix its rules for identifying health effects under TSCA
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is required to use methods “consistent with the best available science" to evaluate scientific evidence on chemical health risks. These methods are critical because they shape EPA’s decision-making on chemicals evaluated under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which has profound implications for public health. In 2018, EPA released its … Continue reading “I swear I’ve changed” – US EPA
For over a decade, PRHE has mentored dozens of environmental health scientists, most of whom have gone on to play significant roles in the field. We spoke to four of them about their PRHE postdoc experience, what they’re doing now, and what changes they think are needed in environmental health. During the course of these … Continue reading PRHE Postdocs: Where are they now?
Exposures to industrial chemicals and their health consequences remain a preventable source of occupational disease, with workers suffering more than 190,000 illnesses and 50,000 deaths annually related to chemical exposures, according to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). However, the occupational health community has not yet fully engaged with implementation of an important … Continue reading Occupational health professionals key to TSCA protections
Avoiding food in plastic or cans, and avoiding fast foods are among the recommendations in a new study from the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) to reduce exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) and improve pregnancy outcomes. The study, published in the International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics, was a semi-structured review to learn … Continue reading FIGO study: Dietary changes can reduce exposure to EDCs
They may be called forever chemicals because they can stay in your body for years, but we don’t have forever to enact health protective decisions on PFAS (per- and poly-fluorinated alkyl substances). This is especially true given the large body of scientific evidence on prenatal exposures to PFAS and effects on fetal growth that the … Continue reading EPA uses systematic reviews to guide new PFAS drinking water standards
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