Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) is asking EPA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) to investigate what it says is the TSCA new chemicals office’s policy of refusing to consider new toxicity data on existing substances — and argues the agency used that stance to ignore studies linking a common solvent to cancer.
In a Dec. 21 complaint to OIG, the environmental whistleblower group claims that EPA in 2019 improperly declined to conduct a new risk assessment on the solvent parachlorobenzotrifluoride (PCBTF) despite a National Toxicology Program (NTP) study released the previous year that showed “clear evidence of carcinogenic activity” in a cancer bioassay of rats and mice.
Rather, PEER says, staff reviewing a Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) pre-manufacture notice (PMN) for a new chemical made with PCBTF were told that a decades-old policy memo barred them from updating a prior risk assessment of the solvent to incorporate NTP’s findings.
“Despite these new hazard data and significant exposures, EPA staff were not allowed to assess PCBTF risks in the new chemical,” and ultimately concluded that the substance was “not likely to present risks,” reads PEER’s summary of the complaint.
