H- wrote:
Quote:
If you want a good example of how environmental regulation has failed the public, look at the PFAS issue.
Recent
ATSDR Report may get things moving. I haven't gotten into the numbers at all nor have any idea how these new thresholds correspond to levels in Public Water Supplies.
Poorly written ABC News story. If the administration tried to block this report from ATSDR, that is a disgrace.
This whole rollout has been badly botched, and there's going to be a shitstorm. But if I had been part of the White House I might well have tried to delay or manage the rollout, too. And I am not one to miss an opportunity to bash this White House. Let me explain ...
The issue is that the ATSDR toxicity profile is suggesting that several of the PFAS (PFOS, PFOA, PFHxS, and PFNA) are far more toxic than previously believed. Using PFOS as an example, if their suggestions are incorporated into an updated EPA Health Advisory level for drinking water, the HA would be lower by a factor of ten for PFOS - it would go from 70 ppt to 7 ppt. To give you an idea how low 7 parts per trillion is, even as recently as 2015 the top commercial laboratories would have struggled to meet 7 ppt as a detection limit.
So, (you ask, as I did) what is the basis for this ten-fold increase in the supposed toxicity of PFOS? You will probably imagine (as I did) that there were new studies, or a more careful analysis, or some other substantive increase in our knowledge of PFOS toxicology. You would be wrong (me too).
The new report uses a 2005 study (delayed ossification of rat phalanges) as the basis for the new MRL (Minimum Risk Level) for PFOS. This single study, and most of the other assumptions are
exactly the same as those in the 2016 EPA Health Effects document for PFOS.
The only difference (the
only goddamn difference), is that they add an additional uncertainty factor of 10, to allow for the supposition that "immunological endpoints may be more sensitive than developmental endpoints." (I may have the quote a little bit wrong, I'm going from memory.)
Now, I'm not a toxicologist, but I dabble, and this is the first time I've ever seen an uncertainty factor like this. It's bizarre, and I have to wonder if it was politically motivated. The assumptions and uncertainty factors in this document are literally an order of magnitude more conservative than most other similar tox profiles.
So I can appreciate the bewilderment on the part of the EPA, DoD, and the White House. And maybe these issues should have been worked out before the release of the report. But the White House completely botched things by doing things like writing emails that referred to a potential "public relations nightmare". Yeah, no shit, you didn't think that would get leaked?
Now that the report is out, there is a formal public comment period. The peer review for the report was done by four academics. Now the industry toxicologists and DoD policymakers will have their crack at it. It should prove interesting!