For decades, it was the secret behind the magic show of homemaking across the US. Applied to a pan, it could keep a fried egg from sticking to the surface. Soaked into a carpet, it could shrug off spills of red wine. Sprayed onto shoes and coats, it could keep the kids dry on a rainy day.
A coalition of academics that includes former EPA scientists says the agency’s long-awaited draft guide for crafting cumulative risk assessments (CRAs) examining the combined dangers of chemical hazards and other health stressors does not meet TSCA’s “best available science” standard and must be rewritten to be fit for regulatory use.
Environmentalists and their allies are pressing EPA to tighten its proposed TSCA risk-management rule for perchloroethylene (PCE) in part by banning more uses of the solvent or even phasing it out entirely, arguing the current approach that focuses on worker-safety measures fails to protect fenceline communities from exposure.
PFAS lurk in so much of what we eat, drink and use. Scientists are only beginning to understand how they’re impacting our health — and what to do about them.
An academic center that supports more stringent TSCA chemical reviews is pushing EPA to incorporate several key steps toward that goal in pending revisions to the “framework” for risk evaluations of existing chemicals, including a new approach to systematic review, a redone model for gauging non-cancer health risks and a structure for cumulative risk assessments.
Forever chemicals are everywhere, including in period and incontinence products—even in some that companies claim are free of such substances.
Environmentalists and academics are urging EPA to bolster the exposure data it uses to inform chemical risk assessments under TSCA and other laws, arguing that the agency needs “new approaches” to close what they say are serious gaps in the information it receives on toxic substances.
High levels of a cancer-causing chemical have forced evacuations at two Milwaukee apartment developments this year. Here’s what you need to know about the chemical and its health hazards.
‘Forever chemicals’ and acids used in plastic production connected to poor pregnancy outcomes: study
Cancer-linked “forever chemicals” and certain compounds used in plastic production may be associated with a heightened risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes, according to a study from researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
California researchers have found new evidence that several chemicals used in plastic production and a wide array of other industrial applications are commonly present in the blood of pregnant women, creating increased health risks for mothers and their babies.
July 19, 2023Press Release
Chemicals used in plastic production and PFAS are widespread in Bay Area pregnant women and are associated with an increased risk of poor pregnancy outcomes including gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia, and hypertension, according to UCSF researchers.
Vanessa Langness had always been a bit worried about the chemicals she worked with as a biomedical researcher, but when she got pregnant in October, her concerns grew. The 34-year-old based in Santa Maria, California, suspected the ethidium bromide she was using in the lab for molecular cloning could put her and her baby at risk.
In 1953, a paper developed for cigarette maker RJ Reynolds detailed possible cancer-causing agents in tobacco, but the document would remain hidden from public view for decades. In the interim, the industry told the public: “We don’t accept the idea that there are harmful agents in tobacco.”
Companies making so-called "forever chemicals" knew they were toxic decades before health officials, but kept that information hidden from the public, according to a peer-reviewed study of previously secret industry documents.
The female employees at the DuPont chemical company’s Washington Works plant in Parkersburg, W. Va., were not given much of an explanation in 1981 when they were all abruptly moved away from any part of the factory that produced a category of chemicals then known as C8. They certainly were not told about their eight recently pregnant coworkers who had worked with C8 and given birth that year—one of them to a baby with eye defects and just a single nostril; another to a baby who had eye and tear duct defects; and a third with C8 in its cord blood.