Written by Marc Yaggi and Gabrielle Segal
The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, passed under the Obama administration in 2016, is a critical piece of legislation that reforms the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which has been deeply flawed for decades. The passage of this bill marks the first time in 40 years that the U.S. will have a chance for a chemical safety program that works. The act outlines how to protect our citizens from exposure to toxic chemicals and provides more transparency about the risks of hundreds of chemicals. We need the director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Protection to ensure robust science-based implementation and enforcement of TSCA.
Trump’s nominee for the position, Michael Dourson, who founded and ran a toxicology consulting firm, Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment (TERA), would do anything but enforce this act. In fact, Dourson has been paid to defend and strip away the negative stigma of many of the chemicals he would be in charge of regulating. For example, in paid research for Dow Chemicals on the dangerous chlorpyrifos, Dourson “came up with a safety threshold that was some 5,000 times less protective than what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommended for children between the ages of one and two,” while EPA proposed banning the chemical.
In 2002, West Virginia assigned TERA to a case in which Dupont, a chemical company, had been polluting water with PFOA, a toxic chemical tied to many cancers. The state needed help in setting a standard that would potentially find Dupont liable to provide clean water to West Virginians affected by the pollution. After TERA’s review of the risk levels of PFOA, they set a “safety threshold of 150 parts per billion… That number was 150 times higher than the maximum safety level DuPont’s own scientists had determined in 1988 — 1 pbb — based on internal company research showing that PFOA was toxic to both workers and lab animals.” As Sharon Lerner of The Intercept points out, TERA’s findings “enabled DuPont to avoid providing clean water to people in West Virginia”, despite contaminating the water with PFOA. Dourson, who would be responsible for setting chemical safety levels for the entire country, has already set one state’s safety standard for a dangerous chemical at the lowest standard in the US.
Even a handful of Senators who normally support Trump’s nominees fear Dourson would be unfit for the position. North Carolina’s two Republican senators, Richard Burr and Thom Tillis, both said they would oppose Dourson’s nomination. Neither of them are known for bucking the party line in order to do the right thing, but concern among their state’s citizens was more than enough for them to show resistance to Dourson. They are concerned about his track record as a consultant for chemical companies, especially considering that the results he often produced through his research found “little or no human health risk for company products.” North Carolina has experienced the devastating effects of chemical exposure to human health. Senator Burr specifically pointed to drinking water at Camp Lejeune, a North Carolina military base and the country’s largest marine base, which was contaminated with a known carcinogen and has caused sickness in those exposed. Dourson has actually argued for a less rigid safety standard for trichloroethylene, one of the toxic chemicals found in the drinking water at Camp Lejeune, than what EPA already recommends. Senator Burr is also concerned with an unregulated compound known as Gen X, discovered in the Cape Fear River earlier this year.
In a statement, Burr proclaimed: “I will not be supporting the nomination of Michael Dourson. With his record and our state’s history of contamination at Camp Lejeune as well as the current Gen X water issues in Wilmington, I am not confident he is the best choice for our country.” Senator Tillis’s office also has confirmed that he will not be supporting Dourson’s nomination. If both Senators follow through, and Democrats in the Senate vote against Dourson, only one more opposition vote would be needed to sink his nomination. Republican Senator Susan Collins, from Maine, told reporters: “I have a lot of concerns about Mr. Dourson, and I have not yet made a final decision. But I certainly share the concerns that have been raised by Sen. Burr and Sen. Tillis… I think it’s safe to say that I am leaning against him.” Her vote could be the deciding factor.
It is more than safe to say that people are deeply troubled by Dourson. West Virginia Senate Democrat, Joe Manchin III, who generally takes a more conservative stance on environmental issues and supported the nomination of Scott Pruitt, declared his opposition to Dourson. In a statement, Manchin wrote; “In West Virginia, we are unfortunately familiar with the dangers that can arise when we neglect to properly comply with and enforce our chemical regulations… After reviewing his qualifications, I am not convinced that Dr. Dourson is the proper fit to oversee the federal agency responsible for overseeing chemical safety.”
It is not too late to reach out to your Senators and urge them to vote against Michael Dourson for Director of EPA’s Chemical Safety and Pollution Protection office. We cannot let any more defenders of chemicals and big industry, or those who question established science and put our family and friends at risk for serious, life-threatening diseases, take leadership at EPA.