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Friday, July 29, 2005

Tue Jun 21, 2005: OMB met with small business over the EPA Pretreatment Streamlining Rule. Those in attendance included representatives from SBA's Office of Advocacy, the Water Quality Assessment Program, the National Water Quality Assessment Program, EPA and the Policy Group.
Tue Jun 28, 2005: OMB met with international aid and development groups over the marketing and branding of USAID. Those in attendance included WHO Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, USAID, the Association of PVO Financial Managers), IFES/Interaction (International Development), Catholic Relief Services, World Vision and Interaction.
Tue Jul 5, 2005: OMB met with USDA and the Australian Embassy over the "prohibition of the use of SRN for human food." Presumably, the meeting was actually over SRM, or specified-risk materials. Specified-risk materials are the brain, nervous and spinal tissue most likely to contain the prion that causes mad cow disease.

Posted by Genevieve Smith, 12:26:39 PM

Questioning the theory of market-based approaches
A new article by CPR member scholar David Driesen questions the conventional theory purporting to establish that environmental benefit trading encourages innovation better than comparable traditional regulation. Here's a look at the abstract:

It argues that the induced innovation hypothesis, that high costs encourage innovation, suggests that trading would lessen incentives for innovation by lowering the cost of complying with conventional approaches. The conventional theory relies upon the incentive emissions trading creates for polluters to make additional reductions in order to sell credits. But emissions trading also creates incentives for half of the pollution sources (the credit buyers) to make less reductions than they would under a traditional regulation. By focusing analysis only upon the sellers of credits, the traditional theory systematically biases results.
Proper analysis must compare a trading program to a non-trading program with identical underlying limits. This analysis shows clearly that trading does not encourage high-cost innovation as well as a comparably designed performance standard. Even innovation that costs a lot now can prove economically and environmentally superior over the long run, because innovation can make costs of new techniques fall over time and some innovations provide very wide ranging environmental benefits. But trading encourages selection of the techniques with the cheapest current cost, not the cheapest long-term cost or the greatest long-term value.
Design variables, such as the stringency of regulation and the quality of monitoring play an important role in encouraging (or failing to encourage) innovation. Neither traditional regulation nor environmental benefit trading stimulate innovation especially well, because government often regulates weakly. This chapter suggests an alternative economic incentive program that would maximize incentives for innovation and progress on environmental problems.

Download David M. Driesen, Design, Trading, and Innovation

Posted by Robert Shull, 10:59:22 AM

Thursday, July 28, 2005

Running on Empty: The Politics of Fuel Economy

According to the New York Times, EPA has withheld a report showing that due to loopholes in fuel efficiency standards, manufacturers have been allowed to produce cars that, on average, are significantly less fuel efficient than cars sold in the late 1980s. The loopholes give car manufacturers credits towards their fuel economy standards if they produce dual-fuel cars in their fleet—those that can run on both ethanol blend and gasoline. The credit then allows the manufacturers to add more inefficient cars such as SUVs and trucks to their fleet. Since so few gas stations have ethanol pumps, most consumers can't actually take advantage of the dual-fuel capabilities; manufacturers receive the fuel economy credit while most of the cars will never run on alternative fuel sources.

EPA plans to withhold the report on fuel economy until after the vote on the energy bill, which despite promises to greatly reduce the U.S's oil dependency, does little to improve fuel efficiency. The House passed the bill today, and the Senate is scheduled to do so as well. Read more:

Releasing the report this week would have been inopportune for the Bush administration, its critics said, because it would have come on the eve of a final vote in Congress on energy legislation six years in the making. The bill, as it stands, largely ignores auto mileage regulations.
The executive summary of the copy of the report obtained by The Times acknowledges that "fuel economy is directly related to energy security," because consumer cars and trucks account for about 40 percent of the nation's oil consumption. But trends highlighted in the report show that carmakers are not making progress in improving fuel economy, and environmentalists say the energy bill will do little to prod them.

Read the text of the embargoed report, provided by New York Times. For more on fuel economy, check out Public Citizen.

Posted by Genevieve Smith, 03:26:35 PM

Thursday, July 14, 2005

Industrial pollution in the womb
The Environmental Working Group unveiled a stunning report of new scientific research in the chemicals to which babies are exposed in utero. Scientists used to assume that the placenta shielded the developing baby from most chemical exposures, but studies drawn from cord blood reveal something quite different:

In a study spearheaded by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) in collaboration with Commonweal, researchers at two major laboratories found an average of 200 industrial chemicals and pollutants in umbilical cord blood from 10 babies born in August and September of 2004 in U.S. hospitals. Tests revealed a total of 287 chemicals in the group. The umbilical cord blood of these 10 children, collected by Red Cross after the cord was cut, harbored pesticides, consumer product ingredients, and wastes from burning coal, gasoline, and garbage.
This study represents the first reported cord blood tests for 261 of the targeted chemicals and the first reported detections in cord blood for 209 compounds. Among them are eight perfluorochemicals used as stain and oil repellants in fast food packaging, clothes and textiles — including the Teflon chemical PFOA, recently characterized as a likely human carcinogen by the EPA's Science Advisory Board — dozens of widely used brominated flame retardants and their toxic by-products; and numerous pesticides.
Of the 287 chemicals we detected in umbilical cord blood, we know that 180 cause cancer in humans or animals, 217 are toxic to the brain and nervous system, and 208 cause birth defects or abnormal development in animal tests. The dangers of pre- or post-natal exposure to this complex mixture of carcinogens, developmental toxins and neurotoxins have never been studied.

"These findings raise questions about the gaps in our federal safety net," said Jane Houlihan, EWG's vice president for research. "Instead of rubber-stamping almost every new chemical that industry invents, we've got to strengthen and modernize the laws that are supposed to protect Americans from pollutants."

Posted by Robert Shull, 10:57:05 AM

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

EPA needs to be able to do more re chemical risks
A new GAO report concludes that limitations in EPA's authority to regulate chemical safety leaves the public with only "limited assurance" that the 700 new chemicals entering the marketplace each year are safe and won't harm the environment. Some of the findings:

EPA's reviews of new chemicals provide limited assurance that health and environmental risks are identified before the chemicals enter commerce. Chemical companies are not required by TSCA, absent a test rule, to test new chemicals before they are submitted for EPA's review, and companies generally do not voluntarily perform such testing.
Given limited test data, EPA predicts new chemicals' toxicity by using models that compare the new chemicals with chemicals of similar molecular structures that have previously been tested. However, the use of the models does not ensure that chemicals' risks are fully assessed before they enter commerce because the models are not always accurate in predicting chemical properties and toxicity, especially in connection with general health effects.
EPA does not routinely assess the risks of all existing chemicals and EPA faces challenges in obtaining the information necessary to do so.
TSCA's authorities for collecting data on existing chemicals do not facilitate EPA's review process because they generally place the costly and time-consuming burden of obtaining data on EPA.
Partly because of a lack of information on existing chemicals, EPA [initiated a voluntary disclosure program with industry]. It is unclear whether the program will produce sufficient information for EPA to determine chemicals' risks to human health and the environment.

Posted by Robert Shull, 07:39:51 PM

Monday, July 11, 2005

Foxes in the henhouse: BLM drilling permits
"Consultants paid by the oil and gas industry have been volunteering to work for the Bureau of Land Management's Vernal[, Utah] office for the past five months, expediting environmental studies to keep pace with a glut of drilling requests in the region," reports the Salt Lake Tribune. Five consultants paid by the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States have volunteered to work through "a backlog of about 400 permits." The Vernal BLM office receives the second-highest number of drilling applications in the country.

"This is very troubling," Steve Bloch, an attorney with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, told the Tribune. "It's akin to the foxes guarding the henhouse. These are public lands and there clearly is a quid pro quo expected here, that there is going to be faster permitting, faster approval rates, and instead they really should be taking their time to make sure they're doing it right."

Posted by Robert Shull, 05:02:09 PM

Sunday, July 10, 2005

Recently in the news
Check out some of the latest news articles of interest to regulatory policy:

Assault on Science:

Chris Mooney, "Some Like It Hot," Mother Jones, May-June 2005
Forty public policy groups have this in common: They seek to undermine the scientific consensus that humans are causing the earth to overheat. And they all get money from ExxonMobil.
Bill McKibben, "Climate of Denial," id.
One morning in Kyoto, we won a round in the battle against global warming. Then special interests and pseudoscience snatched the truth away. What happened?
David Michaels, "Doubt Is Their Product," Scientific American, June 2005
Industry groups are fighting government regulation by fomenting scientific uncertainty.

Special Breaks for Special Interests: Erik Kancler, "Getting Away With It: How Congressional Republicans have shielded MTBE polluters from liability," Mother Jones, May 24, 2005

Under the Radar: CBC News, "Concerns raised about 1997 U.S. mad cow tests," April 2005
Canadian news coverage raising questions about whether the USDA did not properly analyze two suspected cases of mad cow disease in 1997, years before it showed up in Canada and devastated that country's beef industry.

Posted by Robert Shull, 02:45:44 PM

Real environmental review?
A new article explores the relationship between NEPA, the APA, and judicial deference to agency claims and asks whether it is acceptable for agencies conducting NEPA reviews to get away with listing their environmental considerations in the administrative record even though they have in fact given zero weight to those considerations. From the abstract:

his Article questions whether courts should engage in a more searching review of whether agencies, in fact, have given any weight to the environmental consequences or alternatives of their proposed actions. In other words, might giving zero weight to environmental factors in practice, despite their inclusion in the decision-making documents, violate the "arbitrary and capricious" standard of the Administrative Procedure Act ("APA")? The piece further examines the tension between the role of the APA and the U.S. Supreme Court's NEPA jurisprudence, and concludes that -- despite the Supreme Court's crippling of NEPA -- an agency's failure to give any weight to project alternatives and environmental concerns in the decision-making process would be unreasonable under the APA, and suggests indicators for determining whether such a failure has taken place.

Check it out: Jason J. Czarnezki, "Revisiting the Tense Relationship between the U.S. Supreme Court, Administrative Procedure, and the National Environmental Policy Act," 26 Stan. Envtl. L.J. __ (forthcoming 2005).

Posted by Robert Shull, 02:09:14 PM

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Water on the knee, manganese on the brain
Manganese is dangerous to humans at high levels. Although we are all exposed to small amounts every day, at higher levels manganese is toxic to the nervous system and can lead to a Parkinson's-like disorder. It's already regulated in our drinking water. A new study reveals that we are at risk not just by drinking it but also by inhaling it... in our bath water:

A new analysis based on animal studies suggests that showering in manganese-contaminated water for a decade or more could have permanent effects on the nervous system.
The damage may occur even at levels of manganese considered safe by the Environmental Protection Agency, according to researchers from Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
"If our results are confirmed, they could have profound implications for the nation and the world," said John Spangler, M.D., an associate professor of family medicine. "Nearly 9 million people in the United States are exposed to manganese levels that our study shows may cause toxic effects."

Manganese is regulated in the water supply, but the standard is set based on the risk from drinking the water, not from inhaling the steam:

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has set 0.5 milligrams/liter as the upper limit of manganese advisable in water supplies. The limit, however, is based on odor and taste of the water. The potential risk of manganese accumulating in the brain through showering has not been considered by the EPA in setting this limit. In their analysis, Spangler and Elsner found that concentrations well below 0.5 milligrams might lead to brain injury.
"Inhaling manganese, rather than eating or drinking it, is far more efficient at delivering manganese to the brain," said Spangler. "The nerve cells involved in smell are a direct pathway for toxins to enter the brain. Once inside these small nerves, manganese can travel throughout the brain. ... Regulatory agencies may one day need to rethink existing drinking water standards for manganese."

Reminiscent of the historical problem of leaded gasoline, we may also be at risk from manganese in gasoline:

The addition of manganese to gasoline as an anti-knock agent may also be a threat, the researchers said.
"The manganese, as it settles from car exhaust onto streets and highways, may enter the water supply, increasing manganese levels in the water we drink and bathe in," said Spangler.

Posted by Robert Shull, 02:34:16 PM

The latest bad news

BushGreenWatch is reporting that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a permit last week that will allow the Coeur d'Alene mining company to discharge mining waste from a proposed gold mine into a lake in the Tongass National Forest near Berner's Bay in Southeast Alaska, paving the way for mining companies all over the country to follow suit. According to the mining company's environmental review, the barrage of chemicals in the lake will likely exterminate the fish population. Environmentalists criticized the change as a backdoor attempt to circumvent a court ruling that found that mining waste in Appalachian mountain streams violates the Clean Water Act.

The Congressional Research Service analyzed chemical security risks and learned that more than 100 facilities nationwide, in 23 different states, store large amounts of chemicals that are fatal or could actually melt your lungs -- and are located near communities of at least 1 million people. Meanwhile, the Bush administration's ties to the chemical industry leave the homeland unsecured.

A NewJersey food manufacturer is recalling a Spanish sausage product becasue of possible contamination by Listeria, the bacterium "that won't die." Weakening already weak safegaurds against Listeria, by the way, is a priority item on the White House's anti-regulatory hit list.