Members of EPA chemicals panel resign

Three members of a panel that advises EPA on the management of commercial chemicals resigned as a bloc effective Oct. 4. The National Pollution Prevention & Toxics Advisory Committee "has been unable or unwilling to consider systematic, structural problems" with EPA's assessment and management of chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act, they said in an Oct. 2 resignation letter to EPA. Leaving the 15-member panel are Richard A. Denison, senior scientist for Environmental Defense; Joseph H. Guth, executive director of the California League for Environmental Enforcement Now; and Joel Tickner, assistant professor in the department of community health and sustainability at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. The three said EPA has been reluctant to acknowledge and confront limitations to its approaches for assessing and managing chemicals. Also, the agency has "repeatedly cited EPA's budgetary constraints as a barrier even to considering changes." In addition, the advisory panel is "numerically weighted excessively toward industry," they said. This has allowed some industry members to put off the panel's discussion of broader issues and limit its agenda to "narrow, short-term issues," the three wrote.