NYTimes confuses improper waste disposal with product safety.
PFOA is blamed for poisonings even though the culprits were likely other improperly disposed of chemicals. BUT PFOA as used in, say, Teflon is safe.
The NYTimes editorializes:
NYTimes confuses improper waste disposal with product safety.
PFOA is blamed for poisonings even though the culprits were likely other improperly disposed of chemicals. BUT PFOA as used in, say, Teflon is safe.
The NYTimes editorializes:
DuPont and other multinationals that produce, process, or distribute chemicals (a surprisingly large percentage of companies, given that the chemical industry is one industry that provides its products to ALL other industries) are more concerned with International chemical regulations such as REACh (the Registration, Evaluation, and Authorization of Chemicals) that already require safety testing before a chemical can be transferred to another company, transported across a national boundary, or used in consumer products.
The UN CLP standard (for Classification, Labeling, and Packaging) and the GHS (Globally Harmonized System) for communication of hazard information require far more information that the EPA has imagined, to be placed on the SDS (Safety Data Sheet, superceding the old MSDS that OSHA used to use).
The Senate Bill and the testing are non-issues.
OSHA (29 CFR 1910.1200 App E) permits manufacturers to claim ‘trade secrets’ to protect the exact formulation (chemical identity and exact amount used) so that their ‘recipes’ are not copied by competitors – sort of like patent or copyright protection for mixtures of chemicals. OSHA *does* require full disclosure of all known hazards associated with a substance or mixture, and that includes hazards uncovered in the safety testing required under REACh for their European markets.
The Senate bill would just be a ‘me too’ on this requirement.
Once the substance has been tested for REACh by ANYBODY and found to have a risk, that becomes public information, and the US company is required by OSHA to acknowledge that. No hazard gets ‘hidden’.
As of Jun 2015, the new SDS format mandated by OSHA, which includes testing data, toxicity, environmental effects, etc. is required. The old ANSI standard MSDS is no longer acceptable. All US companies dealing in chemicals know this, and have either established their own SDSs for their products, complete with testing data, or have found other ways to provide the required documentation.
The real issue here is ‘dumping’ – which likely may have been done by small business contractors trying to cut corners and maximize profits by cheating on contracts and lying to their big company clients.