The House on Tuesday voted overwhelmingly to pass an overhaul to the nation's chemical safety standards for the first time in four decades.

 

The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act aims to answer years of complaints that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) lacks the necessary authority to oversee and control the thousands of chemicals being produced and sold in the United States.

 

It also significantly clamps down on states' authorities in an effort to stop a nationwide patchwork of chemical laws that industry says is difficult to deal with.

Source: Environmental Leader, May 24, 2016
Author: James G. Votaw

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Also see fact sheets on the 2012 data from the U.S. EPA, Basic Information and a Chemicals Snapshot.

Potentially effective glycerol-based solvents for nitrocellulose have been designed using a top-down in silico procedure that combines Computer Assisted Organic Synthesis (CAOS) and Molecular Design (CAMD). Starting from a bio-based building block -- glycerol -- a large number of synthetically feasible chemical structures have been designed using the GRASS (GeneratoR of Agro-based Sustainable Solvents) program. GRASS applies well-selected industrial chemical transformations to glycerol together with a limited number of relevant co-reactants. Then, the most promising structures are considered as lead compounds for further modification in silico thanks to the IBSS (InBioSynSolv) program, which generates derivatives with alkyl, cycloalkyl, alkene, cycloalkene or phenyl substituents. Finally, IBSS ranks all the candidates according to the value of their overall performance function to best fit the predefined specifications, i.e. (i) high solubilisation of nitrocellulose, (ii) slow evaporation and non-flammability, (iii) low toxicity and environmental impact. This general strategy enables the highlighting of the most relevant solvent candidate derived from any building block for a given application. To validate the approach, 15 commercially available solvents derived from glycerol were confronted with nitrocellulose and led to highlight diacetin as an effective and safe solvent.

Last week, hundreds of changemakers from hospitals, health systems and medical products or supplier companies gathered in Dallas to learn and compare notes at the 13th CleanMed Conference.

The UK Nanosafety Group (UKNSG) has updated and published a 2nd edition of guidance to support safe and responsible working practices with nanomaterials in research and development laboratories.

The document aims to provide guidance on factors relating to establishing a safe workplace and good safety practice when working with particulate nanomaterials. It is applicable to a wide range of nanomaterials, including particles, fibres, powders, tubes and wires as well as aggregates and agglomerates, and recognises previous and current uncertainty in developing effective risk management when dealing with nanomaterials and advocates a precautionary strategy to minimise potential exposure.

This 2016 report estimates that 1.3 million lives and 43 million disability-adjusted life-years were lost in 2012 due to exposures to selected chemicals.

However, data are only available for a small number of chemical exposures and people are exposed to many more chemicals every day.

Unintentional poisonings are estimated to cause 193, 000 deaths annually, with the major part being from preventable chemical exposures, however only 47% of countries have a poisons centre.

Addressing lead exposure would prevent 9.8% of intellectual disability, 4% of ischaemic heart disease and 4.6% of stroke in the population, yet many countries do not regulate lead paint.

This report provides examples of effective interventions to prevent death and disease caused by chemicals, and the economic benefits to be gained.

There is some evidence that early-life exposures to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and other persistent environmental chemicals can alter the developing immune system and may be associated with diminished effectiveness for certain vaccines. This could have serious implications for parts of the world where diseases that are preventable with vaccines remain a major public health threat. In this issue of EHP, researchers present new evidence that two persistent organic pollutants are associated with a lower antibody response to the tuberculosis vaccine, which could potentially lower resistance to infection.

"Our findings show that environmental chemicals may be playing a role in immune disruption-in this case the suppression of immune response to a vaccine," says lead author Todd Jusko, an epidemiologist at the University of Rochester in New York.

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Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that interfere with mammalian hormones. Bisphenol A (BPA) is one of the most prevalent, found in every-day items including refillable drink bottles and food storage containers. Vinclozolin is another endocrine disruptor that was commonly used as a fungicide in vineyards, golf courses and orchards.

Molar incisor hypermineralisation (MIH) is a pathology affecting up to 18% of children aged 6-9, in which the permanent first molars and incisors teeth that erupt have sensitive spots that become painful and are prone to cavities. These spots are found on dental enamel, the tough outer covering of teeth that protects it from physical and chemical damage. Unlike bone, enamel does not regrow and so any damage is irreversible. Previous rat studies have shown that MIH may result from exposure to BPA after finding similar damage to the enamel of rats that received a daily dose of BPA equivalent to normal human BPA exposure, though the exact mechanism of action remains unclear.