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The tenure of President Donald Trump has been characterized by numerous situations in which federal departments, including the Environmental Protection Agency, have eliminated or weakened various environmental regulations. Critics of the administration cite these acts as dangerous due to the looming issue of climate change, while the White House and its proponents maintain that such rollbacks have been necessary to create less restrictive conditions for American businesses. <\/p>\n
While the motivations behind these policy decisions are subject to debate, the fact that such changes were made (or in this case proposed) is indisputable. Recent reporting shows that the latest instance of this behavior concerned a potential regulation that would govern use of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl chemical compounds<\/a>, according to The Hill. These substances, often used to manufacture food packaging and other common consumer products until fairly recently, have been repeatedly linked to increased risk of various health problems, including cancer. <\/p>\n OMB requested safe harbor for PFAS use<\/strong> Arguing its case further, OMB stated, "We would like to note that a safe harbor provision is not new to US regulations or even statutes, so proposing a safe harbor provision would not be precedent-setting, but rather, the exclusion of providing that could be considered precedent-setting." <\/p>\n Although the EPA under current Administrator Andrew Wheeler has acted in accordance with the White House's priorities before, the agency ultimately declined to include the requested provision in the SNUR. Sen. Carper publicized the documents describing this interagency conversation in April 2020, after uncovering them as part of his work on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. <\/p>\n EPA claims dialogue was part of routine review<\/strong> "Through this process it is routine for the agency to receive input from stakeholders, including our federal partners," the agency's statement explained. "EPA then reviews comments and may revisit or revise proposed decisions based on that feedback."<\/p>\n Carper, in an April 17 letter to the EPA's Wheeler, seemed less directly concerned with the OMB than with anti-regulation actions by the White House's National Economic Council<\/a> at the behest of Nancy Beck. A former EPA official with a history of undermining environmental regulations (and attacking them as a lobbyist for the chemical industry<\/a>, per The New York Times), Beck worked behind the scenes to keep PFAS in broader use despite studies outlining their dangers. <\/p>\n While the SNUR concerning PFAS is on track to take effect June 20, Beck, as a nominee to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, would easily be able to fight it and other, similar regulations if confirmed to that Cabinet position by the Senate. <\/p>\n
U.S. Sen. Tom Carper released documents dated Nov. 27, 2019 that illustrated the White House's desire to limit a Significant New Use Regulation of PFAS chemicals: Specifically, comments from the Office of Management and Budget<\/a> asked the EPA to work a "safe harbor" provision into the policy. This proposed protection would prevent companies from being penalized if they had improperly used the chemicals in manufacturing processes before the date of the SNUR's passage, or had otherwise "violate[d] the law on technicalities beyond their reasonable control." <\/p>\n
An official statement from the EPA that followed Carper's document release claimed that nothing the OMB did in its comments was specifically out of the ordinary, but rather typical agency back-and-forth.<\/p>\n