Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Guest Column:

Pick for chemical post a danger to our health

As a grandmother, and now great-grandmother, I know it’s up to me to protect my grandchildren, whether teaching them how to safely cross the street, feeding them healthy food or keeping an eye on them as they play outside.

But there are other dangers for which parents need government to step in, such as keeping kids safe from dangerous chemicals. That’s why it’s so concerning that the U.S. Senate is on the verge of undermining protections from toxic chemicals.

There are tens of thousands of chemicals in use today, and scientists are increasingly finding that some common chemicals are linked to serious health impacts. With toxic perchlorate, which can impair children’s brain development, in our drinking water, or toxic flame retardant chemicals tied to cancer in our furniture, there’s not much a mom, dad or local legislator can do to protect our families from toxic chemicals.

We need credible, independent scientists to study chemicals’ risks, and we need our government to take their recommendations and ban or restrict use of those that are dangerous. Last year, after decades of inaction, Congress updated the country’s primary federal chemical safety law. Prior to that update, the law was so toothless that it couldn’t even ban asbestos, a well-known carcinogen. Now the agency responsible for implementing that law, the Environmental Protection Agency, has new tools and powers to deal with the massive backlog of chemicals that need attention, including toxic chemicals readily found in Nevada homes, schools and workplaces.

That’s why the Trump administration’s choice to oversee the EPA chemical safety effort, Michael Dourson, is so alarming. Dourson is a toxicologist for hire, who has made a career out of downplaying the dangers of toxic chemicals on behalf of the chemical and tobacco industries. He and his firm have spent decades using skewed data to create misleading scientific reports that recommend weak “safe” levels for chemicals, often hundreds or even thousands of times weaker than those established by government agencies based on the best science.

An example of Dourson’s industry-funded work that should hit home here in Nevada is perchlorate. Many Nevada families are familiar with this chemical because it contaminated drinking water in our region.

Local authorities have had to spend years to reduce the levels of perchlorate in our water. The source of the problem was the old Kerr-McGee chemical facility in Henderson, which disposed of the chemical so that it leached into the groundwater and eventually made its way into Lake Mead. Near the height of this crisis, Dourson’s firm, Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment, was hired by a perchlorate industry front group to “study” the chemical. Among the members of the front group, known as the “Perchlorate Study Group,” was none other than Kerr-McGee. Dourson and TERA argued for standards 3 to 9 times less protective than the EPA standard for perchlorate.

Such work has been par for the course for Dourson: Over and over, he has helped clients argue for less restrictive standards for their chemicals, from pesticides like chlorpyrifos that impact children’s brains, to chemicals like 1,4-dioxane and trichloroethylene known or expected to cause cancer.

No doubt, such work helps Dourson’s chemical industry clients save money or keep their products on the market. But it’s the health of our kids who suffer if his “safe” level of a chemical, like perchlorate, means too much of the stuff is allowed in our drinking water, in products in our homes, or in our schools.

Given his track record, the notion of putting Dourson in charge of our chemical safety program is nothing less than absurd. Local governments need to know they can depend on the EPA to make decisions based on impartial science, when addressing issues like perchlorate. Even more, families deserve to know that the products they buy and bring into our homes are safe. We simply cannot trust Dourson to keep our kids safe.

Frighteningly, Dourson is just one vote away from being confirmed as our nation’s top chemical safety official. I urge Sens. Dean Heller and Catherine Cortez Masto to put the safety of Nevada families first and vote no on Michael Dourson.

Marilyn Kirkpatrick is a Clark County commissioner and chair of the Southern Nevada Health District. She is a former member of the Nevada Assembly.