"Last week, in a highly unusual move, the Environmental Protection Agency embraced that approach in announcing that it is revising an assessment of the health dangers posed by formaldehyde, a widespread pollutant that causes far more cancer than any other chemical in the air. Working on that effort were two of those former industry insiders, who are now top EPA officials."
"Under previous Republican and Democratic administrations, EPA scientists were instructed to assume that chemicals that cause cancer by damaging DNA - the largest group of carcinogens, which includes formaldehyde - pose a "linear" risk, meaning that even small exposures can be dangerous. The agency adopted the approach almost 40 years ago to protect against the multitude of low-level cancer threats the public faces daily."
Industry lobbyists pushed for a less stringent method to gauge cancer risk that would ease regulations for companies. The Environmental Protection Agency revised its formaldehyde health assessment to adopt that approach, nearly doubling the amount considered safe to inhale. Formaldehyde is a widespread air pollutant that causes more cancer than any other airborne chemical. The new method treats some DNA-damaging carcinogens as having a threshold below which exposures pose no risk, replacing the longstanding linear model that assumed any exposure could be dangerous. Two former industry insiders now serving as top EPA officials worked on the revision.
Read at Truthout
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