EPA reverses course on safe formaldehyde exposure threshold

For the first time, the US Environmental Protection Agency is suggesting there’s a safe threshold for formaldehyde exposure.The EPA and other leading public health bodies have long measured the chemical’s health risks by its potential to cause cancer even at imperceptible exposures. In its updated draft risk-calculation memo, released Dec. 3, the agency now says that if individuals are not exposed to the chemical at levels that typically cause irritation under its conditions of use, they’re protected against all effects, including cancer. The move has sparked sharp criticism from public health advocates who say the agency is catering to industry and putting more people—especially workers—at risk.“This revision makes a mockery of the review process,” Maria Doa, the Environmental Defense Fund’s senior director of chemicals policy, tells C&EN. “It ignores the EPA’s own cancer guidelines and the most important, internationally recognized, and thoroughly peer-reviewed scientific studies, including the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine-peer-reviewed IRIS assessment, and cherry-picks only what the chemical industry has long been lobbying for . . . which is a lowballing of the risk so that regulations will be less restrictive.” Formaldehyde: ubiquitous and carcinogenicFormaldehyde (CH₂O) is a simple, highly reactive aldehyde gas that occurs naturally in human metabolism and the environment, and as a by-product of combustion sources such as motor vehicle exhaust and tobacco smoke. It is also produced industrially by the catalytic oxidation of methanol for use as a chemical intermediate in adhesives and resins, textiles, coatings, cosmetics, pesticides, disinfectants, and myriad other