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Udall Statement On EPA’s Proposed Asbestos Rule

Office of US Senator Tom Udall (D-NM)

Commentary: WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senator Tom Udall (D-N.M.), ranking member on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee overseeing the EPA’s budget, released the following statement on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s Asbestos Problem Formulation document and Significant New Use Rule (SNUR) for asbestos:

“I’m always troubled when I learn that EPA has ignored its own expert staff, but what most alarms me is that the EPA is proposing to conduct a risk evaluation that excludes among the most common exposures to the known carcinogen asbestos. EPA is ignoring the risk posed by asbestos present in countless homes and buildings—and therefore ignoring a huge portion of the real risk that Americans face from this deadly chemical. As Congress called for when reforming TSCA in 2016, EPA’s risk evaluation must look at all risks from asbestos and other chemicals in order to best fulfill its mission to protect the health of American families. We worked in a bipartisan way to reform TSCA because the law was broken – and precisely because the law had been rendered powerless to ban even highly dangerous chemicals like asbestos. The EPA should fully ban asbestos – and if it won’t, the agency’s leaders should explain to the public why they won’t take this known carcinogen off the market.”