DR. LI LI:  Li, thanks.  So, I have two clarification questions.  Of course, thank you so much for the fantastic presentation.  Of course, this is very thorough and lots of considerations, and you handle this very well.  So, I have two questions.  The first question is my understanding is that the assessments were largely based on the 2019 TRI data, but you also mentioned a case that you don't have the 2019 TRI data.  But you have multiple years of TRI data before 2019.
                  So, I'm not sure whether you have some general rules for us to select the data between the different years other than 2019.  For example, in some cases you use the maximum data for previous years, but in the case of 1-BP you select the central tendency -- that's the 50th percentile -- and the maximum of the data for the past years.
                  So, I wonder, for example, in terms of the future assessment whether these two data points are recommended for use in the future assessments or whether the risk assessors have their own descriptions to prioritize the data selected for the future assessments.
                  DR. REHAN CHOUDHARY:  All right, Dr. Li.  Thank you for your question.  Again, this is Rehan Choudhary from the EPA.  I believe you're first asking about use of 2019 TRI, and then in certain instances, other data sources are used to estimate releases.  I believe slide 12 of our presentation helps you to understand what we do and the general hierarchy we follow when we don't have 2019 TRI data.  That slide 12, specifically, refers you to the section in the report that also elaborates on the hierarchy that is used.
                  So that'll give you a good understanding of when we don't have 2019 data how we go about the various steps and logic to reference other data sets or sources.  I believe you're also asking about, in some cases, we use central tendency and maximum release estimates.  But it goes back to what Kevin Vuilleumier was presenting.
                  There's a prescreening methodology, and there's the full screening methodology.  And I believe in the prescreening methodology where they're using the IIOAC tool, they take a look at TRI reporting.  They kind of characterize central tendency and high or maximum release, and they put that through their prescreening result to try and understand whether we should proceed to the full screening.
                  So that's my understanding of your question.  I'm going to pivot now to Kevin Vuilleumier to see if he wanted to add to what I've said with respect to the prescreening versus full screening.
                  DR. KEVIN VUILLEUMIER:  This is Kevin Vuilleumier from EPA.  Yes, Rehan, I think he answered it well.  Did that answer your question, Dr. Li, that you were pursuing?
                  DR. LI LI:  Yes.  I understand the difference between the 2019 data and the years before 2019.  So, I was wondering if you have multiple years of data before 2019 and how did you decide which one should gain the priority?
                  DR. REHAN CHOUDHARY:  Okay.  So, let me pivot to Franklyn Hall to focus on that aspect of it.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  That was Dr. Choudhary.
                  DR. FRANKLYN HALL:  Hi, Dr. Li, this is Franklyn Hall, EPA.  So, as Rehan has indicated, we would first try to extract 2019 TRI data.  If that data's unavailable, then we looked at previous years, I believe, from different TRI, and we would go back sequentially.  So, if there wasn't 2019 data, we'd look for 2018, 2017, et cetera.  So that is generally how we would approach trying to fill the data gaps for TRI data that was not available for 2019.
                  However, I believe that we are asking the Committee to provide comment on whether or not one year's of release data is appropriate, or whether or not there are suggestions or proposals to incorporate previous years of TRI data to encompass -- I think what you're trying to get at -- which is the variability that could occur over multiple reporting years.  Does that answer your question?
                  DR. LI LI:  Yes, yes, yes.  That answers question.
                  DR. FRANKLYN HALL:  Okay.
                  DR. LI LI:  Yeah.  So, I have another question.  The second question is so, of course, you mentioned when 2019 TRI data are missing, and you recommend to give the priority to modeling results to compare to the existing literature resources, for example, in published risk assessment.  So, for example, you gave the higher priority to modern results rather than the trinity consult report used for 1-BP.  So, I was wondering about the justification for the higher priority given to the modeling result.
                  DR. REHAN CHOUDHARY:  Okay.  This is, again, Rehan Choudhary from the EPA.  I believe the hierarchy you're referring to the -- correct, use of modeling is then presented after use of past year data, and I believe the genesis behind that is the models themselves are incorporated in the risk evaluations that were completed.  So, they completed peer review.  So that's why, I believe, they were placed higher in the hierarchy.
                  And then, if there were references or sources cited in the risk evaluations, we then turn to those.  But let me pivot to Franklyn Hall to see if he wants to elaborate or correct me if I've misspoken on any items.
                  DR. FRANKLYN HALL:  I think Rehan has captured it appropriately, Dr. Li.  It's exactly as he's indicated in terms of the preference for model data versus what we cited in literature.
                  DR. LI LI:  Okay.  Thanks.  I have no more question.
                  DR. REHAN CHOUDHARY:  Thank you.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Okay.  Thanks.  Dr. Unseld.
                  DR. MONICA UNSELD:  Yes, this is Monica Unseld.  Again, thank you for the presentation.  You did a great job.  And I understand that this is just a starting point.  I would like to know how much or how often did you engage with disproportionately impacted communities, or fenceline communities, to make sure that the assumptions in your models and the equations were reflective of real life.
                  I just was trying to see, if the modeling is beginning and it's already at a point where it's so far away from reality, are we going to have to take some back steps here to make it more robust?
                  DR. REHAN CHOUDHARY:  So, thank you for the question.  This is, again, Rehan Choudhary from the EPA.  I believe when the effort launched, we made efforts to consult with the Office of Environmental Justice, Office of Air, Office of Water to try and learn from their experiences and share our thoughts on how we were structuring the approach.  As the approach became more concrete, so to speak, in that we had something to put on paper and we started -- and we had draft results, we then did meet with various stakeholder groups to relay and communicate what we were finding.
                  And based on those interactions, we received feedback on, well, the current approach doesn't maybe take a look at one-time events.  It would be good if you can elaborate and take a look at one-time events and the acute exposures and risks that occur from that.  They commented on the use of TRI data and how just taking annual releases and dividing by the number of days may not appropriately capture these one-time events.  So, that's the nature of the interaction we've had so far.
                  It's a start, and we hope to engage much more with those stakeholders as we've entered this public comment and SACC review phase.
                  DR. MONICA UNSELD:  A follow-up question -- this is Monica Unseld again.  Are you considering looking at some of the emerging models to integrate lived experience data in order to capture that?  Are you considering that for version 2.0?
                  DR. REHAN CHOUDHARY:  This is Rehan Choudhary from the EPA, again.  This is, again, something we're looking forward to understanding, based on what the SACC Committee itself says and what the public provides to us.  What we've provided is that version 1.0 -- it's through readily available data and methods that were available to us, and I think we're relying on the SACC Committee itself and experts in the public to drive our attention and focus to newer capabilities, emerging capabilities for version 2.0.
                  DR. MONICA UNSELD:  Thank you.  That answers my question.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Thanks.  Dr. Ferry.
                  DR. JOHN FERRY:  I have a question, not so much about what you showed in your presentation, which I really appreciated, but something that I wonder about might be missing.  I didn't see any consideration of transport venues off-site that you -- I guess I didn't -- sorry, I'm not expressing this very well.  I was curious about criteria that you used to reject consideration of some factors.  So, for example, in the model you're presenting this for version 1.0, we have transport through the gas phase.  We have transport through the aqueous phase, but there's no transport, for example, say, associated with dust which could be very significant for some other contaminants, not necessarily in this.
                  So, I was curious.  Could you explain a little bit about how you decided to reject looking at some pathways?
                  DR. REHAN CHOUDHARY:  This is, again, Rehan Choudhary from the EPA.  I think this is largely a scope and pathway kind of question in that there was a policy shift and that we had not looked at certain pathways when we completed the risk evaluations a year or two ago.  And we know there are more pathways that we did not examine.  But in this version 1.0, the initial thought was to focus on certain air pathways and water pathways with many of the substances we're looking at from the first ten risk evaluations being volatile solvents.
                  I don't think we've excluded the notion of examining dust emissions and what dust would do.  It just wasn't relevant to the case studies and chemicals we're focusing on right now.  And I think if you're able to focus in on the methodology and capability itself and drive to our attention how it could be expanded to address scenarios you have in mind, we would certainly welcome that.  Let me pivot to Kevin Vuilleumier to see if he wants to add to your question about the dust pathway or the settling of dust or things of that nature.
                  DR. KEVIN VUILLEUMIER:  Thank you, Rehan.  This is Kevin Vuilleumier from EPA.  Yeah, Rehan kind of hit the nail on the head.  When we're looking at the air pathway, most of the solvents for the first ten that were taking the screening level approach to look at are VOCs; they're volatile compounds.  However, one of the benefits of the methodologies that we put together and using AERMOD as we noted to a previous comment, it can factor in considerations of dust.  It takes in -- AERMOD can consider deposition.  It can consider evaporations from lakes.  So, there's a lot of other factors that we can take into account moving forward as it applies to different chemicals that maybe need to be evaluated.
                  So, in the initial approach, the focus was on the seven chemicals we were doing which were mainly VOCs, so we didn't really look at particulate.  But we have the capabilities to look at that moving forward.  As you noted, other chemicals that aren't so volatile thus can be very large contributor.  So, we are able to do that, and that would be considered on a chemical-by-chemical basis as we move forward as to where you may have different impacts from different phases of the chemical.
                  DR. JOHN FERRY:  Okay.  I guess -- and I'm sorry if I'm not articulating it well.  But what I'm curious about really is did you start off with a goal?  So, are (audio skip) export parameters from the site that account for say 90 percent of the releases; 95 percent, 50 percent?  Could you help sort of clarify that a little, please?
                  DR. REHAN CHOUDHARY:  This is Rehan Choudhary from the EPA, again.  I think goal-wise it's based on the scope that was provided to the team.  It was framed as let's examine the ambient air pathway and the surface water pathway.  And so, when we had that framed that way, we took a look at the risk evaluations and as we had published them, right?  We took a look at aquatic exposures in those completed risk evaluations.
                  So, we reused the release assessments from those completed risk evaluations for the water pathway to take a look at surface water concentrations and impact to humans.  In the previous completed risk evaluations, we didn't take a look at the air pathway -- the ambient air pathway.  So here, we took a look at what are some readily available sources?  We gravitated towards the TRI, and we took a look at fugitive and stack releases from TRI.  And we characterized what ambient air concentrations look like from these releases to estimate what the impacts on receptors may be nearby.
                  So that's how the scope to the team came about and how they focused on elaborating on that scope and getting initial draft results in place.
                  DR. JOHN FERRY:  Thank you.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Okay.  Thanks for the questions.  Any other questions of clarification that we can bring forward to the Agency?  Okay.  With that in mind, at this point let's go ahead a take an East Coast break for an hour.  So, let's reconvene at 40 past the hour -- one hour from now -- and then reconvene for our public commenters period.  Thank you.

                                 [LUNCH BREAK]
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Okay.  I have 20 minutes till.  Let's go ahead and reconvene the Committee.  At this point in time we'll go ahead and do a roll call for Committee members.  So if you could just answer present, that would he fantastic.  Let's begin with Dr. Apte.
                  DR. UDAYAN APTE:  Present.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Great.  Dr. Baker.
                  DR. MARISSA BAKER:  Present.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Dr. Blystone.
                  DR. SHERI BLYSTONE:  Present.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Dr. Calder.
                  DR. RYAN CALDER:  Present.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Dr. Chaisson.  Dr. Chaisson.  Hello?  Okay.  Dr. Cobb.
                  DR. GEORGE P. COBB:  Yep.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Dr. Davies.
                  DR. HOLLY DAVIES:  Present.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Dr. Doucette.
                  DR. WILLIAM DOUCETTE:  Present.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Dr. Ferry.
                  DR. JOHN L. FERRY:  Present.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Dr. Gribble.
                  DR. MATTHEW O. GRIBBLE:  Hello.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Dr. Heiger-Bernays.
                  DR. WENDY HEIGER-BERNAYS:  Present.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Dr. Henneman.
                  DR. LUCAS HENNEMAN:  Present.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Dr. Johnson.
                  DR. MARK JOHNSON:  Present.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Dr. Kissel.
                  DR. JOHN KISSEL:  Present.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Dr. Li.  Dr. Li.  Okay.  Dr. Messerlian.  Dr. Messerlian.  Okay.  Dr. Przybyla.
                  DR. JENNIFER PRZYBYLA:  Present.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Great.  Dr. Reif.  Dr. Reif?  Dr. Reiss.
                  DR. RICK REISS:  Present.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Dr. Rowlands.  Dr. Rowlands.  Okay.  Dr. Sathyanarayana.  Dr. Sathyanarayana.  Okay.  Dr. Unseld.
                  DR. MONICA UNSELD:  Present.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Dr. Vorhees.
                  DR. CHARLES V. VORHEES:  Present.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Great.  Let's go back up.  Dr. Chaisson.  Dr. Chaisson.  Okay.  Still not, and Dr. Li?  Have you joined us yet?  Dr. Messerlian.  Dr. Reif.  Okay.  I think we have enough for a quorum to proceed at this point.  Dr. Rowlands, have you joined us yet?  Still not there.  Okay.  At this point in time, it is time for our public commenting period.  We have a number of public commentors that I've been provided a list of.
                  Let me remind the public commenters that we basically have to hold you to a five minute presentation time period.  If you exceed that, I'll just let you know ahead of time when that's coming.  And we can move forward with that.  Okay.  With that in mind, let's go ahead and begin with our first public commenters.  This is going to be Dan Baker, who's from the Environmental Reaction Engineering Experts Consulting.

PUBLIC COMMENTS

                  MR. DAN BAKER:  Hi.  My name is Dan Baker, and I am currently consulting with a consortium of stakeholder chemical companies.  For over 30 years I have been involved in air quality programs serving as the committee chair for the American Petroleum Institute and for the coordinating research council.  I have evaluated hundreds of projects with one of the criteria being their likelihood of delivering a credible and useful end product.
                  In my professional judgement I would not have released this version in its current form.  The reasons why will become clear as I go through the charge questions.  I'll focus on questions 2 and 3 to be brief, while my written comments will cover all four questions.  Regarding Charge Question 2, while I do believe that all potential risk will be captured through the screening approach, I don't think a definitive answer can be given because, in my judgement, the range over which this ambitious screening approach is intended to encompass is much too broad in multiple ways.  I'll mention one here.
                  The types of TRI reporting facilities are too broad, ranging from large multi-emission source manufacturing facilities, many with green space buffer zones, to small one or two emission source specialty businesses embedded in populated neighborhoods.  It is unreasonable to expect a generic fugitive and stacked dual characterization to represent the full diversity of facilities.  Consequently, this screening approach, version 1.0, does little to inform on risk.
                  Specifically, it does little to differentiate between real potential for risk and highly improbable potential for risk.  Additional tiers of refinement focusing on emissions, source characterization, and population activity patterns are all needed to substantially reduce uncertainty before considering risk-based decisions that would likely result in misutilization of limited resources.
                  For Charge Question 3 there are several much needed improvements.  I'll focus on one here, namely source characterization.  The EPA is well-aware that stack height has the greatest impact on predicted concentrations of air pollutants, as cited in EPA documents from the 90s that reviewed stack heights by SIC codes, with median heights as high as 40 meters.  For comparison, a 40 meter stack height compared to a 10 meter median stack height reduces peak concentration by a factor of 20.  And the peak occurs four times further downwind.
                  Stack height upper and lower quartiles were not provided, just medians in those documents.  A full display of the data could be available if those records were retained.  In addition, a simple two stack non-merging plumes scenario with a median height of still 10 meters, centered around the facility midpoint, reduces downwind concentration significantly over the entire receptor field, except the very near field.  The combination of potentially misrepresenting stack heights and their spatial distribution can result in roughly two orders of magnitude of uncertainty.
                  Furthermore, if the emissions are actually from a flare at 40 meter height -- and TRI chemicals can have significant flare emissions -- then the peak concentration is reduced two orders of magnitude and occurs five times further downwind.  Clearly flares, as reported in TRI Part 2, Section 7A, Column B, need to be distinguished from stacks.  With regard to TRI chemicals that are also hazardous air pollutants, these are already well modeled using a hybrid approach and air tox screen.
                  All sources are considered, which allows for model to monitoring data comparison, a key ground truthing step that unfortunately is not part of this current effort.  Finally, other overlapping EPA and state programs could play a much needed role in restructuring and improving this current effort to avoid focusing on highly improbable potential for risk.  Thank you.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Thank you, Mr. Baker.  Any questions from the Committee?  Okay.  Our next presenter is Xavier Barasa (phonetic) from the EJ Leadership Team.  Mr. Barasa?  I'm not hearing you.  Okay.  I guess we will go to the next speaker, which is Uni Blake from the American Petroleum Institute.  Mr. Blake, or Ms. Blake.  There you go.  Oh, thank you.
                  MS. UNI BLAKE:  So, thank you members of, yeah, here I am.  Thank you.  So thank you members of the SACC and EPA for hosting this meeting.  My name is Uni Blake.  I'm a senior policy advisor here at the American Petroleum Institute.  So API is the only national trade association representing all facets of the oil and natural gas industry.  As such, all members are affected by many of EPA's activities under the amended TSCA.
                  We applaud EPA's desire to continue advancing the Agency's capabilities to improve methodology to ensure scientifically rigorous approach is used to evaluate risk.  So we support the development and use of sound and well-defined methods for identifying potential health risks associated with fenceline exposures.  However, incorporating exposures for fenceline populations has introduced a layer of complexity into TSCA risk evaluations that are potentially beyond this program's scope, for example, the influence of local specific factors.
                  So, as defined by the EPA, fenceline exposures occur within 10,000 meters of a facility.  At those distance, local specific factors, such as stack height -- like the previous speaker talked about -- topography, meteorology influence, atmospheric concentrations of a facilities emissions -- these factors are essential input parameters into AERMOD, which is the program that EPA is using.  They influence the dispersion of the emissions.  And so pairing a sophisticated air model with generic assumption can lead to a labor intensive exercise with results that could not reliably support risk management options.
                  We are also very concerned about the data that's being inputted into the models.  TRI data are typically used across several different EPA risk screening models to provide a broad perspective of potential risk, typically in the context of prioritization.  There are known limitations related to the use of TRI data, as identified by the EPA in their draft document.  Therefore, the data should not be used for making risk determinations.
                  EPA should consider confirming exposure data information directly with the affected facilities and confirming any extrapolation assumptions that they made when the TRI data was missing or unclear.  The Agency also needs to clarify how they interpret and use the risk findings.  For example, if a second level screening assessment resulted in only one facility having potential risk indicators for an OES, what will the next steps be?
                  What if there are cases where risk estimates from a second level screening result in sufficiently high exposures across a majority of facilities?  Will a more refined assessment be necessary?  The Agency could consider developing a decision tree that illustrates how EPA could utilize different risk results in a risk management paradigm.  We urge EPA and the TSCA 9 to consult and coordinate with other agency programs as well as other federal and state offices to avoid duplicative requirements.
                  For example, fenceline exposures are already regulated under the Clean Air Act Section 1112.  As under Section 1112, a substance can be added to the air toxic either by petition or on the administrators determination.  So, in closing, we are asking EPA to clarify how the Agency intends to address uncertainty and complexity introduced into the fenceline screening method by data limitations and the varying exposure profiles that results, in some cases, in differences in orders of magnitude.
                  We also urge EPA to continue engaging with industry as the industry can serve as a resource to develop practical and streamlined approaches to screen out condition of uses that do not present risk and help identify the remaining COUs for which additional data or modeling is needed to make risk determinations before recommending risk management measures.  Again, thank you very much for this opportunity.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Thank you.  Any questions from the Committee?
                  DR. MONICA UNSELD:  I have one.  This is Monica Unseld.  You mentioned several -- more than once that the EPA should engage with facilities and industry.  I was wondering how often industry is engaging with the communities -- the fenceline communities, so we can see if we can get a data set that tells the entire story.
                  MS. UNI BLAKE:  Thank you very much for your question.  We do have community engagement programs in place for our members that they utilize to engage with the community.  Most of our facilities are located in communities.  They are, for example, CAT programs that refineries use to engage with the communities.  There are several different avenues that the industry has used.  I will gladly share that information with you once I get off this opportunity.  Thank you for the question though.
                  DR. MONICA UNSELD:  Yes, and as a follow-up, could you also, if you have it available -- how you would deal with discrepancies in what the communities are reporting and what the industry is reporting?  So, if you have that available, please make that available.
                  MS. UNI BLAKE:  Yeah, of course.  Thank you.  Thank you for the questions.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Any other questions?  Yep, Dr. Doucette?
                  DR. WILLIAM DOUCETTE:  Yeah, I had a related question regarding fenceline monitoring.  There are fenceline monitoring requirements for refineries, specifically benzene and, in Canada, benzene and a variety of VOCs.  In your opinion, do you think this data could be used to evaluate or validate the screening approach that EPA is proposing?
                  MS. UNI BLAKE:  I believe in my comments I kind of touch a little bit on that.
                  DR. WILLIAM DOUCETTE:  I was hoping you could expand.
                  MS. UNI BLAKE:  Yeah.  No.  Okay.  So, yes, I believe yes, it could help identifying exposures that occur at the fenceline.  But I'm not sure which program this would fall under.  Whether it would be the TSCA Chemical Management Program or it'll be through the Air Toxics Program.  What we're just trying to do is avoid duplicative reporting.  It makes it challenging for us to operate.
                  DR. WILLIAM DOUCETTE:  Thank you.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Okay.  Thank you.  With that we'll go ahead and move on to our next speaker, which is Eboni Cochran from REACT.
                  MS. EBONI COCHRAN:  Hello, my name is Eboni Neal Cochran and I'm a resident of the Chickasaw Neighborhood in Louisville, Kentucky.  Chickasaw is one of numerous neighborhoods adjacent to a cluster of Title V chemical facilities commonly referred to as Rubber Town.  For over eight decades residents have been adversely impacted by excess emissions, explosions, fires, noxious odors, and acute and chronic illness and deaths, some of which they attribute to Rubber Town chemical facilities.
                  This is not to mention railcars parked in neighborhoods and sources of pollution that result in cumulative impacts.  After looking into what the EPA will consider when assessing exposure to chemicals I became concerned.  I'm concerned because the TSCA fenceline assessment tool, as designed now, does not provide a complete picture of how people living, learning, visiting, worshipping, and working in impacted neighborhoods are affected by chemical exposure.
                  Not considering risk from chemical disasters, facility malfunctions, and other peak emissions leaves my community vulnerable because it doesn't take into effect the numerous instances in which chemical facilities in my neighborhood report malfunctions resulting in excess emissions, not to mention the big incidents, like one in which there was a power outage causing a hydrochloric acid spill in my neighborhood.
                  My understanding is that the screening tool wouldn't consider this when accessing risk.  Not considering risk from soil and groundwater leaves my community vulnerable.  In Chickasaw Park, chemicals were found in the sediment of the lake and the fish.  Children play there, and people often fish there.  We suspect they eat what they catch.  My understanding is that this exposure would not be considered.
                  Not far from where I live is a wastewater pool that has a liquid leaking from pipes extending from its side into adjacent ditches.  That liquid is soaking into the soil.  My understanding is that this exposure is not going to be considered.  Not too long ago a woman called me distraught because in her neighborhood chemicals were found to have migrated through the soil into their yards.  That exposure is not being considered.
                  Think about that.  We know the soil is contaminated, but the EPA is going to turn their backs on this family because why?  Because it's more convenient?  Because they're taking the easy way out?  What is the point of spending time, money, and other resources on a tool when the tool does not reflect what my community and other communities around this country are exposed to?  Why is the EPA willing to work with industry using their numbers to assess risk but not also relying on impacted communities to show them exactly what they are being exposed to?
                  American Synthetic Rubber Company is a prime example of why the EPA should not rely solely on industry self-reporting.  For years, the company has been considered one of the main contributors of 1,3-Butadiene in the community.  They denied it.  This was back in 2003, I believe.  Then came their period of shutdown.  Air monitoring revealed that levels of 1,3-Butadiene reduced significantly during their shutdown.  And at that point they could no longer deny it.
                  This is just one of the numerous examples as to why solely depending on self-reported numbers is not a good idea.  We need a comprehensive tool that reflects actual pathways of exposure.  By limiting the pathways to the air and surface, the EPA is watering down the atrocities my community experiences every day.  What we need is for the EPA to be on the ground, working with us to identify all known pathways of exposure.
                  We need the EPA to begin speaking in terms of cumulative impacts because that is the reality.  We need the EPA to consider the most vulnerable in our neighborhoods, like our elders, our children, and those with ailments that make them more susceptible to chemical exposure.  These are all commonsense asks.  You don't have to be a chemist, biologist, physician, or engineer to understand this.  You just have to have compassion for the people who are being impacted by chemicals they didn't ask to be exposed to.
                  If TSCA requires the EPA to identify and then eliminate unreasonable risks from chemicals, how will they meet this requirement without the most complete picture?  Please help us, and, with a sense of urgency, please do what you can to ensure all of our communities become safer places to live.  Thank you.  And I do -- I want to say that I appreciate that you all allowed five minutes instead of three because three is definitely -- you know, makes you rush through and all of that.  So, I do appreciate it.  Thank you.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Thank you for your presentation.  Any questions from the Committee?  Okay.  Let's go ahead and move on to -- our next speaker is Dr. Paul DeLeo from the American Chemistry Council.
                  DR. PAUL DELEO:  Thanks, Dan, and good afternoon.  My name's Paul DeLeo.  I'm a senior director in the Regulatory And Scientific Affairs Department at the American Chemistry Council.  ACC is a U.S.-based trade association of about 160 companies, more than half of which are small and medium-sized businesses.  More importantly, our members have facilities in communities across the country that employ hundreds of thousands of Americans.
                  Our members' facilities in the U.S. are subject to numerous federal statutes and regulations, including the Toxic Substances Control Act.  And ACC strenuously advocated for the 2016 Lautenberg Amendments to TSCA with a desire to foster greater confidence among Americans regarding the safety of chemicals in commerce.  In much the same way, ACC is eager to see an approach adopted for evaluating general population exposures to high priority chemicals that consider exposures to fenceline communities adjacent to facilities manufacturing and using those chemicals.
                  ACC members manufacture, process, or use many of the chemicals for which EPA conducted the first ten risk evaluations that this Committee has previously reviewed.  Therefore, we look forward to the expertise and insights that SACC can provide to EPA as it refines its fenceline approach.  The SACC has been tasked with conducting a peer review of the recent EPA draft TSCA screening level approach for assessing ambient air and water exposures to fenceline communities.
                  The review by the SACC is critical to producing a transparent and workable framework as EPA will review the SACC's recommendations and develop a final method.  Finalized screening level approach would be applied to seven of the first ten chemicals for which EPA published risk evaluations between 2020 and 2021.  And the final screening level approach will also be applied to future chemicals undergoing risk evaluation under TSCA Section 6.  ACC has submitted written comments in advance of this meeting, however, we'd like to emphasize several points.
                  First, understanding general population exposures of which fenceline exposures may be a component is an important aspect of the risk evaluation process.  However, the exposure assessment should be developed in a manner consistent with the current longstanding EPA guidance.  EPA's exposure assessment guidelines recommend completing exposure assessments iteratively using a tiered approach to strike a balance between the cost of adding detail and refinement to an assessment and the benefits associated with that additional refinement.
                  The same is true with the screening level approach.  EPA should develop a tiered exposure assessment methodology that is part of a larger decision tree that guides the actions that would be taken as part of the assessment.  An explicit tiered approach would provide transparency to stakeholders regarding EPA's decision making process.  We believe the use of a tiered approach would result in efficiencies that would counterbalance potential additional effort associated with higher tier refinement, when needed, and achieve the EPA's mission of safeguarding communities and their surrounding environs.
                  Second, the screening level approach should include steps where existing data analyses and expertise are incorporated into the assessment.  For example, six of the seven chemicals that are, or will be, subject to the screening level approach are hazardous air pollutants under the Clean Air Act, which means they're existing or pending national emissions standards for hazardous air pollutants for most of these chemicals.
                  As such, there's a tremendous amount of data, expertise, and activity that can be found within EPA's Office of Air and state agencies implementing the Clean Air Act that should be weaved into the screening level approach.  For example, only two weeks ago the Office of Air released an update to its Air Tox Screen model.  EPA describes the Air Tox Screen model as being part of its new approach to air toxics that provides updated data and risk analyses on an annual basis to assist state, local, and tribal agencies, EPA, and the public in more easily identifying existing and emerging air toxics issues.
                  The EPA TSCA Office should discuss their current or planned engagement with the EPA Office of Air and other experts as part of the development of the screening level approach.  Finally, the data used in the screening level approach, such as the TRI data, are critical and influential components of the outcome of the analysis.  So those data need to be subject to a data quality assessment so that the variability and uncertainties associated with them are well-understood and documented and accounted for.
                  We believe that the TRI data, while valuable for some purposes, are not sufficiently reliable to serve as the basis for a determination of unreasonable risk under TSCA.  ACC appreciates the opportunity to provide comments on the screening level approach.  And we'd like to thank you, the members of the SACC, for your contribution to this important activity.  Thanks.  Thanks, Dan.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Thank you.  Any questions from the Committee?
                  DR. MONICA UNSELD:  I do.  This is Monica Unseld again.  Thank you for your comments.  This is more of a request for information, if you have it.  Since we have the health data to know that there is a sense of urgency to protect these communities, could you provide us with any actions that the EPA could take to not delay protecting communities while we refine the methodology?  So, with the tiered approach, how long is that going to take?  If we're not using TRI data, what can we use so that we can protect public health?  Because that is one of the missions points of the EPA.
                  DR. PAUL DELEO:  Right.  Yeah, yeah, and I think that, again, there are many other activities outside of the TSCA Office that are currently in place.  And those are places where you might want to consider looking.  And I'm hoping that EPA will talk a little bit more about how they're interacting with those other parts of its own agency and some state agencies.
                  DR. MONICA UNSELD:  Okay.  Thank you.  This is Monica again.  I was asking because you mentioned the tiered approach, and we are aware of how EPA is working with other offices.  But we just want to make sure that, as we refine this, do you have any tips for us on how we can make it better, more sound science, without people getting sick if they don't have to be?
                  DR. PAUL DELEO:  Right, right.  I think, again, part of the tiered approach is taking efforts -- avoiding spending your time on things that are going to be insignificant exposures and focusing your time on those cases where you might clearly have a concern regarding exposure.  I was just looking today at the data on methylene chloride, and something like 0.03 percent of the 390,000 water samples had levels of methylene chloride above the standard, the MCL.
                  And I'm just kind of curious.  Is that sufficient to say we don't need to look at drinking water exposures to methylene chloride, or is it even that 0.03 percent is too much to be considered?  I think there has to be some decision making and some criteria on decision making that needs to be incorporated.  Otherwise, you're just spending all your resources going round and round and trying to follow each molecule without getting to those decisions and taking action, as you point out.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Okay.  Thank you.  Dr. Johnson, you have your hand up.
                  DR. MARK JOHNSON:  Yes, sir.  Quick question.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Sure.
                  DR. MARK JOHNSON:  Mr. DeLeo, are you familiar with the guidance documents that the EPA has for incinerator permitting?
                  DR. PAUL DELEO:  Not personally, no, not so much I'm afraid.
                  DR. MARK JOHNSON:  Okay.  I was thinking maybe that was what you were kind of alluding to because they use sort of a tiered process as well.  And they look at worst-case assumptions.  And they don't have TRI data to build from.  So I was just wondering --
                  DR. PAUL DELEO:  Yeah, I think there are a number of federal programs where you have this sort of tiered approach.  I'm more familiar on the food safety side.  You look at exposures and based on the exposures that tells you how much data do I need to go onto the next step and just those kinds of ideas -- marrying understanding of the situation with the level of effort.  I personally would like to see more of that weaved into this process so that there's an efficient use of the Agency's resources.
                  DR. MARK JOHNSON:  Thank you.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Dr. Gribble.
                  DR. MATTHEW O. GRIBBLE:  Thank you.  This is Matt Gribble from University of Alabama at Birmingham as an ad hoc member of the SACC.  I'm just hoping for a clarification on scope.  So I understand that we're responding to all public comments, and Dr. DeLeo's comments are welcome and appreciated.  But a lot of them had to do rather with the programmatic aspects of what EPA might do with limited resources, rather than technical criticism of the draft policy, the screening framework.
                  And I'm wondering is this conversation for the SACC's summary of the technical review of this supposed to include programmatic considerations of where resources are better spent or worst spent?  It seems like that might be a separate conversation from what we're tasked with focusing on in our charge questions.  But I would defer to EPA staff on whether we're moving a little outside scope.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  I can respond to that, Dr. Gribble.  This is a period of time where the public is basically commenting on the presentation that the EPA has made.  So they're welcome to present anything they wish to present at this particular time for five minutes.  You're welcome to incorporate those responses into your comments for the questions that the EPA has provided.
                  That's the purpose of this particular period right now.  If you have questions for the commenters -- for the presenters regarding information that will help you provide a better assessment of the questions that the EPA has provided to you, then feel free to ask questions about that.
                  DR. MATTHEW O. GRIBBLE:  Thank you for clarifying.  This is my first time doing this.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  No worries.
                  DR. PAUL DELEO:  Yeah, and, Dan, if I may real quickly just I think programmatically we expect this assessment to be conducted.  But I think you in the SACC can help in helping the Agency focus its resources by determining criteria to when is enough enough of an assessment?  That sort of thing.  So thanks very much.
                  DR. MATTHEW O. GRIBBLE:  Thank you.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  That was Dr. DeLeo.  Okay.  Let's go ahead and move on to our next speaker, Stephanie Herron from EJHA.  No response.  Okay.  Let's move on to Dr. Elke Jensen from Dow Chemical Company.  And I believe you have some slides that need to go up.
                  DR. ELKE JENSEN:  Yes, I do.  Thank you very much.  Hi, good afternoon.  My name is Elke Jensen.  And I am a risk assessor at the Dow Chemical Company.  Dow very much appreciates this opportunity to comment on EPA's proposed screening level approach for assessing ambient air and water exposures to fenceline communities.
                  Dow is committed to the principles of responsible care.  And we remain dedicated to reducing emissions to a level that meet or outperforms EPA's regulations and our own company's sustainability goals.  Dow's comments focus on three main points.  One, the proposed screening level approach is too uncertain and too conservative for use in risk management or cumulative impact assessment.
                  Two, the proposed approach should only be used in a tiered framework, such as that shown here in the figure, for screening out low risk scenarios.  And, three, other EPA offices and state pollution control agencies have developed higher tiered data, information, and methods that would better inform community-specific assessments.  First, several important sources of uncertainty in the proposed approach undermine its use generally in the risk evaluation process and specifically for evaluating fenceline exposures.
                  One uncertainty stems from using toxics release inventory data to estimate air and water concentrations.  Uncertainties in the TRI data include ambiguities around the reported release amounts, lack of information about the number of release days, and lack of knowledge about the specific location and characteristic of emissions, amongst others.  All of these can strongly influence estimates of fenceline air and water concentrations.
                  Another significant source of uncertainty is the mapping approach proposed to assigned chemical releases to conditions of use.  In many instances the mapping process appears highly uncertain and dependent on professional judgment.  And there are additional uncertainties, which are discussed in our written comments.  Due to the high degree of uncertainty, Dow recommends not to merge chemical exposure estimates from the proposed screening level approach with non-chemical stressors to evaluate combined impacts on fenceline communities.
                  The recently published EPA Office of Research and Development proposed research plan for cumulative impacts lays out significant gaps in data, information, and methods that are needed to evaluate the combined impact of chemical exposure with other stressors.  Accessing cumulative exposures and impacts is complex.  It requires the knowledge of site and community-specific information, consultation with other stakeholders, and peer review before combined effects of chemical and non-chemical stressors are considered.
                  Second, screening level assessments are by their very nature intended to help prioritize specific scenarios for additional analysis, and as such, fit into a tiered framework.  Thus, the current proposed methodology may be useful for eliminating low-risk scenarios from further assessment.  However, results generated using screening level approaches should not be considered to represent actual exposures experienced by communities or individuals.  Therefore, the proposed approach should not be used to make risk determinations or risk management decisions relating to potential fenceline exposures.
                  Third, Dow recommends that community-specific analyses, rather than the general ones based on the proposed screening methodology be used to inform potential fenceline exposures.  Other regulatory authorities within EPA, such as the Office of Air Quality, Planning, and Standards, and state pollution control agencies, already perform higher tier fenceline exposure and risk assessments that may provide a more accurate understanding of fenceline community exposures.
                  For water, for example, EPA and state programs implement water quality standards based on site-specific operations and discharge, along with detailed characteristics of the receiving waterbody and its uses.  The water quality criteria are factored into the development of permit limitations to ensure maximum protection of aquatic life and human health.  Thus, at a minimum, these groups should be consulted so that fenceline exposures under TSCA can leverage existing methods and information developed under those authorities.
                  If we can move to slide 2, please?  Thank you.  In summary, Dow does not recommend use of the screening level fenceline approach to inform risk management for potentially exposed communities.  These results do not accurately depict risk and should not be used in a public health context to evaluate overall community health.  Furthermore, results based on the proposed fenceline approach should not be combined with other stressors, as there are significant gaps in both data and methods that could lead to incorrect conclusions.  Site-specific information is needed to accurately estimate potential emissions.
                  And community-specific information is needed to evaluate other potential exposures or stressors.  Communicating the results of an overly conservative screening assessment has the potential to create unnecessary fear in fenceline communities and cause more harm than good.  That concludes my remarks.  I'd like to refer the SACC and EPA to our written comments that we've submitted for additional details.  And thank you very much for the opportunity to comment and for your time and attention.  Thank you.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Thank you.  Dr. Gribble, your hand is still up.  Do you have another question, or was that from last time?  Okay.  Thanks.  Anybody else have a question?  Okay.  Thank you very much.  Let's move on to our next presenter.  This would be Rashmi Joglekar -- sorry if I butchered your name -- from Earth Justice.
                  MS. RASHMI JOGLEKAR:  Thank you.  Good afternoon.  My name is Rashmi Joglekar, and I'm the staff scientist at Earth Justice.  And I'd like to thank the SACC for serving in this critical role and for providing the opportunity to speak today regarding the draft TSCA Screening Level Assessment Approach for fenceline communities.
                  We support EPAs decision to consider impacts to fenceline communities when evaluating and regulating chemicals under TSCA, a change which is needed to comply with TSCA and to fulfill the Biden Administration's Environmental Justice commitments.  However, as currently drafted, the screening methodology fails to account for many of the ways that fenceline communities are exposed to and harmed by chemicals.  And fails to provide a complete or scientifically supported assessment of fenceline community risks and thus understates the harm that residents of those communities face.
                  As Eboni very clearly described, communities near polluting facilities and contaminated sites are exposed every day to toxic chemicals in the air they breathe, the water they drink, and the soil they live, play, and grow food on.  As a result, fenceline communities face disproportionately high risks of cancer, respiratory illness, and other health harms compared to the general population.
                  Moreover, in the United States residents of these communities are more likely to be people of color, who experience income inequality, health care inequity, food insecurity, and disproportionate burdens of underlying disease which further increases their susceptibility to harm from chemicals released by nearby polluting facilities.  These communities need regulation that protects them now.  The SACC is charged with ensuring that EPA's screening methodology captures all of the ways that communities are exposed to and harmed by toxic chemicals and, if not, recommending ways that the methodology can be improved.
                  In doing so we urge the SACC to take the following issues into consideration.  First, EPA does not consider risk to communities exposed to the same chemical for multiple facilities.  This approach effectively assumes that community residents will only be exposed to a chemical from a single facility by a single condition of use.  This is not a realistic assumption, and it is not consistent with the best available science, which shows that polluting facilities are often clustered and concentrated in fenceline communities, leaving residents of those community's exposed to the same chemical from multiple sources.
                  Next, EPA does not consider risk from communities' cumulative exposures to multiple chemicals from a variety of sources and pathways.  Ignoring the real world exposures and risks faced by many fenceline communities.  This approach is also inconsistent with the best available science and is particularly problematic for chemicals that contribute towards common adverse health outcomes, which could increase the likelihood of harm to exposed communities.
                  For example, TRI data from 2020 indicated that fenceline communities near Geismar, Louisiana, a town situated in the heart of Cancer Alley, were exposed to over 370,000 pounds of chemicals associated with cancer by air emissions from nearby facilities.  These include carbon tetrachloride, methylene chloride, PCE, TCE, formaldehyde and 1,3-Butadiene.  EPA also fails to consider fenceline communities' increased susceptibility to harm.
                  The best available science shows that people living in fenceline communities are more susceptible to harm from chemical exposures due to both intrinsic factors, such as life stage or underlying disease, and extrinsic factors, such as psychosocial stress from racial injustice.  And people living in fenceline communities often experience multiple intrinsic and extrinsic factors simultaneously.  They're more likely to be low income people of color with reduced access to quality health care and healthy foods.  In addition, they have a higher risk of developing cancer or respiratory illness from air pollution.  Yet, EPA fails to take any of these factors into consideration in the screening methodology.
                  Next, EPA does not consider all relevant exposure routes and pathways through which fenceline communities are exposed to chemicals and ignores risks from known and foreseen exposure combinations.  And, finally, EPA does not consider complete or reliable chemical release data.  And it fails to consider chemical accidents, spills, and other peak release events, which underestimates risk to fenceline communities from peak exposure events.
                  In its charge to the SACC, EPA solicited comments on ways that its screening methodology may be expanded to address these issues discussed above.  EPA should not delay the implementation of improvements to its screening methodology that can be made today using existing information and resources to protect communities now.  We urge the SACC to recommend near term revisions to EPA's approach that can be implemented without delaying needed chemical regulation.
                  These include incorporating additional uncertainty factors to account for risks from cumulative exposures to multiple chemicals and multiple non-chemical stressors that enhance susceptibility to harm.  This also includes using the highest level of TRI reporting over a several year look-back period, supplemented by other available data sources that capture accidental spills and peak release events, including facility and fenceline monitoring data, and chemical incident reports.  And this also includes using models and information already --
                  DR. ALAA KAMEL:  You have 30 seconds.
                  MS. RASHMI JOGLEKAR:  Okay.  Thanks.  This also includes using models and information already included in the screening methodology, like the IIOAC and AERMOD, to calculate community exposures from multiple facilities that release the same chemical via multiple and combined exposure routes and pathways.  We also urge the SACC to recommend additional changes the EPA should make before completing any additional TSCA risk evaluations to ensure that EPAs fenceline assessments measures fenceline communities' true exposures and risks.  Thank you for your time and your consideration.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Thank you.  Question from Dr. Calder.
                  DR. RYAN CALDER:  Thank you.  That was a really great presentation.  I have a question, I guess, in the first place for the chair.  The last presentation raised a question that I had -- a technical question that I have that maybe I would like technical clarification on if possible from EPA.  Is that possible to do now, or should I do that later?
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  That would be at another time at that particular point.  So you can hold off on those.  We'll have another period where we go back to them.  At this point, yeah, please focus on the commentors at this point.
                  DR. RYAN CALDER:  Okay.  Okay.  Okay.  Thank you.  Sure.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Sure.  Okay.  Any other questions?  Thank you.  Let's go ahead and move forward with our next presenter, who is Amy Kyle -- Dr. Amy Kyle, who is an environmental health scientist faculty member.
                  DR. AMY KYLE:  Hello, this is Amy Kyle, retired faculty member in case anyone's keeping track.  I'm sorry I have a little bit of unstable internet, so I can't turn on my video.  But thank you for the opportunity to comment.  I really appreciate the thoughtfulness that we've seen already from the EPA presentations and also from the questions and comments from the advisory panel.  I'm really looking forward to you all's work on these very important issues.
                  And I guess I have two main points to make here.  And the first one other people have touched on, but the methods that are proposed really are not sufficient to capture the experiences of the most exposed communities.  And you've heard this from some other people, too.  One issue is that they don't represent what we know about exposure scenarios that are important to communities but not necessarily at the fenceline.  TSCA doesn't limit this just to fenceline communities.  It's supposed to be all the affected communities.
                  And I want to highlight three things that I think are important to consider.  One of them are the food chain pollutants -- food chain contaminants.  Those are typically contaminants that are persistent, bio-accumulative, and toxic -- the so-called PBT pollutants.  I mean, mercury and dioxane are two very notorious examples that were admitted primarily to air but distribute in such a way over broader areas that they got into the food chain and led to discontinuing consumption, or limiting consumption, for fish and shellfish in most of the states in the United States.  It was an enormously impactful situation far from some of the sources of these pollutants.
                  And so, I think those need to be considered.  One of the other speakers mentioned that previously.  One additional concern about that is that the food chain pollutants that become contaminated as the toxics move up the food chain also are often traditional foods for people of indigenous heritage or tribes.  And so, that creates additional impacts from a cultural perspective.  And that's fundamentally very unjust.  It's a very fundamental environmental injustice.  So, I urge you to consider these impacted communities that may be disproportionately impacted but not necessarily immediately adjacent to the facility or the waterbody into which the pollutants are distributed.
                  Secondly, I wanted to agree with others who said that excluding the groundwater pathways is quite problematic because we know that pollutants are distributed through groundwater.  And so, if you don't consider those, that leaves a very important deficit in the analysis as well.  And then, the third thing I wanted to also point out, and this particularly, I looked into the data here on methylene chloride particularly.  But communities can be effected by the waste management disposal systems that we have, which then in themselves become a source of exposure.
                  And these systems can effectively concentrate these materials in the areas where the facilities are located.  The TRI data that you all are using requires reporting from certain disposal facilities but not from wastewater treatment facilities.  So I'm wondering if this has maybe been overlooked somewhat partly because of that.
The National Emissions Inventory, which also includes toxics data for some toxics, air emissions from wastewater facilities of methylene chloride, for example, in Los Angeles comprised almost 30,000 pounds from 80 facilities.
                  That appears to be missing from the data sources that you all are using.  I don't know why those are excluded from the TRI reporting.  It seems like they should be included.  But my point here is that hazardous waste facilities, landfills, and wastewater facilities are all significant emitters of methylene chloride, as one example.  And so, it seems like, because we know those are concentrated pollutants drawn from a wider area, that those should be included.  Okay.   So then my second major point is that --
                  DR. ALAA KAMEL:  You have 30 seconds.
                  DR. AMY KYLE:  Okay.  Well, I'll be brief on this one then.  We really need the scientists here to look deeply into the scientific infrastructure that we have at EPA for these hazardous air pollutants because it's eroded over the last 30 or so years, since the 1990 amendments, as few or no -- or actually one pollutant has been added as a designated hazardous air pollutant, which then is subject to reporting and management and so on.
                  DR. ALAA KAMEL:  Please complete your sentence.
                  DR. AMY KYLE:  And I think this Committee needs to look at the underlying infrastructure for designation of chemicals and management of data about them to think about how we could do this better.  So, thank you and thank you for my extra 10 seconds.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Thank you.  Any questions from the Committee?  Okay.  Let's move forward to our next presenter, Sonya Lunder from the Sierra Club.
                  MS. SONYA LUNDER:  Hello.  Thank you all for inviting testimony today.  My name is Sonya Lunder.  I'm the senior toxics policy advisor for the Sierra Club.  I'm speaking today on behalf of our millions of members and supporters and my program's own commitment to ensure that our advocacy supports efforts to address the most severe impacts of chemical pollution on people and their health.
                  As such, we believe that the Agency must quickly and deliberately move toward policies and methods that go beyond the rudimentary quantification of single chemical impacts through single media models.  We believe that EPA already has the methods and tools available to do this better to integrate people's background exposure to the high priority chemicals, add together exposure from multiple sources for just one single chemical, and use uncertainty factors to account for major gaps in knowledge about the intensity of exposure to highly impacted populations.
                  At this point, when the President and his senior advisors are proclaiming a commitment to environmental justice and a move to understanding the complexity of the social and environmental factors that impact environmental justice communities, I suggest that the SACC members ask themselves and the EPA whether the proposed model achieves EPA's legal and political mandate of identifying and hopefully protecting the people who are most exposed to TSCA first ten chemicals.
                  Sierra Club and other community leaders, advocates, and our legal counsel has always disputed EPA's conditions of use framework for interpreting TSCA's legal mandate and allege that it's an unjust way to narrow the bills original scope.  We've seen positive progress in the administration to broaden the focus -- for example, the Agency's determination that we use a, quote/unquote, whole chemical approach to evaluate the safety of HBCD.
                  In the face of this progress on TSCA chemical evaluations and the broader commitment to do better in addressing the totality of human exposures to environmental pollution, EPA's fenceline methodology 1.0 is woefully inadequate, as many panelists have already raised questions today about the very narrow framing of the modeling that's been presented.  The current model didn't even attempt to address additive exposures emitted from two adjacent facilities into a community, nor does it add together estimated exposures from air and surface water.
                  As the other advocacy speakers have detailed or will continued to detail in our public comments, these shortcomings and lost opportunities kind of pile up for fenceline 1.0.  The initial criteria themselves cut out significant and widespread background exposures to TSCA chemicals -- things like CDC's NHANE's biomonitoring data that demonstrate vast disparities in exposure to these chemicals across the population and data about subsistence fish consumption, people living in proximity to disposal sites, and drinking water.
                  EPA's tacit assumption for these undocumented exposures is that their contribution to overall risk is zero.  EPA has asked the SACC to weigh-in on how this methodology could be identified to expand to include EJ concerns and be used to inform future EJ assessments.  Indeed the model stands in a stark contrast to the fundamental principle of environmental justice, which is to address the complex and multifaceted attack on community health by a variety of pollutant and non-pollutant stresses.  EJ leaders continuously call our attention to their lived experience and the reality that exposure to health harming pollution varies tremendously based on a person's race, socioeconomic status, and ethnic identity, a reality in which there are vast disparities in rates of chronic diseases, access to quality health care, educational opportunities and economic mobility but are also influenced by a person's race, ethnicity, household income, and immigration status.
                  In the reality we know that fenceline communities are places where people are often living in proximity to multiple polluting industries; have less rigorous permitting and oversight and enforcement of those industries; have less robust drinking and wastewater infrastructure; are subject to harmful spikes in pollution during emergency events, malfunctions, or extreme weather, storms and power outages; and who are more likely to live atop historic pollution sources of all types.
                  We also know that people in fenceline communities drink water from wells, eat locally caught fish or shellfish, and can be employed by those industries that are emitting pollution into the air.  And as just a demonstration of a very different framework, or way of approaching this problem, I would counter the ACC example that only 0.03 water systems --
                  DR. ALAA KAMEL:  You have 30 seconds.
                  MS. SONYA LUNDER:  -- have excessive exposure to methylene chloride.  And I would say these represent documented exposure to real people and a very easy type of exposure data that EPA could incorporate into its models.  Addressing all these factors in a quantitative model could be a risk assessors dream or maybe their worst nightmare.  So, if the EPA wants to do an accurate and reasonably complete assessment of whole chemical exposure to a single TSCA chemical, it needs to measure and model more exposures and account for major unknowns with uncertainty factors.
                  One last example is TCE and PERC, which are closely related solvents.  We know that many communities have additive exposure to these two high priority chemicals in their drinking water and their air, and employments.  And we look toward the next 20 chemicals as a place where there are also lots of additive exposures.  Lots of additive exposures in fenceline communities by the group of solvents --
                  DR. ALAA KAMEL:  Please complete the sentence.
                  MS. SONYA LUNDER:  -- (inaudible).  All right.  I'll stop there.  Thank you so much for inviting public testimony today.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Thank you.  Any questions from the Committee?  Okay.  We'll move forward to our next speaker, which will be Lindsay McCormick from the Environmental Defense Fund.  Lindsay McCormick.  Okay.
                  DR. KAREN SLANEY:  She's muted.  Speaking, but she's muted.
                  MS. LINDSAY MCCORMICK:  Can you hear me now?  I'm sorry.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Okay.  Go forward, please.
                  MS. LINDSAY MCCORMICK:  Okay.  Sorry about that.  Good afternoon.  My name is Lindsay McCormick, and I'm a program manager with Environmental Defense Fund.  EDF commends EPA for developing a draft methodology to assess fenceline exposures and risks from chemicals undergoing risk evaluation under TSCA.  However, we have major concerns about the draft approach, particularly related to its screening level scope, underestimation of risk, and troubling implications for risk management.
                  While EPA intends this draft to be a version 1.0 that will be supplanted by version 2.0 in the future, the Agency clearly also intends to use this version to make important risk management decisions, including decisions that specific fenceline exposures do not present unreasonable risk.  EPA's discussion of the possible outcomes of its fenceline approach indicates that if any unreasonable risk is identified that is not already found in the risk evaluation will need to be further substantiated.
                  In contrast, however, if the fenceline approach estimates there is no unreasonable risk, then the Agency will not require any further substantiation.  EPA's implicit rationale for this asymmetric approach is that it believes its screening approach is conservative.  However, while some factors used in this methodology may indeed be conservative, in reality it systematically underestimates risks overall.
                  This likely means that EPA will exclude real world exposure pathways as well as underestimate exposures to fenceline communities ultimately undermining effective risk management approaches.  I'd like to take a moment to highlight three specific examples.  And we have provided further examples in our written comments that we have submitted.  One, EPA excluded major environmental pathways of exposures, including from land disposal and deposit, groundwater, plume deposits and vapor intrusion, consumption of contaminated food including but not limited to fish and accidental releases.
                  Two, EPA did not advocate multiple exposure sources or settings within a given condition of use, such as combined exposures to multiple facilities, multiple pathways, such as air and water, as well as exposures from being both a resident of a fenceline community and a worker who is exposed to the chemical on the job.  Three, EPA did not aggregate exposure and risk across conditions of use.  The real world scenarios in which fenceline community residents may be subject to combined risk from two more conditions of use are not considered.
                  So, for example, EPA's approach fails to account for the aggregate chemical exposure and risk faced by a person who lives both near an industrial facility and next door to a dry cleaner emitting a given chemical, such as 1-bromopropane.  Further, the approach does not rely in sufficiently robust data.  For example, the use of annual TRI release data will obfuscate peaks such as accidental releases and startup and shutdown events.  Where possible, EPA should integrate real world fenceline air, water, and ground monitoring data to reflect the reality of individual's exposures.
                  Of note, EPA has authority under TSCA Sections 4 and 8 to require or call in such data from chemical companies.  We recommend that in future applications of this methodology, EPA acquires such monitoring data and do so sufficiently early in the process so that it can be fully incorporated.  The many ways in which the draft endpoint approach excludes or underestimates exposures demonstrates the best available science, which is required by TSCA Section 26H, is not being used to estimate risk to fenceline communities.
                  This is particularly glaring given that individuals in fenceline communities generally have higher than average exposures and are potentially exposed or a susceptible subpopulation, a group identified in TSCA for specific consideration.  EPA had sufficient time to revise the approach before applying it to the six chemicals, given its current proposal, to take the time to further substantiate any unreasonable risk with additional analyses.
                  At a minimum, EPA should include all appropriate pathways of exposure, aggregate exposures, and incorporate more robust data sources to reflect how individuals living in a fenceline community are actually exposed to these chemicals.  Beyond this, we also encourage the SACC to provide EPA with advice on how the Agency can implement a cumulative risk assessment framework within the context of a fenceline approach moving forward.  EPA's traditional chemical-specific approach, which is a no-risk consideration of how other chemical exposures may impact the risk posed by the specific chemical in question, underestimates actual risk to public health.  This is particularly the case for fenceline communities --
                  DR. ALAA KAMEL:  You have 30 seconds.
                  MS. LINDSAY MCCORMICK:  -- who are often exposed -- thank you.  This particularly the case for fenceline communities who are often exposed to multiple chemicals simultaneously and disproportionately bear the health burden.  Thank you for the opportunity to comment today.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Thank you.  Any questions from the Committee?  Okay.  Let's move forward.  Our next presenter is Dr. Maya Nye from Coming Clean.
                  DR. MAYA NYE:  Good afternoon.  Can you hear me?
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Yes, thank you.
                  DR. MAYA NYE:  Yes, thanks.  Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.  And I want to thank all of you for your service to the Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals.  So, my name is Dr. Maya Nye.  I'm the federal policy director for Coming Clean.  And we're a network of around 150 organizations across the country that are working to transform the chemical industry so that it's no longer a source of harm.  And we are guided by the Louisville Charter for Safer Chemicals, otherwise referred to as the Louisville Charter.  I'm putting a link to that in the chat as soon as I can find it here.
                  And that outlines -- let's see.  Here we go.  It outlines our vision for a safe and healthy environment.  And it calls on the requirement of safer substitutes and solutions, acting with foresight to protect health, and preventing disproportionate exposures and cumulative impacts.  And so, I guess I want to submit the Louisville Charter for Safer Chemicals as a guidepost for policy and scientific decision making.
                  And so, I grew up in a fenceline community, and I went to school as a child in a fenceline community -- all the schools that I went to next to a chemical manufacturing site that was owned and managed by multiple owners that produced multiple different chemicals, all the way from carbamate pesticides to antifreeze.  And I did so from the time that my mother was pregnant with me all the way through adulthood.  And so, I'm really happy to see the EPA is acknowledging that fenceline communities face unique threats.
                  Unfortunately, as a number of my previous colleagues have pointed out, this methodology falls short of recognizing the realities of the exposures on the ground in my community and in community's like -- that Ms. Cochran from Louisville talked about.  So it really significantly underestimates hazards that are faced by fenceline communities.  And so, in my community we didn't face these hazards one facility at a time, one chemical at a time.  If only we were fortunate enough to say, okay, today I think I'm only going to breathe in the ethylene oxide from the Union Carbide plant in Institute and not the one in South Charleston.
                  Or, I'm only going to be able to breathe it in in the amounts that are actually reported on the toxics release inventory and not the other emissions that didn't get reported through the TRI.  And just pointing out, I think as some previous colleagues did, that these reported data are reported by industry, and oftentimes it's not validated by state environmental protection agencies or the EPA.  And when I was kid, we went swimming in the Kanawha River on a frequent basis.
                  And, I couldn't say, well, I'm only going to be exposed to whatever -- one of these chemicals that's being emitted from the outflow, the discharge that particular day.  And, oftentimes, those discharges significantly exceeded threshold quantities.  And I didn't see in the methodology where those kinds of peak exposures were really well taken into consideration.  And some other folks had mentioned there are a number of people that still fish for subsistence, particularly unhoused populations in these areas, and as a means for a sustenance.
                  So, considering that the fish in the Kanawha River have -- they are burdened with legacy contaminates, these PBTs, these persistent bio-cumulative toxins, that someone referred to earlier -- the uptake in the system is going to be, contribute to cumulative impacts.  Someone else mentioned not taking into account chemical disasters and malfunctions.  And I can't tell you the number of chemical disasters that have occurred in my community over the years.
                  And, in fact, one particular disaster, the fenceline monitoring was disabled prior to the incident.  And so, there was, quote/unquote, no detectable quantity that left the fenceline because, literally, there was no way to measure that it was leaving the fenceline.  But that doesn't mean that the community doesn't experience those things.  It also didn't take into account -- so in my community folks were also about -- 300,000 of my neighbors and I, we had our drinking water contaminated from a chemical that was grandfathered in under TSCA that wasn't required to have human health effects acknowledged before being -- entering commerce or entering our drinking water supply.  So the --
                  DR. ALAA KAMEL:  Thirty seconds.
                  DR. MAYA NYE:  -- methodology didn't take into account those kinds of exposures -- or the brown field sites and Super Fund sites in the area.  It also didn't take into account the stresses that I face as a white woman are not going to be the same stressors that are faced by folks who live in Institute right across the river from where I grew up that are on the receiving end of racial discrimination.  So, don't assume that low levels of discharge aren't worth considering because a lot of low level discharges in these communities add up.
                  DR. ALAA KAMEL:  Please end your sentence.
                  DR. MAYA NYE:  Thank you.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Thank you.  Any questions from the Committee?  Okay.  We'll move forward to our next speaker, Dr. Katheline Pierre, and I believe you have some slides to put up.  There we go.
                  DR. KATHELINE PIERRE:  Good afternoon everyone.  My name is Katheline Pierre.  I am both the medical doctor and physical scientist and the director of Foundation Medicine 501(c)(3) Private Foundation.  And I'm going to go ahead and give you a brief overview of some of the takeaways I got from a lot of your comments, as well as a few different points that I feel that we didn't cover just yet.
                  I wanted to start with the first page, going over what you were tasked with.  And that would be upon a recall of materials such as OES, interest was found in a group of COUs.  Now these COUs are easily combined with different molecules, for example, sulfuric acid, H2SO4, and its carboxyl group, CH3O2.  Now some of the methyls that we've been talking about have various what I would say to be components.  For example, when structuring different molecules, you'll notice their biproducts as well as their catalytic decomposition.
                  Some of it is unbalanced, for example, salt, such as hydrocholorequine, that have been recalled.  That causes gastric acid or hypertension.  They're carboxyl groups.  That would be the hydrochlorics as well as the anticoagulants and the sulfates and sulfides.  The silicone group, that would be much more considered an insulator or an inductor -- the anticonvulsant groups, such as bis-phenyl or hydramine, which has a correlational variable.
                  The anticonvulsants seem to be much better than the original carboxyl group, mainly because most people refuse to use or are unaccustomed to the anticoagulants.  There is -- for reference, we've been taught how to clean, treat, and protect most diseases or brachial hemorrhages.  We also have to overview zinc sulfates from niacin to magnesium thiamine.  Those are successful substitutes.  The next part I wanted to go into would be finding yourself things that are universal.  The reward is in the risk in terms of capacitance and Ieffa (phonetic).
                  Now I carry multiple roles in my community, similar to those around me.  Not only am I a student, I'm a medical professional.  I also live in the community and also travel between community's.  Post-pandemic we have to look at the different correlational variables starting from -- and I just want to make sure that you guys can hear me.  That way I'm able to give you guys a comprehensive review.  For example, distance -- variables that we should measure would be distances -- electrical consumption, as well as its effects during meetings.
                  For example, nylon is a really good substitute for something that may be causing a -- what I would say an index of refraction effect.  And pardon me if I'm not giving you guys the best review.  I am going briefly through this.  I had to do this last minute, and I work all week.  So I have a lot of case files on me as well.  And that's one of the things that is important about Foundation Medicine is that we work with --
                  DR. ALAA KAMEL:  You have 30 seconds.
                  DR. KATHELINE PIERRE:  -- different things.  So one of the, a few important things I do want to stress would be PZ over T or what they would call the molar volumes of these substances -- getting labels for them.  For example, as volume increases, so does pressure -- as well as the, one more minute.  Let me see if I can find my notes on that -- as well as the kinetic theory or Avogadro's hypothesis.  And that would require the molar volumne at STP or A or Calvin, which is equal through a degree Celsius plus 273.15.  For --
                  DR. ALAA KAMEL:  Please finish your conversation.
                  DR. KATHELINE PIERRE:  -- now we have over safety and environmental concerns, such as implementing safer procedures, lubrication post-pandemic, labeling of methods and medical machines.  And, lastly, some of your sources of error -- or sources of error would include --
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Can you please finish up your last sentence, please?
                  DR. KATHELINE PIERRE:  Yes.  The PPM or the PPBs, overcrowding and aggregate exposure as the EBF states.  Post-pandemic rations, getting this to the public without extraneous events.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Thank you very much.  Thank you for your comments.  Any questions from the panel?  Okay.  We will move forward to our next speaker, which is Molly Rauch from the Moms Clean Air Force.
                  MS. MOLLY RAUCH:  Hello.  Thank you so much for the opportunity to testify.  I'm Molly Rauch.  I'm public health policy director for Moms Clean Air Force.  I have three children and live in Washington, D.C.  Moms Clean Air Force has more than a million members across the country and organizers working on the ground in a dozen states.  And our mission is to protect children from air pollution and climate change and other sources of health harms.  Many of our moms and dads and grandmas and aunties who are part of our organization joined us because they are concerned about how toxic chemical pollution is effecting the health of their children and their families.
                  Many of them live near refineries, power plants, pumpjacks, petrol chemical plants, factories, and other industrial facilities in states across the country.  And they're living on the fenceline.  So it matters deeply to our members what they and their families are exposed to.  They don't care if the chemical is in the air or in the water or coming up through the soil in their home, whether it comes from the playground, the home, or the school.  They care about being protected from all these sources.
                  It matters to them that someone's paying attention, and it's so important for the EPA to take an approach that is not piecemeal when it comes to looking at what these families are exposed to.  They're whole people and should be treated as such in EPA's approach.  So, we feel that one way to do this is not only to look at all the ways or pathways that can expose fenceline communities to hazardous chemicals, such as through contaminated food and groundwater and from chemical spills, but also to face the reality that these families and communities often deal with exposures from more than one source, which we've heard a lot about already in this hour.
                  For example, EPA's own data shows that polluting facilities tend to be clustered together.  So fenceline communities will often be dealing with multiple exposures at the same time.  And many members of the community may have a double whammy of exposure because, for example, they live close to facilities and also work at one of them.  And we feel that EPA's plan doesn't properly take such lives into account.
                  Another troubling aspect of the fenceline screening approach, as it's currently written, is that EPA's approach not only underestimates the risks that fenceline communities face but also appears to trivialize them.  The plan says that if risks from certain chemical uses are identified, then EPA will do a further analysis to confirm those findings.  Although, we don't know what that analysis exactly is.  But, on the flipside, if EPA does not identify any unreasonable risks, the plan says the Agency will stop there and no further investigation is needed.
                  So we're concerned about this.  It doesn't make sense to us that EPA would second guess a finding of risk to fenceline communities and require more analysis to confirm it while doing the opposite when its initial screening finds no risk, but just presuming in that case that everything is fine.  So, I urge EPA -- on behalf of Moms Clean Air Force and our members, I urge EPA to strengthen its method of analyzing fenceline risks to capture the real lived experience of these fenceline communities.  Thank you very much for the opportunity to testify.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Thank you.  Question from Dr. Unseld.
                  DR. MONICA UNSELD:  Yes.  This is Monica Unseld.  I'm trying to synthesize as much as I can today.  This is a question for Molly Rauch.  In speaking with the communities that you work with, have you ever heard them express concern that maybe we shouldn't look at cumulative impacts or shouldn't look at something because it would create an unreasonable sense of fear and, therefore, perhaps backfire or --
                  MS. MOLLY RAUCH:  We do not hear this.  In fact, we hear the opposite.  We work with families that are already afraid and are concerned that they're not getting adequate information because the analysis of their exposure doesn't take into account the multiple pathways and the cumulative risks.  So we hear the exact opposite.
                  DR. MONICA UNSELD:  Thank you.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Okay.  Thank you very much.  All right.  Our next speaker is Swati Rayasam from the UCSF Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment.
                  MS. SWATI RAYASAM:  Yeah.  Hi.  Hi, everybody.  Thank you so much for sitting on what is going to be a series of very long Zoom calls.  I really appreciate all of your service to the SACC to address this really critically important issue.  My name is Swati Rayasam.  I'm a science associate at the Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment at the University of California, San Francisco, otherwise referred to as PRHE.
                  And today I'll be discussing a number of my organization's concerns around the recently released fenceline screening methodology, as well as kind of the process that the Agency has used in the release of this important methodology that disproportionately impacts those on the margins.  But, primarily, or first and foremost rather, I have no conflicts to disclose.  So, PRHE is among a number of groups who have been actively following TSCA implementation, submitting public comments with support from experts to ensure that the Agency meets its statutory mandate of making decisions about chemical risks based on the best available science, adequate information, and the weight of scientific evidence.
                  We support the Agency's decision to revisit and evaluate the previous administration's exclusions and exposures to communities surrounding polluting facilities.  However, upon reviewing the methodology, we found a series of both methodological and logistical decisions that, if finalized, would cause this fenceline screening methodology to systematically underestimate risk and adversely impact the health of community's that this document is explicitly stating it wants to support.
                  In several places in the methodology, as well as in the media, EPA has asserted that this proposed screening methodology incorporates conservative assumptions and provides conservative estimates of risk in the sense of being more likely to overestimate than underestimate.  However, EPA provides little or no justification for these statements.  And, upon assessment of our group, and a couple of the other commentors you've heard from, many aspects of EPA's approach are actually likely to underestimate risk to communities.
                  For example, understanding ambient concentrations of a chemical at various locations near emitting facilities seems to be a foundational question that this method would be able to answer.  At present though, EPA's approach is designed to address and understand typical ambient concentrations of a chemical across various locations as a result of emissions from individual facilities assigned to specified occupational exposure scenarios.
                  Thus, the approach doesn't actually consider how multiple facilities may contribute to ambient concentrations of a chemical in a community or aggregate exposure, as addressed by other commentors.  Summary statistics as well reported from EPA's modeling don't present ambient concentration values from individual model receptor locations but instead choose to combine and compile results from multiple receptors, which averages out and, thus, underestimates risk.  So we would strongly recommend that EPA revise its methodology to determine aggregate, ambient concentrations of chemicals at individual receptor locations in fenceline communities.
                  This revision would not require a major overhaul of the methodology but a reorientation of some steps in the approach.  And we outlined them in detail in our written comments, which will be submitted to the docket.  Additionally, EPA's approach to estimations for facilities lacking TRI data is also not conservative and may, in many instances, significantly underestimate emissions, concentrations, and risk by not accounting for uncertainty while making use of very limited data.
                  For example, the category of spray adhesives is the only occupational exposure scenario where EPA found no additional risks for 1-bromopropane.  However, this is a category for which there was no TRI data.  And, in the methodology, EPA used data from a single contractor report that provided data for a single facility and said that there were no fugitive emissions from the facility with all emissions going through the stack.  EPA assumed that these data were representative and appropriate for representing this category in the methodology.
                  However, it seems highly unlikely that this category would have absolutely no fugitive emissions.  And, in fact, the methodology shows that no other OES had zero fugitive emissions of 1-bromopropane.  Therefore, rather than assuming no fugitive emissions for this OES, which likely underestimates ambient concentrations and risks, EPA should have developed a non-zero estimate based on use of data from other OES as surrogates or based on expert engineering judgement.
                  More generally, EPA should adopt a method to account for uncertainty in emissions estimates for categories with limited data and perhaps make use of the Office of Air and Radiation emission inventories and expertise for emissions estimates.  With regard to 1-bromopropane as well, this methodology indicates that EPA has a plan to employ models from its draft risk evaluations which were conducted under the last administration.  However, our group, and many others on this call, submitted extensive comments, which went unaddressed, about the inadequacy of EPA's model assumptions for 1-bromopropane and --
                  DR. ALAA KAMEL:  Thirty seconds.
                  MS. SWATI RAYASAM:  -- its impacts on PESS.  Thank you so much.  So, specifically, that kind of outlines how EPA would assume that children were only exposed during a four hour period after school, which does not actually address the reality of children from low wealth households whose families own dry cleaners, and similarly makes assumptions about single workers doing single tasks and then later counteracts that assumption by saying, but many workers provide multiple tasks.
                  And, so, within its model assumptions as well, which this methodology claims to carry forward, we would really recommend the SACC to look back on public comments that were given both oral and written to EPA that have gone unaddressed that would impact fenceline communities.  And I have a series of other things, but I think that --
                  DR. ALAA KAMEL:  Just finish your sentence please, yes.
                  MS. SWATI RAYASAM:  Yeah.  One of the major things that have been recommended or asked by the SACC at this meeting is what can be done now?  I think, Dr. Unseld, you asked that.  And I think that one of the major things that we would recommend is that EPA can put health protected default adjustment factors right now that were recommended 13 years ago by the NAS and Science and Decisions to account for uncertainties in the data.  And, while they do that, EPA can simultaneously have its cake and eat it too and provide a robust screening methodology that accommodates for all the exposure uses and pathways that people will be exposed via --
                  DR. ALAA KAMEL:  Thank you.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Thank you very much.  Any questions?
                  DR. MONICA UNSELD:  Monica Unseld again.  Could you name that -- what you said was 13 years ago, please?
                  MS. SWATI RAYASAM:  Yeah, totally.  There are health protective default adjustment factors, and we would recommend that EPA would immediately incorporate -- or could immediately incorporate these health protective adjustment factors into the risk evaluation process -- we've said this a number of times during the first ten chemicals -- and into its risk management decisions to be able to kind of protect potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulations.  So, in Science and Decisions, which was released in 2009 by the National Academies of Sciences --  And, to date myself, this is the year that I graduated high school -- these were actually recommended for cases where there are known relevant issues, but we actually lack specified data.
                  And so, we are really trying to understand and sympathize with EPA's predicament, right?  They are under these timeline constraints.  They are under these resource constraints.  However, there are things that can happen now to protect communities who have been experiencing harm via polluting industries, communities that Maya comes from, communities in North Carolina and in Richmond, California, which are next to me in Berkeley over here -- that we can use to protect people right now and make sure that we have methodologies that --
                  DR. ALAA KAMEL:  There's another question.
                  MS. SWATI RAYASAM:  -- well into the future.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Yes, I see it.  Yes, Dr. Chaisson, please.
                  DR. CHRISTINE CHAISSON:  Thank you for your presentation.  Can you provide the specific reference to all of those default factors you're talking about?  Would you be willing to send those to Dr. Schlenk so that we can take a look at that?
                  MS. SWATI RAYASAM:  Yeah, I'm happy to.  I'll be attaching these oral comments, the written version of them.  We also have written comments we'll put in the docket.  And I'll make sure that I attach our 1-bromopropane comments, which I referenced in my oral comment, and Science and Decisions, the specific chapter.
                  DR. CHRISTINE CHAISSON:  Thank you.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Okay.  Thank you very much.  Okay.  Our next speaker is Kari Rhinehart from If It Was Your Child.
                  MS. KARI RHINEHART:  Hi, my name's Kari Rhinehart.  Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.  I want to talk about how important it is for the EPA to ensure it considers all of the different ways that families that live near the factories and the facilities that pollute are exposed to these harmful chemicals.  I'm the founder of If It Was Your Child, a grassroots effort started in 2015 by parents in response to an alarming rate of pediatric cancer in Johnson County, Indiana, where I lived in the town of Franklin for 20 years.
                  One of those children was my 13-year-old daughter, Emma Grace.  Emma died December 18, 2014, from a rare brain tumor, an inoperable glioblastoma multi-form that is most common in men over the age of 50.  Three more children within two blocks of our home were also diagnosed with rare brain tumors in the two years prior to Emma being diagnosed.  After Emma died, I was shocked to learn that for the previous 11 years the home we lived in, in Franklin, had been within a half mile of a site that had a 30 year history of TCE and PCE contamination.
                  This groundwater contamination threatens this community to this day.  In 2012, the well field within a quarter of our home was no longer being used as a municipal water source because the EPA designated it a Superfund site, polluted with TCE, PCE, and other toxins.  While it isn't used any longer for city water, many residents continue to utilize the well field for private wells.  And it has also been repeatedly found in homes from vapor intrusion at dangerously high levels above even the most conservative limits.
                  It has been found under two of our elementary schools, in our creek, running through the city parks.  EPA's proposal for assessing the cumulative exposure and risks to fenceline communities and families like mine would only look at chemical exposures from local air and water.  That means it would not consider the groundwater contamination or the vapor intrusion that invaded our homes, and that is unacceptable.  It does not accurately portray the reality that communities like mine face.  Like the rest of Franklin, like my neighbors, like my daughter, I'm not exposed to these toxic chemicals from just one source.
                  I can be exposed to a chemical like TCE and PCE from the air and the water.  My body, my children's bodies, especially the vulnerable children -- their bodies do not differentiate which route of exposure allows toxic chemicals into our homes and bodies.  The EPA needs to use the best available science to estimate all of the risks we face from a chemical like TCE and other dangerous substances that are making our kids sick.  EPA has said itself even one brief exposure to TCE can be harmful to human health.  And that was regardless of the route of exposure.
                  Just look at what happened to Franklin, where factories have contaminated for decades.  We have 17 percent of the population for our county, yet we have 46 percent of the pediatric cancers.  Almost all of those lived within two miles of this TCE contamination.  It's now time for the EPA to act and to deal with towns like Franklin all over this country.
                  EPA needs to modify its fenceline screening approach so it fully looks out for families like mine.  Please advise the EPA to use the best available science so it understands the full scope of exposures and risks families face and can manage these risks from the chemicals and ensure that communities and children get the protection we need and deserve.  Thank you.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Thank you.  Chris, your hand is still up.  Is that from last time or is that from -- no?  Okay.  Any other --
                  DR. CHRISTINE CHAISSON:  I'm sorry, I just forgot to put it down.  Pardon me.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Okay.  No worries.  Any other questions from the Committee?  Let me just remind the Committee that I do communicate to you directly through the chat box, and I'm not getting any responses.  So please, please check periodically the chat box if you can, which will be part of the public domain as well, just so the audience knows that.  Okay.  Our next speaker will be Jennifer Sass from the Natural Resources Defense Council, and she has some slides as well.
                  MS. JENNIFER SASS:  Sorry, I did answer your chat, and I don't have slides.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Okay.
                  MS. JENNIFER SASS:  But I did see the chat, and I did let them know.  So I was paying attention.  Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you and, also, thank you for your service on the SACC.  I know it'll be a long, hard journey.  But the report and the work that you do is very, very important.  And, as you can see from the lineup of speakers today, many, many people care.  So thank you.
                  I'm a senior scientist at NRDC, the Natural Resources Defense Council.  And I work on the federal chemical policy and regulations across chemicals of all statutes.  My comments, I hope, were circulated to you as a short, roughly eight-page letter or document.  I'm going to just touch on them now.  It's organized by charge question, so I'll just touch on a summary of the response to each charge question.
                  For Charge Question 1 -- I'll keep it short -- we simply recommend to the SACC that the SACC support recommendations from Environmental Defense Fund, Earth Justice, and others that EPA consider using the most recent five years or a broader swath of the TRI data and, also, use the highest reported releases.  I'll talk a little bit about that later in my comments.  For Charge Question 2, I wanted to point out that there is like a fatal flaw in the way the screening methodology is set up right now.
                  I would call it a poison pill, which is to say that if there is some alerts or concerns that are identified, it goes on to more and more screening.  And I think these delays lead to actual harm to people and communities and workers and others.  And I think the other speakers have spoke to that.  So I'll just say that there needs to be some actionable evidence.  The evidence should be actionable.  It needs to be used to deliver the protections that communities and workers and others have been long denied and that are well-deserved.
                  So the screen needs to be used to protect communities, not sideline those concerns.  Specifically, I recommend that if conducting a re-analysis if there's new data or new information becomes available, the screen could be used for that.  It could be updated.  It could be advanced.  But for now it's not robust enough to make a determination of not risk.  So we recommend to the SACC that they recommend that if the screen doesn't find an alert, that that is classified into something like an IR group three, unable to determine, or like an unclassifiable, but not be considered no risk.  The screen can't do that.
                  For Charge Question 3, again, focusing on advancements that should not be delayed, we do recommend some quick fixes that we think could be done to the screen, including incorporating some of the information from other pathways that's available in models from the Air Office and others.  But we also remind the SACC and EPA that these improvements or advancements shouldn't come at the expense of delays and withholding protections so that EPA could apply additional uncertainty factors, as Swati before me talked about.
                  And these uncertainty factors can provide a margin of protection or a margin of safety where there's gaps and limitations.  In particular, the SACC could identify where gaps and limitations underestimate risk.  That's very important -- not just to identify gaps and limitations but what direction they go.  For Charge Question 4A, yes, there's other data that could be used.  And we suggest using the National Air Toxics Assessment data as well.  The NATA data provides a combined measure of exposures, including to multiple chemicals, so it can be very useful in that area.
                  For Charge Question 4B, there's a number of things we think would be really helpful that are kind of quick fixes.  It could be incorporated or considered to address EJ issues.  One of them is risk management plans, EPA's RMP plans.  They require that facilities develop RPM plans that create -- that list foreseeable exposure events, including spills, explosions, things like that.  And those are foreseeable exposure events, so they could be included in a screening method.  And they're in the RPM plans.
                  For example, in my notes I point out that one unlucky zip code in Harris County, Texas, over a period of month, had three such events -- incidents -- chemical explosion and spill incidents in Harris County, Texas, by two different facilities --
                  DR. ALAA KAMEL:  You have 30 seconds.
                  MS. JENNIFER SASS:  -- all of them requiring fenceline communities to be evacuated.  So they're affected by these.  Extreme weather events everybody agrees are going to increase accidental or other releases, including fires.  And we saw that in Hurricane Harvey in 2017 that lead to disastrous chemical spills.  Again, those are foreseen events.  They should be included.
                  Peak releases, such as flaring, spills, and explosions can cause both acute and chronic health harms.  An example of chronic is formaldehyde -- or sorry, chronic outcomes from peak exposures is formaldehyde, which National Cancer Institute has reported in epidemiology studies is associated with peak exposures of 15 minutes or less --
                  DR. ALAA KAMEL:  Please finish the sentence.
                  MS. JENNIFER SASS:  -- can lead to cancer.  Sorry?
                  DR. ALAA KAMEL:  Your time is up.
                  MS. JENNIFER SASS:  Oh, thank you.  Okay.  I'll just say that there are some quick things that I've identified in here, but fundamentally -- and we present a method that I've published in the published literature using IRIS data to identify endpoints that are common, such as cancer or noncancer endpoints, across multiple chemicals.  That is published, and I've just put a summary in my comments here with references.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Thank you very much.
                  MS. JENNIFER SASS:  And on the last page I've got the databases there.  Thank you.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Thank you very much.  Any questions?  Okay.  We'll move on to, at least on my list, our last presenter, Karen Slaney also from Moms Clean Air Force.
                  MS. KAREN SLANEY:  Good afternoon.  My name's Karen Slaney.  Thank you for hearing my comments today.  EPA needs to look at all the real world chemical exposures people face, in combination, not just one or two in isolation.  Evaluating chemical exposures from the air and the water is important and good but incomplete.  There are more than two ways to come into contact with chemicals.  Today, chemicals are everywhere.  We can be exposed to chemicals from places we work or shop or from the products we buy or use.
                  The proposed methodology does not consider exposure from all these sources.  Exposure matters.  I was exposed to chemicals at work for some years when I worked at Greater Boston Legal Services in Downtown Boston.  Next door to our pretty refurbished building was a dry cleaning shop, and it turned out that it was venting its waste fumes right into our building.  I and a few others in the office developed health problems, quite possibly as a result.  For the significant and debilitating immune and endocrine problems that I faced, I received social security disability benefits and an end to my legal career.
                  Even if EPA's proposed method would capture the type of exposure I endured at work, it would treat it in isolation unrelated to anything else I experienced from polluted air near my home, other emissions at work, the chemicals that hit me every time I walk into a dry cleaning establishment.  Exposures aren't neatly packaged in isolated and discrete occurrences.  The more someone is exposed to a chemical, the more likely we are to see health impacts.
                  So it's crucial that EPA consider all the different chemicals and burdens that individuals face.  When we sideline science or fail to use best scientific practices, people, families, and communities living and working near polluting facilities will pay too high a price.  In summary, EPA must consider together all the ways we're exposed, so I ask you, as a science advisory committee, to please advise the EPA how it can evaluate all the real world exposures and risks we face from a chemical in today's world.  Thank you.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Thank you.  Any questions from the Committee?  Okay.  Oh, we have a question from Dr. Chaisson.
                  DR. CHRISTINE CHAISSON:  As the presenters are referring to other publications or something like that, Dan, would you request that they post those somehow so that we can take a look at what they're referring to.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Yeah.  Most of the presenters actually have written comments that are on the docket.  If you are requesting additional information, they can place those on the docket, which you will be allowed access to.
                  DR. CHRISTINE CHAISSON:  Thank you.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Okay.  That's the last person on my list.  There's a couple unconfirmed public commenters that I just want to read out just to make sure that they're not available.  Debbie Cox, Brandi Crawford-Johnson, Sherri Norris, John Oluwaleye, Paul Webster, or Jane Williams?  Okay.  Having not heard anything let's go ahead and take a 15 minute break at this particular point.  And we'll reconvene and begin our charge questions.

                  [BREAK]

                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Okay.  We're starting to get folks back.  Alaa, do you want to make a, you said you had a comment you want to make.  You want another couple minutes, or go ahead?
                  DR. ALAA KAMEL:  Yeah, just a quick announcement for the public commentors who made oral comments.  I know they left the Zoom link, and if they rejoin YouTube and they can still hear me, if you have a written document on what you have presented orally, it would be great if you can send it to me to my email.  The address is on the agenda.  It is<EMAIL_ADDRESS> So that whatever you send will be more accurate than the transcription and that way we can have exactly an accurate representation of what you said.  Thank you very much.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Okay.  Thanks, Alaa.
                  DR. ALAA KAMEL:  You're welcome.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  So I'm going to try a third time.  Dr. Rowlands, are you on to introduce yourself?
                  DR. CRAIG ROWLANDS:  Okay.  I think I'm unmuted now.  This is Craig Rowlands --
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Yay.
                  DR. CRAIG ROWLANDS:  You can hear me?
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Yes.
                  DR. ALAA KAMEL:  Yes.
                  DR. CRAIG ROWLANDS:  Okay.  Good.  This is Craig Rowlands with Underwriters Laboratory R&D, toxicologist that has a background in molecular toxicology with a focus on cancer.  And I do risk assessment for various businesses at the UL and focus a lot on medical devices.  And glad I was able to introduce myself.  Thanks.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Thanks.  Thanks for doing that.  Appreciate that.  At this point in time I believe there were a couple Committee members who had some additional questions or clarification for the Agency.  So, before we read the questions into the record, I was wondering are Kevin and Rehan around that they could actually answer some of the questions?
                  DR. REHAN CHOUDHARY:  Good afternoon.  This is Rehan Choudhary from the EPA.  Yes, the team is still available, so if there's some additional questions, we can do our best.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Okay.  Let me just, at least to give some information to the Committee, especially for some of the newer ad hoc members.  Once we go into the charge questions, we try to not necessarily have a banter back and forth with the EPA.  So, again, the questions that you do have please try to ask them now before we get into the charge questions.
                  I will, after each charge question, ask the EPA if they are satisfied with the answer or have questions or clarification for us.  But we try to avoid the banter back and forth between the Agency and the Committee.  So please, at this point in time, if you have, again, questions of clarification before we move into the charge questions, please do so at this point.  Dr. Calder.
                  DR. RYAN CALDER:  Hi, thank you.  Ryan Calder speaking.  So we heard from a number of commentors about the importance of considering both exposure to multiple contaminants and exposure from multiple sources.  And I had thought, at least for the air exposure pathway, that the methodology does consider the super imposition of multiple sources.  I thought that was the rationale for using quite a long radius from each receptor.  Can you clarify that?  If the screening methodology considers via influence of multiple, simultaneous sources for a given contaminant?
                  DR. REHAN CHOUDHARY:  So this is Rehan Choudhary from the EPA.  Currently the approach is estimating ambient air concentrations through a single source -- release source.  It is not aggregating concentrations due to multiple release facilities.
                  DR. RYAN CALDER:  Okay.  Thank you.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  All right.  Any other questions or clarification?  Okay.
                  DR. LUCAS HENNEMAN:  This is Lucas Henneman raising my hand in real life, not virtually.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Okay.  Thank you.
                  DR. LUCAS HENNEMAN:  Just a quick clarification on the TRI data, so are there two mediums of release total in the TRI data, air release and water release?  I know there are different pathways associated with that, but are those the total of the TRI release types?
                  DR. REHAN CHOUDHARY:  So this is Rehan Choudhary from the EPA.  The TRI database itself is multimedia, so in addition to releases to air and water it also encompasses releases as reported by facilities to other pathways, either offsite waste management or to landfills or underground injection, and things of that sort.
                  DR. LUCAS HENNEMAN:  Thank you.

CHARGE QUESTION 1

                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Okay.  So let's go ahead and move forward into the charge question answering period.  At this point we usually have the agency read the question into the record.  Usually that's on a slide, so yep, there we go.  So, Rehan or Kevin, do you want to read that into the record for us?
                  DR. REHAN CHOUDHARY:  Yes, not a problem.  This is Rehan Choudhary from the EPA.  The first charge question we're posing to the SACC Committee: Is EPA screening level approach (Version 1.0) for assessing ambient air and water exposures to fenceline communities clearly communicated and are you able to reproduce results that are relevant to your review?  In your response, please provide examples or explanations to support your conclusions or suggestions.
                  DR. DANIEL SCHLENK:  Okay.  The lead discussant for question 1 is Dr. Cobb.
                  DR. GEORGE P. COBB:  Thank you, Dr. Schlenk.  I've endeavored to pull together the responses for all the discussants and other Committee members who sent me comments.  So I will do my best to read this into the record.  It's relatively long.  So I'm just going to go ahead and get started.  The Committee commends the Agency for drafting a complex document that does a good job explaining the procedures to have been followed to assess exposures that may be experienced by humans residing in fenceline communities.
                  This document is well-organized and generally well-written.  In general, discussants can reproduce results that are relevant to the understanding and review of the document.  Of course, with any draft document, there are improvements that can be included.  Let's begin with a few overview thoughts.  It would be helpful if EPA provided an explanation of how the case study chemicals were selected.  There should be some explanation of why some chemicals were -- excuse me, the same chemicals were not used for air and water pathways.
                  The draft TSCA screening level approach should be validated with appropriate fenceline monitoring data.  Until validation is done, it may be premature to evaluate the reproducibility of this screening approach.  For example, in some cases there are ten orders of magnitude difference between minimum and maximum predicted air concentrations.  Chemical use data from benzene monitoring programs associated with refinery emissions to evaluate and validate proposed screening approaches could be useful.
                  Broadly speaking, steps in the approach are clear.  The process follows logical steps to obtain the information for air modeling, including emissions, discharge estimates, which are the most challenging input to obtain.  So, with those big picture questions in mind, let's move forward to more specific responses to some of the portions of question 1.  Calculations are mostly reproduceable to the extent that data is provided.  However, that is not always the case.  In the 2019 TRI data for air, for 1-BP and for methylene chloride in Washington State, these data could not be reproduced.
                  The EPA spreadsheet for 1-BP has four facility's in Washington, but the TRI data has five.  The air appears to be involving the Protective Coatings Incorporation in Kent, Washington.  The stack release was 21,617 pounds, so it wasn't too small to include.  Perhaps the fugitive emissions being small was the reason.  The EPA said they used both stack and fugitive emissions.  They ended up only using fugitive emissions, and it's not clear why.  There was insufficient time to review and evaluate all the supplemental files and to try and decipher this.
                  Using mass balances to total masses used versus reported releases could be helpful in determining the fraction of any chemical that is unaccounted for in a given assessment.  There were other places in the document where it is unclear what is done.  For example, in the 1-BP case, there are 15 OESs in Table 3-3.  The few sections later there are 14 OESs evaluated in Table 3-5.  No rationale is provided for excluding one of the OESs.  And there's indication of which OES was omitted.  This situation was noted.  There are other cases as well.
                  EPA did not provide the AERMOD input files, which would have been needed to verify if AERMOD was run correctly.  One discussant found that opening Excel files caused errors when brining up linked files.  Excel data sheets are highly technical and can be understood by scientists but difficult for others, including fenceline communities, to interpret.  It will be helpful to develop an internet application to look at these tables and important data.
                  It would also be useful to include calculations in Excel cells.  Some have this, but others do not.  The discussants suggested that the executive summary and introduction sections more clearly articulate the intended or targeted users of the screening level approach and the intended range of chemicals, or classes of chemicals that would be assessed through this approach.  The current methodological document provides rather limited information on the intended targeted users and the scope of this methodological document.
                  It would be useful for EPA to define the audience and user base for this approach.  The definition provided for a fenceline community for the purposes of this report is clearly stated.  However, the process to identify fenceline persons and populations is vague.  The approach identifies programs that were used but does not outline the methodology.  EPA should provide some background on how this has historically been approached for general population exposures at the fenceline.
                  On pages 10 and 11, the exclusion of groundwater wells from consideration of the scope leaves this document incomplete.  The report would benefit from including descriptions of relative risk of exposure pathways not assessed by the approach, for example, from contaminated soil or groundwater.  The current methodological document articulates the exclusion of exposure pathways other than air and water.  It does not consider concepts of aggregate cumulative exposures.
                  While the document states that the design of the proposed methodology presented is flexible enough to allow addition of expanded capacities, on page 18, discussants could not find any information through the document on how the flexibility is embodied or implemented in the screening level approach.  EPA has the discretion to exclude exposure pathways.  It is also impractical to include all exposure pathways.
                  However, decisions to exclude an exposure pathway should always be based on relevance to overall human exposure to the chemical.  And such a decision should be specified in the chemical's properties, uses, and releases.  Perhaps exposure pathway considerations should be part of the problem formulation process.  Another weakness in the approach is the lack of explicit considerations of race and economic disparities, cumulative impacts, and occupational exposures.
                  A short description of A and R, designations within TRI forms, would be helpful to make the methods of this document clearer.  Something like most facilities report on the R form, but some facilities use the shorter A form.  TRI estimates for 1-BP release to ambient air were made using several different approaches: mass balance, monitoring, best practices, best judgement.  How do the accuracy and variability of these approaches compare?  Is it appropriate to compare fenceline concentrations obtained using these vastly different release estimation techniques?
                  Annual TRI releases were used along with the estimated number of days per year that a process is implemented in order to predict daily exposure concentrations.  It doesn't seem likely these releases would occur in this manner.  How would larger, less frequent or single larger releases impact the assessment?  Also, is there any information that would indicate a typical variability associated with TRI chemical release?  How would this variability impact the resulting estimated fenceline air and water concentrations?
                  I might point out that those questions I just mentioned aren't questions we anticipate the Agency answering here today.  They're things to be addressed in the document.  One would assume that many facilities use and release multiple chemicals or change chemicals over time.  Even facilities that use a single solvent likely release other chemicals, perhaps as impurities in bulk solvents.  How would co-contaminants be addressed, and how many chemical facilities that provide TRI data do so for multiple chemicals?
                  So let's move on to estimating emissions and mapping to OES.  It's challenging to use TRI emissions to map to OES, and the descriptions and process need to be explained, including discussions of uncertainty.  There's an interesting admission in page 86, which reads, "In addition, information on the use of chemicals at the facility in TRI and DMR is limited."  Therefore, there's some uncertainty as to whether the mapping of each facility to the OES does in fact represent specific OES.  The uncertainty is quite a bit larger than the word "some" applies here.