Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - March/April 2014 - (Page 26)

Making Chemicals Safer, st 21 Century Interview with Dr. Tina Bahadori, Director EPA Chemical Safety for Sustainability National Research Program by Carol Blackburn, Ph.D. How many diﬀerent manmade chemicals have you encountered today? Hundreds, maybe thousands. They're in our food, our clothes, our furniture, our buildings, our vehicles. In our cell phones and computers. In the air we breathe, and almost everything we touch. They enrich our lives and make them more convenient in countless ways. Most of us take for granted that the chemicals in our lives have been tested and deemed safe. But in the United States, by law, a company does not have to prove that a chemical is safe before introducing it in the commercial market. Rather, the burden of proof is on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to prove that a chemical "presents or will present an unreasonable risk" to human health or the environment in order to require a company to produce safety data on it. Dr. Tina Bahadori is Director of EPA's Chemical Safety for Sustainability (CSS) Research division, where she is helping EPA transform its chemical safety screening tools. She holds a doctorate in environmental science and engineering from Harvard School of Public Health and master's and bachelor's degrees from MIT. Can you give us some background on your work? In the U.S., certain types of chemicals are carefully reviewed for safety: chemicals like pharmaceuticals, food additives, fertilizers, and insecticides-chemicals that we know humans are directly exposed to. But by law, most other chemicals are not required to be approved for safety. There are more than 80,000 such manmade chemicals currently registered for use in the U.S., 26 imagine and at least 1,000 more are introduced every year. And only a few hundred of these have been thoroughly evaluated for their potential risks to human health, wildlife, and the environment. The law that governs chemical safety regulation for most chemicals, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), does not require companies to do safety testing or to provide safety data. Instead, if the EPA is concerned about the safety of a chemical, it must do its own testing, putting a significant burden of proof on the Agency. Mar/Apr 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - March/April 2014

In My Own Words
Chemistry Is…
Master of Reactions
Fascinated by Photochemistry
What About Labs?
Buckyballs and Nanocrystals
Small Is Big
Chemistry Among the Stars
Making Chemicals Safer, 21st Century Style
Selected Opportunities & Resources
Empowered to Change the World
The Buzz About History
Off the Shelf
Word Wise
Exploring Career Options
One Step Ahead
Planning Ahead for College
Students Review
Mark Your Calendar
Knossos Games

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - March/April 2014