EPA sitting on warnings about cancer-causing chemical: Report

“It’s my understanding that the EPA has finalized its conclusion that formaldehyde causes leukemia and other cancers,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) told Pruitt. The EPA chief responded: “You know, my understanding is similar to yours.”

Keeping the health assessment under wraps is yet another demonstration that the EPA, increasingly peopled by political appointees with corporate connections, appears more concerned about shielding industries than protecting the environment, and the health of Americans from toxic chemicals.

Formaldehyde is one of the most commonly used chemicals in the nation. It’s used in wood composites in furniture and cabinets, as well as in cleaning products and cosmetics, and is spewed into the air by oil refineries. Formaldehyde can be inhaled as a gas or vapor or it can be absorbed through the skin in liquid form, according to the National Cancer Institute. The federal Centers for Disease Control says that formaldehyde is “known to cause cancer.”

Release of the EPA’s health assessment — followed by verification by the National Academies of Sciences — could trigger new regulations concerning the chemical and could also bolster lawsuits against companies from people suffering ill effects from formaldehyde.

But the American Chemistry Council’s Formaldehyde Panel, an industry trade group than includes Exxon Mobil, has been lobbying the EPA to go slow on releasing the assessment.

“A premature release of a draft assessment … will cause irreparable harm to the companies represented by the Panel and to the many companies and jobs that depend on the broad use of the chemical,” said a letter obtained by Politico and written in January to EPA officials by panel representative Kimberly Wise White.

Pruitt last year appointed White to the EPA’s Science Advisory Board even as she remains a senior director at the American Chemistry Council. Nancy Beck, who used to be on the industry council, is now a top deputy shaping the EPA’s policies on hazardous chemicals.

Markey and two other senators sent a letter to Pruitt in May expressing concern that “political appointees” were dragging their feet on releasing the assessment as the agency was being pressured by corporations with links to people inside the EPA.

The EPA has denied it’s suppressing the document or keeping Americans in the dark about the risks they face.

The agency “continues to discuss this assessment with our agency program partners,” agency spokeswoman Kelsi Daniell said in a statement. “Assessments of this type ... undergo an extensive intra-agency and interagency process.”

• This article originally appeared on HuffPost.