The Environmental Protection Agency has released a draft toxicological review of formaldehyde, entitled “Toxicological Review of Formaldehyde Inhalation Assessment: In Support of Summary Information on the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS).”  (EPA’s IRIS is a human health assessment program that evaluates quantitative and qualitative risk information on effects that may result from exposure to chemical substances found in the environment. )

EPA announced a 90-day public comment period and a public listening session for the external review draft human health assessment.  The draft assessment was prepared by the National Center for Environmental Assessment (NCEA) within the EPA Office of Research and Development (ORD). EPA said it was releasing this draft assessment for the purpose of pre-dissemination peer review.  Also, a committee of the National Research Council, acting under the auspices of National Academy of Sciences (NAS), will conduct an independent scientific peer review of the EPA draft human health assessment of formaldehyde. The peer review committee will hold meetings, some of which may involve public sessions. Public sessions will be announced before each meeting on the National Academies Web site.  The public comment period and NAS scientific peer review are separate processes that are supposed to provide opportunities for all interested parties to comment on the assessment.

Formaldehyde is present in a wide variety of products including some plywood adhesives, abrasive materials, insulation, insecticides and embalming fluids. The major sources of anthropogenic emissions of formaldehyde are motor vehicle exhaust, power plants, manufacturing plants that produce or use formaldehyde or substances that contain it (i.e. glues), petroleum refineries, coking operations, incinerating, wood burning, and tobacco smoke, says the EPA.  It is used in industry to manufacture building materials and numerous household products and consumer products, including some soaps, shampoos, and shaving cream.

Of course, alleged exposure to formaldehyde has been involved in numerous toxic tort suits as well as consumer fraud actions.

The draft assessment found that formaldehyde could be more likely to cause cancer than in previous EPA calculations. In the draft, EPA now estimates there could be up to one case of cancer for every 1,000 people breathing formaldehyde at concentrations of 20 parts per billion over their lifetime.  The draft assessment also provides for the first time an agency estimate of a reference concentration (RfC). Lifelong inhalation of formaldehyde at concentrations up to that RfC would not be expected to cause breathing, immune, reproductive, and other non-cancer health effects.

At Section 4.5.4, the report concludes that human epidemiological evidence is sufficient to conclude there is a causal association between formaldehyde exposure and nasopharyngeal cancer, nasal and paranasal cancer, all leukemias, myeloid leukemia and lymphohematopoietic cancers as a group. But, for example, it is questionable whether there really is a demonstrable link between formaldehyde and leukemia.  And the evidence does not appear to support a causal link between formaldehyde and  upper-respiratory tract cancers. See the critical comments of other federal agencies.

Any regulatory decision on this important chemical based on incomplete information could cause significant harm to the economy, as many products critical to the home and commercial building, automotive and aerospace industries, as well as defense-related applications and vaccines used worldwide to prevent polio, cholera, diphtheria, and other major diseases, all use it.  All living things — including people — produce and process formaldehyde. It occurs naturally in the air we breathe and does not accumulate in the environment or in plants, animals or people.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) has stated that the draft report is another reason to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act.  He plans to introduce such a bill this Summer. Also, legislation that would amend TSCA to set formaldehyde emissions limits for plywood and other composite wood products was reported out last month by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.  See H.R. 4805, The Formaldehyde Standards for Composite Wood Products Act.

Update: and an alert reader points out that the Senate just this week passed its own version, S.1660, the Formaldehyde Standards for Composite Wood Products Act.  The Senate bill would make the formaldehyde emission standard contained in the California Code of Regulations (relating to an airborne toxic control measure to reduce formaldehyde emissions from composite wood products, as in effect on July 28, 2009) applicable to certain hardwood plywood, medium-density fiberboard, and particleboard sold, supplied, offered for sale, or manufactured in the United States, with certain exemptions, including for composite wood products used inside new vehicles, rail cars, boats, aerospace craft, or aircraft.