ChemRisk uses toxicology and risk assessment to measure the hazards of chemicals in soil, air, water, food, sediments and consumer products.
"[5] His 1986 Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology co-authored article, "A Critical Examination of Assumptions Used in Risk Assessments of Dioxin Contaminated Soil"[6][Notes 1] was written in response to the Times Beach, Missouri crisis.
[12] In his August 1, 2018 article in New Solutions: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy, David Egilman said that the role of scientific consulting firms such as ChemRisk and Exponent, was litigation.
[13] These firms use "dose-reconstruction studies and policy arguments" in legal defenses using "multidisciplinary" teams that they include "scientists, physicians, engineers, and regulatory consultants".
[14] Since 1972 Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) standards have required warning labels on brake and clutch parts made with asbestos.
[14] On November 6, 2006, OSHA threatened to suspend Wainless for not including articles that had been "commissioned jointly by General Motors, Ford, and DaimlerChrysler, starting in 2001".
"[17] Castleman described how ChemRisk and Exponent provided litigation services as a "key" part of the defense strategy used by General Motors, Ford, and DaimlerChrysler.
He said their work was "solicited for the purpose of fighting personal injury claims brought by mechanics and their family members" as part of a "strategy of corporate defense lawyers, approaching and generously supporting the scientist-authors, most of whom had previously published little or nothing on asbestos.
"[18] By 2012, when Cardno, an "Australian infrastructure services group" acquired ChemRisk for US$33 million, the firm had a staff of 95 with expertise "across toxicology, industrial hygiene, epidemiology, ecotoxicology, environmental sciences, medicine, engineering, statistical analysis and risk assessment.
[3] Focus areas of expertise included "dioxin, asbestos, lead, Polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs), chromium, benzene, methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE), beryllium, cobalt, diacetyl, rubber particles, nanoparticles, pharmaceuticals and personal care products, Bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) and phthalates, Volatile organic compound (VOCs) & diesel exhaust, mercury, glycol ethers.
This included Pacific Gas and Electric Company in relation to 1993 lawsuit by the town of Hinkley regarding the Hexavalent chromium (Chromium-6) contamination of the groundwater,[21][22] BP in relation to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill,[23][24] and DuPont who hired ChemRick to environmental chemist Wilma Subra's findings that the 2005 flooding of the Dupont DeLisle Plant by 2005 Hurricane Katrina had released toxins that were harmful to human health.
"[30][31] In 1987 the Chinese scientist—Jian Dong Zhang published a paper reporting "significant association between chromium pollution of drinking water and higher rates of stomach cancer in villages in rural northeast China."
[33] "One of PG&E's key experts was Steven Patierno, a former professor of pharmacology at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences who had conducted numerous studies on the metal.
"In 2005, The Wall Street Journal reported on the influential role ChemRisk had played in changing the narrative about chromium by authoring the article as consultants for PG&E.
"[2][37] Since 1995 he Environmental Protection Agency and California's EPA concluded that drinking chromium causes cancer but they faced powerful opposition from the chemical industry in making its ruling official.
"[38] In 2013 California Environmental Protection Agency finally ruled that "drinking hexavalent chromium, the rust inhibitor that PG&E dumped in Hinkley, can cause cancer.
[40] In 2005 DuPont hired ChemRisk's Houston, Texas branch of the "environment and health consulting firm" to review the work of environmental chemist Wilma Subra.
[25] They challenged Subra's findings, whose work showed that heavy metals and other pollutants that had accumulated over time at the DuPont DeLisle Plant were stirred up when the facility was flooded by Hurricane Katrina.
[25] ChemRisk researcher Mark Harris argued that the toxicants such as arsenic that Subra found in soil samples, did not pose a health risk.
[25] ATSDR found that in 2004, "DuPont DeLisle’s titanium dioxide plant reported the third highest amount of dioxin-like compounds in EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory (TRI).
[46][47] DuPont's DeLisle plant is one of three titanium dioxide facilities produce the most dioxins in the United States, according to the US EPA's Toxic Release Inventory.
[48][49][50] In September 2011 ChemRisk published an article entitled "Study by Leading Scientific Consulting Firm Finds No Evidence of Health Dangers for Gulf Coast Cleanup Workers" in the journal Environmental Science and Technology[23][24] concluding that off-shore workers who cleaned up BP's oil between April and October 2010 found that exposure to "airborne benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene (BTEX) fell well below the Permissible Exposure Limits (PELs) established by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
"[51] In their article, Foytlin and Savage "raised questions about a 2011 ChemRisk study that found no link between chemicals released during the 2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, and health problems reported by cleanup workers."
They claimed that "ChemRisk has a long, and on at least one occasion fraudulent, history of defending big polluters, using questionable ethics to help their clients avoid legal responsibility for their actions.
ChemRisk lost the case based on Massachusetts Anti-SLAPP Statute—"legislation that provides a special motion to dismiss lawsuits designed to chill public participation in government.
"[53] Lanier said that Hollins who has a master's degree in public health and who was introduced as a scientist—an "industrial hygienist as in epidemiologist" was much less qualified to speak on the issue of asbestos exposure than witnesses for the plaintiffs such as Egilman and Jacqueline Moline, who is the director of the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring Committee.
With his student researchers, they also thoroughly examined "thousands of pages of internal J&J documents unearthed during the litigation" revealing that "J&J found no asbestos in the talc because its tests were not sensitive enough".