Given a paragraph, generate a claim that is supported by the given paragraph. 1) The claim must contain information from within the paragraph. 2) A sentence within the paragraph can be used as a claim. 3) The claim should not have contradictions within the paragraph. 4) The claim should be at most one sentence long.

On 1 June 2018, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics announced a proposed “Significant New Use Rule” (SNUR) for asbestos, a mineral once widely used in the construction of buildings due to its flame-retardant properties but now uncontroversially considered a carcinogen. The necessity for such a rule, in general, stems from the fact that not all uses of asbestos are currently banned; some of them remain unregulated thanks to a 1991 court ruling. The asbestos uses the 2018 SNUR applies to are ones that had not been banned by earlier regulations and remained in active use at the time of the 1991 court ruling, but are no longer in use due to users’ desires to avoid contracting cancer or liability for causing cancer in others. The EPA refers to these uses as “currently unregulated former uses.” SNURs are a mechanism within the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) that mandate specific EPA approval when a chemical is used in a significantly new way or in a significantly new mixture that “might create concerns.”: For asbestos, [the] EPA is proposing a SNUR for certain uses of asbestos (including asbestos-containing goods) that would require manufacturers and importers to receive EPA approval before starting or resuming manufacturing, and importing or processing of asbestos. This review process would provide EPA with the opportunity to evaluate the intended use of asbestos and, when necessary, take action to prohibit or limit the use. The TSCA is currently undergoing a major overhaul that began under the Obama administration and was reinterpreted in radically divergent ways under the Trump administration. When former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt (a Trump appointee who resigned amid accusations of misconduct) explained the proposed SNUR for asbestos, he described it as part of an “unprecedented” set of new protections against the dangers of asbestos which require manufacturers “to receive EPA approval before starting or resuming manufacturing, and importing or processing of asbestos”. In their correspondence with us, the EPA stated that the proposed rule serves “to ensure that the manufacture, import, or processing for the currently unregulated former uses of asbestos identified in the rule are prohibited unless reviewed and approved by EPA.” According to critics, the problem with this position is twofold. The first problem concerns the way in which the current EPA has written the SNUR, which EPA staffers have privately worried does not allow for the ban of all currently inactive unregulated uses but instead only concerns 15 specific uses the EPA “believes” to be comprehensive and thus could allow for the continued legality of some now dormant uses. The second problem concerns the way in which the EPA has proposed to evaluate the risk of these “currently unregulated former uses”. In May 2018, the EPA published a document known as the “Problem Formulation of the Risk Evaluation for Asbestos,” which establishes the scientific approach the EPA will take in evaluating these new uses. Significantly, their approach will not include information from existing (or “legacy”) uses of asbestos, despite the significant body of work around health risks stemming from those uses: In the case of asbestos, legacy uses, associated disposals, and legacy disposals will be excluded from the problem formulation and risk evaluation … These include asbestos containing materials that remain in older buildings or are part of older products but for which manufacture, processing and distribution in commerce are not currently intended, known or reasonably foreseen. EPA is excluding these activities because EPA generally interprets the mandates under section TSCA § 6(a)-(b) to conduct risk evaluations and any corresponding risk management to focus on uses for which manufacture, processing or distribution is intended, known to be occurring, or reasonably foreseen, rather than reaching back to evaluate the risks associated with legacy uses, associated disposal, and legacy disposal, and interprets the definition of conditions of use in that context. E&E News reported that this approach may serve to severely limit the types of exposures the EPA will consider when formulating the potential risk of new uses for asbestos: Public health advocates believe EPA is inappropriately limiting its health reviews of chemicals to avoid considering the impacts of those already in the environment. But the agency hasn’t been swayed by their pushback … That means the agency won’t consider the dangers posed by, for example, asbestos-containing tiles, adhesives and piping in millions of homes and commercial buildings nationwide. According to the New York Times, the new rules will serve to narrow the ways in which asbestos itself is defined as well: Other changes identified in the E.P.A. documents narrow the definitions of certain chemicals, including asbestos. Some asbestos-like fibers will not be included in the risk assessments, one agency staff member said, nor will the 8.8 million pounds a year of asbestos deposited in hazardous landfills or the 13.1 million pounds discarded in routine dump sites. Three former EPA officials, including the former supervisor of the toxic chemical program, told the New York Times that such stipulations would necessarily create flawed analyses of the threat posed by any chemical currently being re-evaluated by the EPA: Three former agency officials, including a former supervisor of the toxic chemical program, said that the E.P.A.’s approach would result in a flawed analysis of the threat presented by chemicals. “It is ridiculous,” said Wendy Cleland-Hamnett, who retired last year after nearly four decades at the E.P.A., where she ran the toxic chemical unit during her last year. “You can’t determine if there is an unreasonable risk without doing a comprehensive risk evaluation” … The most likely outcome of the changes will be that the agency finds lower levels of risks associated with many chemicals, and as a result, imposes fewer new restrictions or prohibitions, several current and former agency officials said. Senator Tom Udall, a Democrat from New Mexico, argued that former EPA head Scott Pruitt was undermining a bipartisan push to reform the TSCA that began under President Obama. “Congress worked hard in bipartisan fashion to reform our nation’s broken chemical safety laws, but Pruitt’s E.P.A. is failing to put the new law to use as intended,” he said in a statement. President Trump spoke on the topic of asbestos long before his election to the White House. In his 1997 book The Art of the Comeback, Trump argued that the chemical is actually safe once applied and suggested that the link to health problems was manufactured by mob-connected companies which perform asbestos removal: “I believe that the movement against asbestos was led by the mob, because it was often mob-related companies that would do the asbestos removal. Great pressure was put on politicians, and as usual, the politicians relented.” While it is true that the uses of asbestos discussed in the 2018 SNUR are currently legal, their health and litigation risks have rendered them effectively dead. The current administration has established a process for some of those uses to be granted formal approval by the EPA if they pass a safety review many scientists find flawed. For these reasons, we concur with the leaked opinion of EPA lawyer Mark Seltzer, an attorney advisor to the EPA Chemical Risk and Reporting Enforcement Branch who worked on the SNUR and concluded that: “This new approach allows asbestos-containing products that are not currently used to be used in the future.”
The Environmental Protection Agency will allow new asbestos products to enter the market.

"In a September 2011 floor speech, Democratic U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Austin spoke of two concerns he said are growing in the Lone Star State: poverty and hunger. Doggett said that in tough times, more families are turning to food banks, creating ""immense"" demand. Among his examples: The Austin-based Capital Area Food Bank of Texas ""this year is delivering 50 percent more food to poor people than it did three years ago."" In his speech, Doggett attributed that figure to John Turner, a food bank official. We wondered if the proclaimed increase was correct, and if so, whether that accurately reflected a surge in hunger in our area. The food bank, founded in 1981, takes in donations of food and money from the government, the food industry and the public, then distributes food to Central Texas residents directly and through more than 350 agencies in its 21-county service area roughly centered on Travis and Williamson counties. (Click to view a map.) The region’s north edge runs from Mills County in the west to Freestone County in the east; its south edge runs from Gillespie and Blanco counties in the west to Fayette County on the east. Doggett spokeswoman Sarah Dohl told us by email that Doggett drew his 50 percent figure from a Sept. 4, 2011, news story in the Guardian, a British newspaper, which quotes Turner saying the food bank was delivering 50 percent more food to the poor than it had done three years ago. In an interview, Turner, the food bank’s senior director for marketing and branding, recently told us he’d given the Guardian a conservative estimate: The pounds of food distributed by the bank had actually increased 64 percent, going from 15.4 million pounds in 2007 to 25.3 million pounds in 2010. Turner noted, too, that the 2010 poundage was inflated by one-time federal stimulus aid enabling the bank to buy an additional 2.3 million pounds for the Summer Food Nutrition Program. Subtract that, and the 2010 figure becomes 23 million pounds -- up 49 percent from what the bank gave out in 2007. So, do the poundage figures mean hunger in the area shot up 49 percent or more over the past few years? J.C. Dwyer of the Texas Food Bank Network, the state association of food banks, told us pounds of food distributed generally isn't the best measure of need in a food bank's region: ""It’s more of a metric for how we’re dealing with the needs,"" Dwyer said. A better way of gauging needs, he said, is to track the number of residents requesting food assistance. That is, the amount of food distributed doesn't necessarily reflect ups and downs in need. In the holiday season, donations and distributions surge, for instance, but that doesn’t necessarily mean surges in need. Dwyer and Turner each suggested we check on changes in food demands through ""Hunger in America,"" a report commissioned every four years by Feeding America, a national charity that acts as a clearinghouse connecting food supplies to 200 food banks, including the one in Austin. There was no ""Hunger in America"" report for 2007, the first year in Doggett’s statement, but the reports based on surveys in 2005 and 2009 were broken down into smaller reports covering the Austin bank’s 21-county region: In 2005, the Capital Area bank fed an estimated 174,900 people. In 2009, the estimated number of people served was 284,900 for the year, up 63 percent from those who were served in 2005. That change outstripped population growth, according to U.S. census estimates. In 2005, the 21 counties had 2,265,981 residents. By 2009, the region’s population was 2,547,559 -- up 12.4 percent. Put another way, the food bank provided sustenance to nearly 8 percent of the region’s residents in 2005 while about 11 percent of a greater total of residents got food in 2009. Finally, we wondered if Doggett was correct in saying the food aid went to the poor alone. Turner told us the bank does not question people who come seeking food as to their income -- if you show up, you are fed, he said, though depending on the lines that form, it could take an hour or two. However, the ""Hunger in America"" report using 2009 data states that 73 percent of the Capital Area food bank’s clients had incomes below the federal poverty level. Census figures for 2010, drawing on 2009 data, show that poverty in the 21-county region matched the percentage for Texas overall: Seventeen percent of residents had income below the federal poverty level. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, Dwyer told us, ""food insecurity"" across Texas -- the percentage of households at risk of missing meals because of financial pressure -- rose from 14.8 percent in the three-year period 2005-07 to 18.8 percent in 2008-10. Our conclusion: Changes in the amount of food distributed over several years, which Doggett cited, might not be the best way to gauge changes in residents’ needs. That said, the number of Central Texas requestors for food aid over those years outpaced regional population growth. The 63 percent increase in requestors also exceeded the 50-percent increase in food distributed that he stressed, though, contrary to his statement, not all those pounds of food went to ""the poor."""
Lloyd Doggett Says the main Central Texas food bank is delivering 50 percent more food to the poor than three years ago.

Strong point. The story said, “There’s one other thing, the CDC says. Make sure patients understand that warding off HIV isn’t cheap. Each pill currently costs around $36, which adds up to more than $13,000 a year. Some insurers might pay, but some might balk” The story stated the benefits clearly – albeit only in relative risk reduction terms. We would have preferred absolute numbers. But it did such a good job in telling the updated story about proper use of the drug in question that we give it a satisfactory score. Several clear points were made about harms: The story did a great job of communicating the read-between-the-lines reality of the evidence for the use of this drug. NO disease-mongering here. The story is based on the CDC’s evaluation and warnings about proper use of the drug. We would have liked to have seen a clinician-researcher’s perspective – someone not affiliated with the CDC analysis. Not applicable. Because of the nature of this drug, no comparison is really necessary. As the story stated, “It’s the first time anybody’s shown that taking a pill can prevent HIV – and it was the first new weapon against HIV unveiled in many years.” The story is clear that Truvada is already on the market. The story stated, “It’s the first time anybody’s shown that taking a pill can prevent HIV – and it was the first new weapon against HIV unveiled in many years.” We  have no evidence that the story relied on a news release.

CDC To Doctors: Anti-HIV Pill No Magic Bullet Against Virus

