The Revision of The Toxic Substances Control Act

The TSCA was supposed to protect the American public from dangerous toxic chemicals, but instead of that, the TSCA allowed chemicals to be used in high-production volumes, without their toxicity being thoroughly evaluated or disclosed.

The TSCA also made it very difficult for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to take regulatory action to prevent Americans from being exposed to dangerous chemicals.

The act only gave the EPA 90 days to determine if a new chemical poses an unreasonable risk prior to it entering the market. 90 days isn't long enough to determine is a chemical is carcinogenic or cumulatively toxic.

Since the TSCA was instituted in 1976, the EPA has only regulated five chemicals and requested testing for 200 chemicals. Since 1976, there have been about 64,000 other chemicals in use that are not regulated and have not been adequately tested for environmental safety.

As you can conclude by now, an overhaul of the TSCA was desperately needed and long overdue. Last month, the House approved the update to the TSCA that was followed by the Senate approval and it will now be signed into law.

Positive Provisions of the New TSCA Update:

1. It will give the EPA the authority to require companies to provide safety data for untested chemicals and it can also prevent chemicals from coming to market if they haven't been tested for safety.

2. It removes the 90-day limit for the EPA to determine chemical risks.

3. The EPA will be required to determine whether a chemical meets a set safety standard before it enters the market.

4. The EPA must consider a chemical's effects on particularly vulnerable populations, such as pregnant women and children.

5. The EPA must quickly review chemicals known to persist in the environment and build up in humans.

6. Companies will no longer be allowed to keep data hidden due to "trade secret" and other confidentiality claims.

7. The EPA has already identified 90 chemicals as high priority and these chemicals are supposed to take precedence.

Negative Provisions of the New TSCA Update:

1. The bill's language was created after close work with the American Chemistry Council in order to ensure it would win the support of the industry.

2. The bill requires the EPA to begin conducting safety tests on roughly 64,000 chemicals, they only have to test 20 chemicals at a time. At that rate, this process will take many years to complete.

3. Each chemical has a seven-year testing deadline, so that means that dangerous chemicals might take a very long time before they are not being used.

4. An analysis by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), estimates that EPA needs 28 years to complete risk evaluations on the 90 chemicals in its work plan, 30 years to finalize related regulations on those chemicals and 35 years to implement the resulting rules.

5. Companies are allowed to the right to seek a federal waiver from the rules for certain chemicals.

6. States may lose their power to regulate chemicals that they deem as toxic. States may restrict a chemical's use, only if the federal risk review takes more than 3 ½ years.

7. No adequate funding is required from the chemical industry, which means there's a good chance the EPA will lack the funding needed to review many toxic chemicals that are already on the market.

8. The EPA will be able to classify chemicals as "low hazard," but there is no set definition of what low hazard means.

Overall, there are some good changes to the TSCA, but the glaring loopholes that are still present, will in my opinion create a situation that will make it very difficult, if not impossible, for the EPA to adequately protect Americans against toxins.

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