6. CHEMICALS: Consumer, public health groups want all chemicals to undergo safety check(05/14/2010)

Sara Goodman , E&E reporter

A coalition of environmental and public health groups wants lawmakers to rewrite three areas within proposed landmark chemical policy reforms, arguing the changes must be made for the law to become adequately protective of human health.

The Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families coalition says Congress must require that all new chemicals meet a safety determination before being allowed onto the market, that U.S. EPA take immediate action on the highest-concern chemicals, and that the law incorporate a series of recommendations by the National Academies of Sciences to ensure the use of the best available science as it debates overhauling the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, or TSCA.

Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) and Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), along with Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), last month released legislative language that would for the first time revise TSCA, the only environmental statute that has not been amended since it was enacted.

In a marked shift from current practice, the language from both the House and the Senate measures would require manufacturers to provide a minimum data set for each chemical they produce, and EPA would have the authority to request any additional data it deems necessary to make a safety determination.

EPA would also be required to prioritize chemicals based on hazard and exposure characteristics. EPA would be directed to take quick action on those chemicals that clearly demonstrate high risk, and manufacturers would have to prove that a chemical is safe to keep it on the market (E&E Daily, April 16).

But the coalition wants the bills to go further.

Andy Igrejas, the coalition's national director, expressed concern with language that would allow certain new chemicals to enter the market before being assessed for their safety. Ultimately all chemicals would have to be assessed, but the bills would allow new chemicals that were not flagged by certain criteria to enter the market and be assessed at a later date.

This could be the group's hardest sell, Igrejas said. "It's been indicated to us that the chemical industry thinks the bills are already too tough on new chemicals, and we think they're too weak. That's going to be a hard one."

Indeed, Mike Walls, vice president of regulatory and technical affairs for the American Chemistry Council, said the discussion draft includes language requiring that all new chemicals meet a safety standard that may go beyond the hazards, uses and exposures of many new chemicals. That safety determination would require that data for all chemicals "provides reasonable certainty of no harm" and that takes into account aggregate and cumulative exposures, as well as potential exposures to vulnerable subpopulations.

"To suggest that new chemicals somehow get a 'pass' under the House draft ignores the plain language of the provision," Walls said in an e-mail. "We should add that the new chemicals provision as written concerns us because it puts in place a significant barrier to innovation and technological progress."

The debate among environmental and industry groups comes amid a larger effort to create a bill with broad support. As soon as the House discussion draft was released, Rush and Waxman sent a memo to committee staff and members seeking feedback on their discussion draft over the next six weeks, and since then, interest groups have been involved in a series of stakeholder meetings to discuss the legislative language, Igrejas said.

The coalition has also been speaking with Energy and Commerce Committee members, however, and Igrejas said those conversations have been largely positive. "Outside of the stakeholder process, we've been canvassing people on the committee and we're finding a lot of receptivity to the idea that the bill should do more," Igrejas said. "We're pretty encouraged by the reception that our ideas are getting so far."

Igrejas said a fundamental piece of chemical reform is to ensure that a chemical is safe before it is allowed on the market. As written, Igrejas said, a chemical's safety would hinge on the minimum data set, which currently is not specifically outlined in the bills.

"The whole idea of preventing new bad things from getting in the market is wrapped up in how robust the minimum data set is," Igrejas said. "These things are sort of interconnected. If there's not an adequate gate for things getting on the market, they run the risk of ruining what the chemical industry ultimately wants -- public confidence that the things coming to market are safe."

The Society of Chemical Manufacturers and Affiliates has argued that both the safety standard and the minimum data set requirements would "create a highly burdensome and time consuming process that would negatively impact innovation, which is paramount to ensuring the ability to develop safer chemicals."

Igrejas said he feels more confident about the potential for changing language on how quickly EPA must act on the highest-concern chemicals, those that are known to be persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic. The House language leaves it to EPA to designate a way of regulating those chemicals, which Igrejas worries will delay action.