Industry Names TSCA Regulations It Wants Reformed

Industry groups have named the new chemicals programme and the EPA’s proposed framework rules among areas of TSCA where it would like to see regulations reformed.

Despite concerns from NGOs that the EPA’s hearing last week to identify regulations under TSCA that could be repealed, replaced or modified is a "distraction" from the more important work of its implementation, industry bodies identified areas where the agency could introduce new efficiencies and improvements under the recently reformed law.

The American Chemistry Council’s senior director of regulatory and technical affairs, Karyn Schmidt, was among those to point to the framework rules proposed by the agency, such as those on prioritisation and the inventory reset. Recognising that these have yet to be finalised, Ms Schmidt said they should "have the quality, and the robustness, and the integrated science standards that the statute demands".

Burdens imposed by the proposed prioritisation rule, for example, could be streamlined by identifying "a smaller subset of high priority chemistries and a larger set of low priority chemistries", she said.

And the ‘inventory reset’ proposal "also offers many opportunities for long-term efficiencies and significant reductions of burden on the regulated community", she said, especially when viewed in the context of the Lautenberg Act’s provisions related to inventory correction and nomenclature.

Jim Cooper, senior petrochemical adviser at American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, agreed that science provisions – as laid out in sections 4, 5,6 and 26 of TSCA – must be incorporated into these proposals, "because this is going to set the foundation for transparency in all the [EPA Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics] actions moving forward".

Mr Cooper also criticised the "logjam" of pre-manufacture notices (PMNs) that has accumulated under the new chemicals programme.

Echoing comments voiced by many in industry in recent months, he argued that EPA’s implementation of the programme is inconsistent with the statute’s intent.

Congress, he said, intended the EPA to make an affirmative decision and communicate that decision to the public. Had lawmakers intended to change the way EPA reviews new chemicals more substantively, they "would have dramatically revised all of the rest of the section 5 language, which they did not do".

Raleigh Davis, assistant director of environmental health and safety of the American Coatings Association, agreed that the agency’s implementation of the new chemicals programme to date is "simply unworkable".

The agency’s "over-reliance" on 5(e) consent orders "leads to duplicative requirements that unnecessarily increase compliance costs", she said. The agency could "effectively streamline section 5 by drawing analogy to the old 5(e) [significant new use rule] (Snur) process when developing a new PMN affirmative approval process".

But Richard Denison, lead senior scientist at NGO the Environmental Defense Fund, said in his testimony that Congress intended that the rigour of new chemical reviews be "significantly strengthened".

And he said that the new law’s requirement to consider reasonably foreseen, as well as intended, uses in making its risk finding is "not optional".

It is "simply not allowed under the new law", he added, for EPA to revert to its prior practice - as urged by industry - "of using Snurs in place of orders when it finds that reasonably foreseen uses may present unreasonable risk".