Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist. Allison Tracy is a Chemicals Policy Fellow.
With the chemical industry and now Congressional Republicans mounting a last-minute effort to derail the EPA’s long-time-in-coming enhancements to its Inventory Update Reporting (IUR) rule (see our last post), it’s worth examining their main objections. That examination reveals a sea of red herrings. Here are a few of the smelliest ones, discussed in detail in this post:
Red herring #1: EPA has failed to indicate how it will use the information it collects.
Red herring #2: Small businesses would be excessively burdened.
Red herring #3: More frequent reporting is a “needless” burden on the industry.
Red herring #4: EPA is expanding the IUR from data reporting to data-gathering.
Red herring #5: EPA’s requirement for retroactive reporting is unfair.
Red herring #6: Requiring electronic reporting is too inflexible.