Stephanie Schwarz, J.D., is a Legal Fellow. Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist.
On Friday EDF submitted comments to EPA on a batch of Significant New Use Rules (SNURs) the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published on August 1 pursuant to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
The SNURs relate to 145 new chemicals for which EPA had earlier issued consent orders that imposed certain conditions on the substances. Those consent orders date back to when EPA was still pursuing the development of such orders for many new chemicals it reviewed, and prior to the recent “pivots” it has been making in an effort to avoid issuing orders by circumventing the requirements of the TSCA provisions governing new chemicals.
TSCA anticipates that EPA will promulgate SNURs to follow up on consent orders. In fact, TSCA section 5(f)(4) requires that when EPA issues an order, EPA must either promulgate a SNUR or provide a statement explaining why EPA is not doing so. And when EPA does promulgate such a SNUR, the SNUR must “identif[y] as a significant new use any manufacturing, processing, use, distribution in commerce, or disposal of the chemical substance that does not conform to the restrictions imposed by the … order.”
EDF strongly supports EPA’s use of SNURs to follow up on consent orders it issues. That is because the order only applies to the original company that submitted a premanufacture notice (PMN) to EPA for a new chemical. A proper SNUR then requires that company or any other company that seeks to deviate from the conditions in the order to first notify EPA, triggering a review of that “significant new use.”
While EDF supports EPA’s issuance of SNURs for these 145 new chemicals, our review of the proposed SNURs raised concerns, prompting us to file “adverse” comments. Our comments raise two major concerns:
First, EPA has adopted an ad hoc testing policy in the direct final rule that does not comply with the requirements of TSCA, without sufficient explanation, and without providing any notice and opportunity for public comment on the policy. EPA needs to avoid adopting such an ad hoc policy.
Second, as noted above, TSCA (as well as EPA’s longstanding policy) requires SNURs to “conform” to the restrictions in the corresponding orders. Yet we identified numerous inconsistencies between the orders and SNURs. EPA must ensure that the final SNURs identify as a significant new use any activity that is not consistent with the restrictions in the corresponding consent orders.
See our comments for details.
NOTE: EPA had published the SNURs both as a direct final rule and as a proposed rule, noting that if it received any adverse comments, it would withdraw the direct final rule and consider the comments received in the process of finalizing the proposed rule. We expect EPA will now pursue this course.