Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist.
Last August, Scott Pruitt announced that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would reverse course in its conduct of risk reviews of new chemicals under the reforms made in 2016 to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) by the Lautenberg Act. The changes will effectively return the program to its pre-Lautenberg state – under which few chemicals were subject to any conditions and even fewer to any testing requirements – or make it even weaker.
In December, despite indicating it had already made the changes Pruitt had previewed, EPA held a public meeting and accepted public comments on the changes. EDF filed extensive written comments, as did many other stakeholders.[pullquote]Undeterred by the facts, ACC persists in its wishful thinking that the law’s provisions on new chemicals are meant to maintain the status quo and that this is what stakeholders wanted.[/pullquote]
Among them was, of course, the American Chemistry Council (ACC). While I won’t describe those comments at any length here, ACC’s primary thesis was that the Lautenberg Act made no significant changes to the new chemicals provisions of TSCA, and that this was in keeping with the wishes of Congress and an acknowledgment that the program has always worked just fine.
If this thesis sounds familiar, it should: ACC has basically echoed this talking point ever since the Lautenberg Act was signed into law nearly 20 months ago. In seeking to support its case, one of the most outlandish of ACC’s arguments is this one: ACC asserts that it was the TSCA reform bill passed by the House of Representatives in June 2015 that “led to” the final bill that became the new law, and that because the 2015 House bill made no changes at all to the new chemicals section of TSCA, that is evidence that this was what Congress intended.
In fact, at least with respect to new chemicals, it was the Senate bill – which made extensive changes to the new chemicals section of TSCA – that was reflected in the final bill that became law. Indeed, Congress expressly rejected the House bill’s decision not to touch these provisions, by instead adopting virtually all of the changes made to these provisions by the Senate bill.
Nonetheless, undeterred by these facts, ACC persists in its wishful thinking that the law’s provisions on new chemicals are meant to maintain the status quo and that this is what stakeholders wanted.
This new round of public comments on the law’s effect on new chemical reviews under TSCA played out almost exactly a year after the first round in December 2016-January 2017. In that earlier round, ACC also insisted that Congress intended no significant change to those reviews. In response, EDF included in our comments 23 pages of statements from both members of Congress and stakeholders. The statements demonstrate both that the law was intended to and did make major changes to new chemical reviews under TSCA, and that many stakeholders had emphasized the need for those changes.
Given ACC’s continued state of denial and perpetuation of its revisionist history of this issue, I feel compelled to include the content of those 23 pages here. Here you go: Read More »
