EDF Health

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist.

[Corrections added below in bracketed italics on 1-17-20]

Last month EPA finally released its long-awaited update to its controversial 2017 New Chemicals Decision-Making Framework, which describes how EPA is conducting risk reviews of new chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).  While we are still reviewing it and will be filing comments, it is clear the new document suffers from many of the same problems as the prior version, as well as raising additional concerns.

A core problem of both documents is EPA’s illegal bifurcation of its treatment of a new chemical’s “intended” conditions of use – those proposed by the company submitting a premanufacture notification (PMN) to EPA – from the chemical’s “reasonably foreseen” conditions of use.  EPA does so despite TSCA’s clear instruction that EPA address potential risks from both categories in an integrated manner and at the same time.  EPA’s frameworks instead relegate any consideration of “reasonably foreseen” conditions of use to a separate, later process undertaken upon receipt of a separate notification submitted to EPA in response to a Significant New Use Rule (SNUR) – assuming EPA has actually promulgated a final SNUR for the chemical in question.

EPA has now used this bifurcated approach to greenlight hundreds of new chemicals for market entry – finding that they are “not likely to present an unreasonable risk” based on a review only of the chemicals’ intended conditions of use.  EDF has blogged in detail about the inadequacies of EPA’s “SNUR-only approach” and the disturbing extent of its application.

EPA has yet to provide any legal justification for its approach – how it believes the approach comports with TSCA – let alone demonstrate how it provides for protection of health and the environment despite deviating from what Congress intended EPA do under the law.

[pullquote]How on earth can EPA assert with a straight face that it is promulgating SNURs that precede its “not likely” determinations?[/pullquote]While we will have much more to say on the new framework, in the remainder of this post I want to focus on EPA’s characterization of its reliance on the SNUR-only approach.  EPA now says it has expanded that approach to two different scenarios:  One is “SNURs that Precede “Not Likely” Determinations” and the other is “SNURs that Follow “Not Likely” Determinations.”

We have examined the accuracy of EPA’s claim that the first type of SNUR precedes EPA’s “Not Likely” determination for a given new chemical.  The timing is critical here:  If there is a significant lag between EPA’s “Not Likely” determination and the issuance of a SNUR, all kinds of problems arise, which we have discussed previously.  To name two:

• If a company engages in what EPA plans to deem a “significant new use” during the gap between the determination and at least proposal of a SNUR, then EPA cannot subject that use to the notification requirements of the SNUR because the use is “ongoing” and no longer “new.” That includes a new use engaged in by the company that got a green light for its chemical based on EPA’s review of only its intended conditions of use.
• Such a company that wants to have the ability to engage in uses beyond those it said it initially intended would have serious incentives to seek to avoid having EPA issue the SNUR. Because SNURs are done through rulemaking, the company can urge EPA to block or modify the SNUR through the rulemaking process.  It can also apply pressure on EPA not to pursue a SNUR at all.

So is EPA being accurate when it claims that a large number of its SNURs precede EPA’s “Not Likely” determination for those same new chemicals?

The answer is a resounding no:  Read More »