Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist.
House and Senate negotiators have reached agreement on a final reconciled bill to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), our nation’s badly broken chemical safety law. The final text of the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act was posted today, and is set to be voted on by the full House tomorrow, with Senate consideration expected to follow later this week.
Negotiations to reconcile the two chambers’ quite different reform bills, both passed last year, reached a feverish pace in the last few weeks, leading to today’s historic breakthrough.
The result is a final bill that, while a compromise, is a substantial improvement over current law. The bill adopts the comprehensive approach taken by the Senate bill, while sticking closer to the structure of current TSCA, as did the House bill. Negotiators adopted the House bill’s construct of risk evaluations over the Senate’s safety assessments and determinations, while largely adopting the Senate approach to reforming TSCA’s new chemicals program, establishing a prioritization process applicable to all chemicals, and updating the inventory of chemicals active in commerce. The bill’s chemical testing provision is more of an amalgam of the two bills and negotiators agreed to leave several sections of TSCA (e.g., exports and imports) largely untouched, as the House bill had done.
Overall, the new bill makes significant improvements to all of TSCA’s core provisions. Read More »