EDF Health

Selected tag(s): Data requirements

Data and safety requirements for new chemicals: China blows past the US

By / Published: November 16, 2010

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

In yesterday’s post, I pointed to a number of ways in which China is taking a proactive stance on chemical safety.  I cited China because the U.S. chemical industry, when saber-rattling about what it regards as overly onerous proposals for TSCA reform, loves to chide all of us that those proposals will drive chemical production overseas to China and that innovation of new chemicals will still happen, only it will happen in China instead of the U.S.

I mentioned yesterday that China is in the process of enhancing its regulatory requirements, including making them more like the European Union’s REACH Regulation.  Well, a great article detailing China’s new requirements for new chemicals was published yesterday by Geraint Roberts in Chemical Watch’s Monthly Briefing for November (subscription required).

Those requirements – which actually took effect October 15 – include the very same elements the U.S. industry has been warning would send chemical production and innovation running to China if they were to be adopted in the U.S., including:

  • registration as well as notification requirements for all new chemicals, whatever their production volume;
  • a minimum data set, which increases with production volume;
  • a requirement for re-notification whenever production volume increases significantly or the uses of a chemical change or expand; and
  • risk assessments for all new chemicals produced or imported above one metric ton per year.

Next up for the Chinese?  Similar requirements for existing chemicals, according to the article.

So much for the chemical industry’s hand-wringing about us losing out to China. When it comes to raising the bar for chemical safety, it appears the U.S. is increasingly the odd one out.

Posted in Health policy, International / Also tagged , , | Comments are closed

Reporting deferred is right-to-know denied: ACC seeks major delays in EPA chemical reporting program

By / Published: November 2, 2010

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist. Allison Tracy is a Chemicals Policy Fellow.

Well, in its comments on EPA’s proposed rule to enhance chemical information reporting under the TSCA Inventory Update Rule (IUR), it took the American Chemistry Council (ACC) all of 5 paragraphs to get through the lip service it no doubt felt it had to pay to supporting EPA’s proposals “in principle,” and then proceed to devote 31 pages to arguments opposing virtually every element of EPA’s proposals.

Cunningly on its part, ACC’s arguments often do not oppose outright the EPA proposals.  Rather, it seeks to put off their implementation for as long as possible.  EPA’s proposed rule calls for reporting in 2011 that would provide information for years 2006 and forward.  In contrast, ACC would have EPA put off implementation of all of its proposed IUR enhancements, with the result that both EPA and the public would not get any of the additional information until at least 2015.

Like we said in the title of this post:  Reporting deferred is right-to-know denied.

We’ll be posting more about ACC’s comments in the coming weeks, but in this post, we’ll consider the core argument ACC makes for deferral:  that “the business of chemistry is product-focused, not substance focused.”  ACC would have us believe their member companies don’t know what chemicals are in any of the products (i.e., mixtures of chemicals) they make and sell.

This argument warrants – ahem – additional scrutiny.  Read More »

Posted in Health policy, Regulation / Also tagged , , , | Comments are closed

Public health advocates to the chemical industry: Stop hobbling EPA

By / Published: October 12, 2010

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.  Allison Tracy is a Chemicals Policy Fellow.

Today, EDF joined with 32 other environmental justice, health and environmental organizations to file comments [PDF] with EPA that strongly support its effort to improve its ability to obtain – and share with the public – robust information about the production, processing and use of chemicals in the U.S.

While the details of EPA’s proposed rule and many of our comments are heavily wonky, the motivation and goals are far from it:  To make sure that EPA, the marketplace and the public have the information they need to guard against harm from dangerous chemicals.  That requires knowing a whole lot more than we do today about what chemicals are in commerce, in what quantities, how they’re used – essential to understanding how we may be exposed.

Robust information is the lifeblood of a sound chemicals management system.  Government needs access to comprehensive, reliable information to inform policy, programmatic and regulatory decisions it must make to carry out its mission.  The market needs access to such information to inform the myriad decisions made every day by producers, sellers and users of chemicals and products and materials made using chemicals.  And researchers, the public and groups that work in the public interest need access if they are to have confidence in, and be able meaningfully to contribute to, decisions and actions taken by government and the private sector.

In an earlier post, we made the point that the chemical industry’s reactions to these modest proposals will be a litmus test for how serious it is in acting on its rhetoric about the need for EPA and the public to have more and better information on chemicals.  With the comment period closing today for EPA’s proposed rule, look here in the coming weeks for our assessment on industry’s comments.

What follows is a summary of our comments, indicating both what we support and what more is needed.  Read More »

Posted in Health policy, Industry influence, Regulation / Also tagged , , | Comments are closed

EPA seeks to improve TSCA data reporting; a real litmus test looms for the chemical industry

By / Published: August 20, 2010

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

While I was on vacation last week, EPA’s proposed rule to improve chemical information reporting under its so-called Inventory Update Rule (IUR) was finally published in the Federal Register.  (I say “finally” because the proposal languished for almost 6 months over at OMB, nearly double the 90 days such mandatory reviews are supposed to take.  That unfortunate delay is curious given the relatively modest changes that appear to have been made by OMB – mostly limited to compelling EPA to shift a few elements from proposals to options open to comment, and requiring EPA to expand the range of issues on which it now seeks comment.)

I won’t summarize the EPA proposals here; EPA’s factsheet does a good job of that, and Daniel Rosenberg at NRDC has also nicely recapped the proposal on his blog.  Suffice it to say that the proposed changes would go far to address the many failings of the current IUR, which amply manifested themselves in the last reporting cycle and severely hampered EPA’s ability to assess high production volume (HPV) chemicals under its ill-fated ChAMP Initiative.

So how will the chemical industry react?  Here’s why I’ll be watching intently.  Read More »

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Should we continue to take the chemical industry at its word when it insists it’s still for TSCA reform?

By / Published: July 28, 2010

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

I’m one of those throwbacks that loves to read a hard copy of a newspaper in the morning.  One thing the hard copies provide that reading online doesn’t is the ability to take in those full-page paid ads that Corporate America runs on a virtually daily basis.

Lately, not surprisingly, ads from “the people of America’s oil and natural gas industry” – aka the American Petroleum Institute (API) – are appearing frequently in the New York Times and Washington Post.  In one recent ad, API asserts:  “Above all else, the people of America’s oil and natural gas industry are committed to safe operations.”  That one is a little hard to swallow, coming as it does not only right on the heels of the largest environmental disaster in American history, but after years of staunch opposition to stronger safety regulation.  It seems API is now all for safety, after years of being against it.

This got me thinking about the chemical industry.  The industry’s main trade association, the American Chemistry Council (ACC), now says it’s all for “modernizing” TSCA, after years of opposing any such effort.  Why am I getting suspicious that there may be no there there?  Read More »

Posted in Health policy, TSCA reform / Also tagged , , , | Comments are closed

More than weather heating up in DC: Rush-Waxman House bill puts TSCA reform back on front burner

By / Published: July 22, 2010

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

We’ve just moved another step closer to protecting Americans and our environment from dangerous chemicals.

The Toxic Chemicals Safety Act of 2010 (H.R. 5820) has been formally introduced by Congressmen Bobby Rush (D-IL) and Henry Waxman (D-CA).  The legislation would implement a top-to-bottom overhaul of the outmoded and ineffectual 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).  Read More »

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