Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist.
Part 1 of a 4-part series – see Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 here
It wasn’t that long ago, June 2016, when there was hope that our nation was at last embarking on the enormous task of reinvigorating and greatly strengthening our chemical safety system, 40 years after original passage of the moribund Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
Passage of the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act by huge bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress seemed to bode well for robust implementation of the law by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Even the affected industry had accepted the reforms as essential to restoring public confidence in our federal system (hoping thereby also to stem the rising tide of actions by state governments, retailers, and others to fill the void left by EPA’s inability to ensure the safety of chemicals and products).
We have an opportunity to rethink how the law could and should be used to advance a broader vision of greater health and environmental protection for all people.
Labor and health and environmental public interest communities saw an opportunity to use the new TSCA to drive more thorough assessments of chemicals’ risks. The failure of our risk assessment-based regulatory system to address the multiple sources of exposure to a chemical affecting many different groups of people had long been viewed as a fundamental flaw of the old law. Fixing that flaw isn’t, unfortunately, how the last four years have gone.
As we look to the future, there is a pressing need to course-correct on TSCA implementation. But there is also an opportunity to rethink how the law could and should be used to advance a broader vision of greater health and environmental protection for all people. This series of blog posts will explore that potential.
But we must start with a brief look back at the damage done. Read More