{"id":1273,"date":"2011-03-30T20:47:22","date_gmt":"2011-03-31T01:47:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/nanotechnology\/?p=1273"},"modified":"2024-02-12T11:01:12","modified_gmt":"2024-02-12T16:01:12","slug":"tsca-reform-advocates-to-acc-give-us-something-to-work-with","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/2011\/03\/30\/tsca-reform-advocates-to-acc-give-us-something-to-work-with\/","title":{"rendered":"TSCA reform advocates to ACC: Give us something to work with!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Richard Denison, Ph.D.<\/em>, is a Senior Scientist.<\/em><\/p>\n

An article just out in Chemical Week<\/em> by senior editor Kara Sissel<\/a> simply nails it in describing the state of affairs on TSCA reform as it played out at last week\u2019s GlobalChem conference.<\/p>\n

The captions under the side-by-side photos of American Chemistry Council (ACC) President Cal Dooley and yours truly tell it all.\u00a0 Mr. Dooley laments the increasingly complex and unpredictable regulatory landscape that finally drove ACC to shift away from its longstanding opposition to TSCA reform.\u00a0 But my plea that it is long past time for ACC to come forward with its own specific proposals for that reform speaks to where things have been stuck for much of the past year.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Those of us who have long been pressing for reform are having\u00a0an increasingly hard time understanding how ACC can still be saying with a straight face that it\u2019s for reform when it hasn\u2019t put a single constructive proposal on the table since first signaling its support for reform over two years ago<\/a>, and then issuing its TSCA \u201cmodernization\u201d principles more than 18 months ago<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the last Congress, ACC\u2019s reason for not talking turkey was its desire to avoid lending any forward momentum to the reform bills that had been introduced in both Houses.\u00a0 Instead, ACC decided to run out the clock, presumably based on its expectation of a more receptive new Congress after the midterm elections.<\/p>\n

This year, ACC\u2019s reason for not talking turkey is less obvious.\u00a0 A divided and presumably more industry-friendly Congress is seated.\u00a0 And all the dynamics that drove it to the table \u2013 state-by-state action<\/a> filling the void at the federal level, \u201cretail regulation\u201d<\/a> in the marketplace,\u00a0 implementation of comprehensive reform in other parts of the world<\/a> \u2013 are still in place; indeed, if anything, they\u2019re ramping up.<\/p>\n

It surely isn\u2019t for any lack of overtures from we advocates<\/a> indicating our willingness to talk and seek middle ground.\u00a0 As I noted in an earlier post<\/a>, we even took the step of offering free lunch to GlobalChem attendees willing to listen for an hour to our proposals for TSCA reform, after we were\u00a0passed over inclusion in the TSCA modernization panel at the industry\u2019s big annual shindig.<\/p>\n

Let me not paint with too broad a brush here:\u00a0 Other trade groups and several ACC member companies have reciprocated our offers, and have both indicated and demonstrated their interest in seriously engaging in substantive efforts toward finding a path forward on TSCA reform.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll say again here what I said in the Chemical Week<\/em> article<\/a>:\u00a0 We recognize the need to find something that all parties can \u201clive with,\u201d but without specific proposals from the chemical industry, it will be hard to move forward.<\/p>\n

And as long as things aren\u2019t moving forward, the chemical industry can only expect more of the same:\u00a0 More states and more companies downstream of the chemical industry acting on their own, and more foreign governments and companies getting out ahead of\u00a0ours in delivering chemicals and products the safety of which the world\u2019s consumers can have confidence in.<\/p>\n

Time\u2019s a-wasting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist. An article just out in Chemical Week by senior editor Kara Sissel simply nails it in describing the state of affairs on TSCA reform as it played out at last week\u2019s GlobalChem conference. The captions under the side-by-side photos of American Chemistry Council (ACC) President Cal Dooley and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,114108],"tags":[39150,5021],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-1273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-policy","category-tsca","tag-american-chemistry-council","tag-chemical-industry-tactics"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/100"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1273"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12624,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1273\/revisions\/12624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1273"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}