{"id":1512,"date":"2011-06-21T15:34:02","date_gmt":"2011-06-21T20:34:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/nanotechnology\/?p=1512"},"modified":"2024-02-12T11:01:16","modified_gmt":"2024-02-12T16:01:16","slug":"waiting-for-godot-405-days-and-counting-at-omb-on-epas-modest-proposal-to-identify-chemicals-of-concern-under-tsca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/2011\/06\/21\/waiting-for-godot-405-days-and-counting-at-omb-on-epas-modest-proposal-to-identify-chemicals-of-concern-under-tsca\/","title":{"rendered":"Waiting for Godot: 405 days and counting at OMB on EPA\u2019s modest proposal to identify chemicals of concern under TSCA"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Yesterday, three legal scholars from the Center for Progressive Reform (CPR) sent a letter to Cass Sunstein<\/a>, Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB).\u00a0 That letter rebutted on legal grounds the call made by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in its own letter to Mr. Sunstein<\/a> for OMB to force EPA to withdraw its proposal to use its authority under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to list chemicals of concern.<\/p>\n

EPA\u2019s proposal<\/a>, which entails use of its clear authority under Section 5(b)(4) of TSCA<\/a>, has been stalled at OIRA for 405 days as of today<\/strong>, with OIRA refusing even to allow the proposal out for public comment.\u00a0 I wrote an extensive blog post earlier<\/a> about all of the reasons why EPA\u2019s proposal is legally sound and makes good market<\/em> sense.\u00a0 That post \u2013 titled \u201cWhy is OMB blocking EPA from using even its limited authority under TSCA?\u201d \u2013 went up way back in December, and there\u2019s been no movement on the proposal since then.<\/p>\n

CPR\u2019s letter rebuts the Chamber\u2019s claims<\/a>, noting that it plain and simply \u201cGets the Law Wrong.\u201d\u00a0 EDF, too, has developed a legal analysis of EPA\u2019s authority<\/a> under TSCA to identify and list chemicals of concern, which is fully consistent with CPR\u2019s analysis but goes further to address a few other legal aspects of the issue.\u00a0 That\u2019s why I\u2019ve decided to post it here.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll leave you to read our memo<\/a> for the details, but provide its conclusion here as a teaser:<\/p>\n

\u201cEPA has clear authority under Section 5(b)(4) to list chemicals of concern and is not required to establish criteria in advance of the issuance of a proposed rule listing specific chemicals.\u00a0 EPA\u2019s authority also extends to the listing of categories of chemicals.\u00a0 The legal threshold for action under Section 5(b)(4) should be interpreted as identical to that in Section 4(a), which requires only a \u201cmore than theoretical\u201d basis for concluding that a chemical \u201cmay present\u201d an unreasonable risk.\u00a0 Even if Section 5(b)(4) is interpreted to mean something different from that in Section 4(a), it should be interpreted to be far less restrictive than the standard in Section 6.\u00a0 In addition, Section 5(b)(4) does not require consideration of economic impact in the decision to list a chemical.\u00a0 Finally, the statute is clear that listing of a chemical in a proposed rule under Section 5(b)(4) triggers export notification under Section 12, and may require the issuance of a SNUR [Significant New Use Rule] with respect to significant new uses of the chemical.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a sad state of affairs when even this modest step proposed by EPA to use its clear authority under TSCA is not even being allowed by OMB to see the light of day and benefit from public review and comment.<\/p>\n

Samuel Beckett\u2019s play, which I borrowed for the title of this post, is described as an absurdist play<\/a>.\u00a0 That pretty much sums up the endless review by OMB of EPA\u2019s modest proposal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist. Yesterday, three legal scholars from the Center for Progressive Reform (CPR) sent a letter to Cass Sunstein, Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB).\u00a0 That letter rebutted on legal grounds the call made by the …<\/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":[44,56096],"tags":[68,91751,39198,39172,39178],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-1512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-policy","category-omboira","tag-epa","tag-nanodelay","tag-office-of-information-and-regulatory-affairs-oira","tag-office-of-management-and-budget-omb","tag-significant-new-use-rule-snur"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1512","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=1512"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12636,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1512\/revisions\/12636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1512"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}