{"id":5276,"date":"2016-05-23T13:39:32","date_gmt":"2016-05-23T18:39:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/?p=5276"},"modified":"2024-02-12T11:01:50","modified_gmt":"2024-02-12T16:01:50","slug":"historic-deal-on-tsca-reform-reached-setting-stage-for-a-new-law-after-40-years-of-waiting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/2016\/05\/23\/historic-deal-on-tsca-reform-reached-setting-stage-for-a-new-law-after-40-years-of-waiting\/","title":{"rendered":"Historic deal on TSCA reform reached, setting stage for a new law after 40 years of waiting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Richard Denison, Ph.D.,\u00a0<\/em>is a Lead Senior Scientist.<\/p>\n<p>House and Senate negotiators have reached agreement on a final reconciled bill to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), our nation\u2019s badly broken chemical safety law.\u00a0 The final text of the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21<sup>st<\/sup> Century Act was <a href=\"https:\/\/rules.house.gov\/bill\/114\/hr-2576-sa\">posted today<\/a>, and is set to be voted on by the full House tomorrow, with Senate consideration expected to follow later this week.<\/p>\n<p>Negotiations to reconcile the two chambers\u2019 quite different reform bills, both passed last year, reached a feverish pace in the last few weeks, leading to today\u2019s historic breakthrough.<\/p>\n<p>The result is a final bill that, while a compromise, is a substantial improvement over current law.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Negotiators adopted the House bill\u2019s construct of risk evaluations over the Senate\u2019s safety assessments and determinations, while largely adopting the Senate approach to reforming TSCA\u2019s new chemicals program, establishing a prioritization process applicable to all chemicals, and updating the inventory of chemicals active in commerce.\u00a0 The bill\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, the new bill makes significant improvements to all of TSCA\u2019s core provisions.\u00a0 <!--more-->Among its main features, the bill:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Mandates safety reviews for chemicals in active commerce.<\/li>\n<li>Requires a safety finding before new chemicals are allowed on the market.<\/li>\n<li>Replaces TSCA\u2019s burdensome safety standard \u2013 which prevented EPA even from banning asbestos \u2013 with a pure, health-based standard.<\/li>\n<li>Explicitly requires protection of vulnerable populations, like children and pregnant women.<\/li>\n<li>Enhances EPA\u2019s authority to require testing of both new and existing chemicals.<\/li>\n<li>Sets aggressive, judicially enforceable deadlines for EPA decisions and compliance with restrictions.<\/li>\n<li>Makes more information about chemicals available, by limiting companies\u2019 ability to claim information as confidential, and by giving states and health and environmental professionals access to confidential information they need to do their jobs.<\/li>\n<li>Requires EPA to reduce and replace animal testing where scientifically reliable alternatives exist that would generate equivalent or better information.<\/li>\n<li>Requires EPA to prioritize chemicals that are persistent and bioaccumulative, and that are known human carcinogens and have high toxicity.<\/li>\n<li>Preserves a significant role for states in assuring chemical safety.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The bill is the fruit of several years of negotiations, initially in the Senate, that started with the introduction in 2013 of the first bipartisan reform proposal by the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg and Sen. David Vitter.\u00a0 Extensive negotiations led by Sen. Tom Udall and Sen. Vitter resulted in a significantly revised bill introduced a year ago, named in honor of Sen. Lautenberg.\u00a0 Further negotiated changes attracted significant bipartisan support in committee, and additional revisions were sufficient to attract 60 co-sponsors by the time of its passage in December by unanimous voice vote. \u00a0Sens. Jim Inhofe, Barbara Boxer, Tom Carper, Sheldon Whitehouse, Jeff Merkley, Cory Booker, Ed Markey and Dick Durbin each played significant roles in improving the bill keeping up momentum toward its passage.<\/p>\n<p>The House process was much quicker but equally bipartisan, with a bill introduced in May and passed in June of last year, by the remarkable margin of 398-1.\u00a0 Representatives Fred Upton, Frank Pallone, John Shimkus, Paul Tonko, and later, Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Diana DeGette and Gene Green shepherded and supported moving the bill through the House and the bicameral negotiations.<\/p>\n<p>This bill gives no one everything they wanted \u2013 neither Republicans nor Democrats swept the table.\u00a0 For EDF\u2019s part, there are certainly provisions we don\u2019t like that are aspects of the final compromise that was struck to secure passage.\u00a0 But we are very pleased that we can say that each major section of the final bill offers real improvements, and taken together, the final bill is a major improvement over current law.\u00a0 At long last, EPA will have stronger tools to protect Americans from toxic chemicals that impact the health of millions of Americans.<\/p>\n<p>The bill has significant support in the health, environmental, animal welfare and labor communities, <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/11\/files\/2016\/05\/Joint-Letter-on-the-Lautenberg-Act-05-20-2016.pdf\">endorsed by these groups <\/a>that represent 26 million Americans:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Environmental Defense Fund<\/li>\n<li>The Humane Society of the United States<\/li>\n<li>International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers<\/li>\n<li>March of Dimes<\/li>\n<li>Moms Clean Air Force<\/li>\n<li>National Wildlife Federation<\/li>\n<li>North America&#8217;s Building Trades Unions<\/li>\n<li>Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For more information, see our brief <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/11\/files\/2016\/05\/Fact-Sheet-on-FRL-Act-5-23-2016.pdf\">fact sheet<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.edf.org\/media\/edf-applauds-house-senate-agreement-chemical-safety-reform\">statement of support<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Richard Denison, Ph.D.,\u00a0is 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\u2019s badly broken chemical safety law.\u00a0 The final text of the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act was posted today, and is set &#8230;<\/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":[56107],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-5276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-policy","category-tsca","tag-lautenberg-act"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5276","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=5276"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12765,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5276\/revisions\/12765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5276"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}