{"id":6727,"date":"2017-08-07T15:59:35","date_gmt":"2017-08-07T20:59:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/?p=6727"},"modified":"2024-02-12T11:01:58","modified_gmt":"2024-02-12T16:01:58","slug":"epas-announced-changes-to-new-chemicals-review-process-put-industry-demands-for-ready-market-access-above-public-health-protection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/2017\/08\/07\/epas-announced-changes-to-new-chemicals-review-process-put-industry-demands-for-ready-market-access-above-public-health-protection\/","title":{"rendered":"EPA\u2019s announced changes to new chemicals review process put industry demands for ready market access above public health protection"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Richard Denison, Ph.D.,\u00a0<\/em>is a Lead Senior Scientist.<\/p>\n<p>Last year\u2019s Lautenberg Act, which overhauled the badly broken Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), made fundamental changes intended to improve EPA\u2019s review of new chemicals prior to their commercialization, by requiring more scrutiny of those chemicals to better ensure they are safe.\u00a0 Until recently, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was on track in implementing the new requirements in a health-protective manner.\u00a0 With the addition of more staff, EPA was also steadily reducing the temporary backlog in new chemical reviews that had developed \u2013 a result of the fact that the law\u2019s new requirements took effect immediately upon passage.<\/p>\n<p>In recent months, however, agency staff have faced relentless pressure from the chemical industry \u2013 and internally from new industry-friendly senior management \u2013 not only to speed up reviews, but to return the program to its pre-Lautenberg practices.\u00a0 There were growing signs that EPA was considering changes that would circumvent the law\u2019s requirements in the name of increasing program \u201cthroughput.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0The agency\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20200118230818\/https:\/www.epa.gov\/newsreleases\/epa-eliminates-new-chemical-backlog-announces-improvements-new-chemical-safety-reviews\">press release today <\/a>makes clear that this is now happening. \u00a0<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>While many details of the shifts EPA is making remain murky, EDF is concerned that EPA is moving away from the law\u2019s clear requirements that:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>EPA rigorously review both intended and reasonably foreseen uses of new chemicals and,<\/li>\n<li>where EPA identifies potential risks or lacks sufficient information, it issue an order imposing conditions on the manufacturer of the new chemical sufficient to mitigate the potential risk.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Among other concerns, EPA\u2019s intent not to issue such orders and merely to promulgate so-called significant new use rules to require <em>notification<\/em> of reasonably foreseen uses \u2013 even assuming it can timely issue such rules \u2013 is squarely at odds with what the law requires.<\/p>\n<p>EPA also appears to be seeking to re-create the infamous <em>Catch-22<\/em> of old TSCA under which EPA could only require testing where it already had evidence of risk.\u00a0 In today\u2019s release, EPA signals that testing will only be required \u201cto address risk concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Finally, apart from today\u2019s release, EPA\u2019s recent approach of sharing information on these anticipated changes only with new chemical submitters is highly disturbing, and further undercuts public confidence in EPA\u2019s implementation of the reformed law.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Richard Denison, Ph.D.,\u00a0is a Lead Senior Scientist. Last year\u2019s Lautenberg Act, which overhauled the badly broken Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), made fundamental changes intended to improve EPA\u2019s review of new chemicals prior to their commercialization, by requiring more scrutiny of those chemicals to better ensure they are safe.\u00a0 Until recently, the Environmental Protection Agency &#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":[44,56093,114108],"tags":[56108],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-6727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-policy","category-industry-influence","category-tsca","tag-new-chemicals"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6727","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=6727"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12801,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6727\/revisions\/12801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6727"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=6727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}