{"id":8136,"date":"2018-09-04T14:43:32","date_gmt":"2018-09-04T19:43:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/?p=8136"},"modified":"2024-02-12T11:02:12","modified_gmt":"2024-02-12T16:02:12","slug":"epa-needs-to-get-its-snurs-in-order-under-tsca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/2018\/09\/04\/epa-needs-to-get-its-snurs-in-order-under-tsca\/","title":{"rendered":"EPA needs to get its SNURs in order under TSCA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stephanie Schwarz, J.D.<\/em>, is a Legal Fellow.\u00a0\u00a0Richard Denison, Ph.D.,\u00a0<\/em>is a Lead Senior Scientist.<\/p>\n

On Friday EDF submitted comments<\/a> to EPA on a batch of Significant New Use Rules (SNURs) the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published on August 1<\/a> pursuant to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).<\/p>\n

The SNURs relate to 145 new chemicals for which EPA had earlier issued consent orders that imposed certain conditions on the substances.\u00a0 Those consent orders date back to when EPA was still pursuing the development of such orders for many new chemicals it reviewed, and prior to the recent \u201cpivots<\/a>\u201d it has been making in an effort to avoid issuing orders by circumventing the requirements of the TSCA provisions governing new chemicals.<\/p>\n

TSCA anticipates that EPA will promulgate SNURs to follow up on consent orders.\u00a0 In fact, TSCA section 5(f)(4)<\/a> requires that when EPA issues an order, EPA must either promulgate a SNUR or provide a statement explaining why EPA is not doing so.\u00a0 And when EPA does promulgate such a SNUR, the SNUR must \u201cidentif[y] as a significant new use any manufacturing, processing, use, distribution in commerce, or disposal of the chemical substance that does not conform to the restrictions imposed by the … order<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

EDF strongly supports EPA\u2019s use of SNURs to follow up on consent orders it issues.\u00a0 That is because the order only applies to the original company that submitted a premanufacture notice (PMN) to EPA for a new chemical.\u00a0 A proper SNUR then requires that company or any other company that seeks to deviate from the conditions in the order to first notify EPA, triggering a review of that \u201csignificant new use.\u201d<\/p>\n

While EDF supports EPA\u2019s issuance of SNURs for these 145 new chemicals, our review of the proposed SNURs raised concerns, prompting us to file \u201cadverse\u201d comments.\u00a0 Our comments raise two major concerns:<\/p>\n

First, EPA has adopted an ad hoc<\/em> testing policy in the direct final rule that does not comply with the requirements of TSCA, without sufficient explanation, and without providing any notice and opportunity for public comment on the policy. EPA needs to avoid adopting such an ad hoc<\/em> policy.<\/p>\n

Second, as noted above, TSCA (as well as EPA\u2019s longstanding policy) requires SNURs to \u201cconform\u201d to the restrictions in the corresponding orders.\u00a0 Yet we identified numerous inconsistencies between the orders and SNURs. \u00a0EPA must ensure that the final SNURs identify as a significant new use any activity that is not consistent with the restrictions in the corresponding consent orders.<\/p>\n

See our comments<\/a> for details.<\/p>\n

NOTE:\u00a0 EPA had published the SNURs both as a direct final rule and as a proposed rule, noting that if it received any adverse comments, it would withdraw the direct final rule and consider the comments received in the process of finalizing the proposed rule.\u00a0 We expect EPA will now pursue this course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stephanie Schwarz, J.D., is a Legal Fellow.\u00a0\u00a0Richard Denison, Ph.D.,\u00a0is a Lead Senior Scientist. On Friday EDF submitted comments to EPA on a batch of Significant New Use Rules (SNURs) the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published on August 1 pursuant to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). The SNURs relate to 145 new chemicals for which …<\/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":[44,56096,114108],"tags":[68,56108,39178],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-8136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-policy","category-omboira","category-tsca","tag-epa","tag-new-chemicals","tag-significant-new-use-rule-snur"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8136","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=8136"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12852,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8136\/revisions\/12852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8136"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}