The Associated Press reports the Obama Administration would like Congress to revise the Toxic Substances Control Act.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson called the 32-year-old statute governing toxic substances a flawed tool for protecting the public from the more than 80,000 chemicals that are on the market. Those chemicals, which do not include pesticides or drugs, are used in everything from cell phones to plastic drinking-water bottles. Not all of them are still in use, experts said.
“The American people are looking to the government for assurance that chemicals have been assessed using the best available science and unacceptable risks haven’t been ignored,” Jackson said in a conference call with reporters before a formal announcement in San Francisco. “Unfortunately, the current law does not allow us to grant them that assurance.” . . .
The Obama administration wants Congress to craft a law that will require chemical manufacturers to provide enough information so that the EPA can evaluate the risks, and to give the agency the authority to act against chemicals it determines to be dangerous.
I found this bit of the story particularly interesting:
Many of the reforms the administration has suggested largely mirror those advanced by the chemical manufacturing industry, which is concerned about a patchwork of regulations at the state and local level.
Here are the EPA Press Release on Administrator Jackson’s speech and EPA’s “Essential Principles for Reform of Chemicals Management Legislation.”
cirby says:
Most American industries are running into the same sort of problem – too many regulations, often confusing, sometimes contradictory. According to which government agency you talk to, a certain concentration of a given chemical can be either safe, borderline, or horribly toxic.
September 30, 2009, 5:54 amPatHMV says:
Like most such large federal regulatory “reforms,” this will undoubtedly end up being a boon for the major chemical companies, while it hurts or even kills smaller chemical manufacturers, who will not have sufficient resources to do all of the new compliance testing which will likely be required. I predict it will also stifle a great deal of innovation, by raising the costs of bringing new products to market (because they will have to undergo extensive testing to see if rats fed a steady diet of the chemical develop cancer or change genders or something).
September 30, 2009, 7:02 amOren says:
Pat, it’s just as possible that simplification will reduce the barriers to entry by reducing the total amount of testing and compliance. That is, the current regime is also very unfriendly to small business and so it’s not really clear whether this will be a forward move or not.
To judge that, we’d have to see an actual statute, rather than a statement of Obama’s intentions (which, at least so far, are not automatically considered binding law).
September 30, 2009, 7:23 amLarryA says:
Now I’ve got it figured out! Obama isn’t a socialist, he’s a Republican.
Of course the Republicans are now socialist, so…
September 30, 2009, 7:34 amPatHMV says:
Oren, that’s certainly possible. My cynicism in such matters is not so deeply rooted as to make a final conclusion before reviewing the final statute and regulations. But I’m not optimistic. In the current climate, I fear that they will basically take California’s regulations and apply them nationally, and when I go to buy some product, the box will be covered with one giant warning label disclosing the complex chemical name of every single chemical which went into the making or the packaging of it.
September 30, 2009, 8:02 amTim McDonald says:
“Wealth of Nations” should be required reading for any manager or above in any of the regulatory agencies.
Established industries will ALWAYS try to get government to erect barriers to competition. When did we forget this?
Have even the correct parts of Adam Smith’s work fallen out of favor?
September 30, 2009, 9:41 amOren says:
If that standard Federally preempts any State and local law and, most importantly, preempts any State and Local court (remember, many don’t have Daubert and will hear “evidence” that high-voltage lines cause Autism) from entertaining tort claims (like ERISA does) then that might be a net game.
One bad regime can be better than a hodgepodge of 50 contradictory ones.
September 30, 2009, 11:14 amPatrick says:
TSCA, as it comes into use, really only applies to PCBs. It works as a second set of rules to RCRA for one group of chemicals (PCBs). It really doesn’t make any sense, as plenty of dangerous chemicals are regulated by RCRA. It might just be the case that the allowable level of PCBs, in waste, is higher than it should be to get around TSCA.
There have also probably been new chemicals developed in the past 32 years, and it makes no sense to regulate old chemicals but not new ones.
So, it is probably long past due to take a look at RCRA and TSCA, and merge and update them. Most of the big utilities have cleaned up their PCB sites by now anyway.
September 30, 2009, 1:53 pmStacy says:
Didn’t we see essentially the same thing happen with tobacco manufacturers as they supported FDA regulations? I agree this agency capture is surprising only because it is the EPA we are talking about. . .
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