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Chemical Safety Reform Gains Momentum in Congress
"This is a monumental sea change"
- Richard Denison of the Environmental Defense Fund in Washington
Two bills in Congress would dramatically strengthen the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) ability to regulate chemicals. The bills shift the burden of proof to industry, which would have to demonstrate the safety of existing and new chemicals. That's a major change from the existing system, in which EPA must prove that chemicals are harmful before it can regulate them.
The current legislation that governs chemical regulation, the Toxic Substances Control Act, has not been updated since it was passed in 1976, and its requirements have restricted EPA's ability to regulate chemicals.
For example, EPA must show that a chemical poses a health risk before it can require companies to provide safety data.
Under a bill introduced today by Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), companies would have to provide a minimum set of data to EPA, which would have the authority to also ask for more details in order to determine safety. For existing chemicals, companies would have 15 years to provide data. But EPA would have to create a high-priority list of 300 chemicals that it considers most dangerous and that require faster evaluation.