Posted on March 31, 2015 by Donald Stever
Way back around the turn of the decade from the ‘70s to the ‘80s I was invited by the International Joint Commission to attend a conference in Montreal to discuss whether the Canadians should adopt a statute similar to the Toxics Substances Control Act of 1976 (“TSCA”). The IJC is a largely advisory US-Canadian body whose primary area of interest is the Great Lakes. Also on that delegation was the principal author of the text of TSCA, Clarence (“Terry”) Davies. I did not win many friends on that trip when I argued that TSCA took the wrong approach to regulating chemicals in the stream of commerce and in the environment primarily because it used an inappropriate cost-benefit premised standard of review. I also argued that TSCA’s standards were simultaneously too vague and too complex. I suggested that the Canadians start afresh.
In the years following, Congress ignored repeated calls for significant amendment or replacement of TSCA, including a chorus of suggestions that it be replaced by a statute resembling the European Community’s chemical regulatory regime, REACH. In the meantime, EPA soldiered along, trying to make the best of enforcing an antiquated and fundamentally flawed regulatory statute.
Now after all these years we have two competing bills in the Senate, each of which purports to “reform” TSCA. On the one hand we have S.697, the “Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act”, an allegedly “bipartisan” effort co-sponsored by Senators Mark Udall (D-N.M.) and David Vitter (R-La.), the first hearing on which was held on March 18th. And from another corner, we have S.725, the “Alan Reinstein and Trevor Schaefer Toxic Chemical Protection Act”, co-sponsored by Senators Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (D.Mass.). At about 175 legislative pages, these bills aren’t capable of being thoroughly analyzed in a blog.
The Udall bill is tepidly supported by the chemical industry and by at least one environmental group, the Environmental Defense Fund. It is opposed by some other environmental and public safety advocacy groups. It would pre-empt state chemical regulatory programs like California’s Proposition 65 and other state-run chemical regulatory programs in California and Washington. The Boxer bill, predictably, because its principal sponsor is from California, preserves state programs. Both bills in one degree or another attempt to address the core problems with TSCA by changing the standard of review to a risk-based standard, overhauling and strengthening EPA’s information gathering authority on hazard, exposure and use data, and prioritizing chemicals for review. The Udall bill throws a bone to the chemical industry by exempting a wide variety of chemicals considered to be of low exposure potential or low risk.
I confess that, although I am not a policy wonk, I have an interest in these bills partly because if either — or a significant element of either — is enacted into law I will have to re-write an entire chapter of The Law of Chemical Regulation and Hazardous Waste. My guess is that, given Congress’s track record of doing little or nothing over the last few years, I won’t have to worry about getting writer’s cramp any time soon.
Tags: TSCA, Proposition 65, pre-emption