Tag Archives: American Chemistry Council

ACC-tung Baby: New Tool For TSCA

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Pressure to modernize TSCA is mounting from all sides, and the American Chemistry Council (ACC) is offering a tool that agencies can use to do something about it.  The ACC is proposing a chemical prioritization system that it believes could be used by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to determine which chemicals warrant additional review and assessment.

Achtung means “Pay attention” in German, and the world is indeed paying attention to TSCA reform.

ACC President and CEO Cal Dooley said as part of the new tool’s announcement, “As outlined in ACC’s principles for modernizing the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), establishing a clear and scientifically-sound prioritization process is key to creating a world-class chemical management system.”

The 35-year-old TSCA law does not dictate a process to utilize the information currently available to prioritize chemicals for review.  ACC’s approach offers one way to evaluate chemicals against transparent, consistent and scientific criteria that take into account both hazard and exposure. In this system, chemicals are given a score based on certain criteria and then ranked based on both:

  1. scores, and
  2. the agency’s best professional scientific judgment

Those rankings would then be used to determine which chemicals should be referred to EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety & Pollution Prevention for further assessment.

Conflict of interest? The obvious problem with ACC contributing a chemical prioritization tool to EPA lies in seemingly inevitable conflicts of interest where an industry-backed association has a stake in evaluating its own products (in this case chemicals) for the marketplace.

ACC says its prioritization tool is not intended to produce conclusions about which chemicals necessarily present a risk to human health or environment. The tool is, apparently, just a gift, simple as that.

EPA’s stakeholder meeting on prioritization. On Sept. 7, before the announcement, representatives from ACC met with officials at EPA to discuss the tool in conjunction with the agency’s stakeholder dialogue on prioritization.

[EPA is opening an online discussion forum for comment from hrough Sept. 14 to get input on the prioritization factors and data sources the Agency plans to use to identify priority chemicals for review and possible risk management action under TSCA.  Participate here.]

“We are glad that EPA has recognized the urgent need to prioritize chemicals for review,” said Dooley. “ACC welcomes the opportunity to participate in [this] dialogue and hopes EPA will utilize our concepts to develop a consistent and transparent prioritization process.”

For more and for reference, see: www.americanchemistry.com/Policy/Chemical-Safety/Chemical-Safety-Regulations

 

Reviving TSCA: Safe Chemicals Act Revision 2011

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On April 14, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) proposed “The Safe Chemicals Act, Version 2” to Congress.  Reception is lukewarm and the legislation is not expected to pass.  However, all industry persons should be familiar with the basics of the proposal.

SCA 2011 E-Z: articles, mixtures and nanos. In common language, SCA 2011 differs from SCA 2010 in three key ways.

In terms of articles, the new revision would not specifically amend the definition of chemical substance to include chemicals in articles.  “Articles” typically means “finished goods,” like a table, chair, electronic device or other saleable manufactured item for the market.  Under SCA 2011, chemical substances imported as part of an article would be subject to the same requirements as if they had been imported in bulk, with some exceptions.

Mixtures are again a hot topic:  current TSCA allows testing and reporting rules and control actions to be issued for mixtures, although EPA rarely implements related procedures.  SCA 2011 unloads many of last year’s mixture requirements so that it more closely resembles the current TSCA status quo.  SCA 2011 would let EPA take actions relating to mixtures in the same manner as actions relating to chemical substances — in the event that EPA determined that doing so would be reasonable and efficient.

In the realm of nanomaterials, SCA 2011 is similar to SCA 2010 in that it lets EPA determine whether nanoscale versions of existing macroscale chemicals are new chemicals.

SCA 2011 E-Z: in context. The esteemed Washington, DC, environmental law in Beveridge and Diamond aptly commented on the upshot of SCA 2011 by pointing out, “With the Republican majority in the House of Representatives unlikely to consider TSCA legislation this Congress, passage of SCA 2011 is unlikely. Nevertheless, SCA 2011 will probably stimulate efforts by stakeholders to educate Congress and each other on a variety of approaches to overhauling TSCA that can address the deficiencies in the current statute while obtaining sufficient support to be enacted.”

The SCA 2011 aims to endow EPA with sufficient information to judge a chemical’s safety.  It requires manufacturers to develop and submit a minimum data set for each chemical they produce, while also preventing duplicative or unnecessary testing and encouraging the use of rapid, low-cost, non-animal tests that provide high quality data.  Again, the onus of chemical evaluation and disclosure is intended to fall on chemical manufacturers, not manufacturers in general.

The American Chemistry Council (ACC) and its members have announced they support efforts by the US Congress to modernize chemical management. A modern system, says the ACC, should place protecting the public health as its highest priority, and should include strict government oversight.