From Inside TSCA

Industry Attorneys See GOP Trifecta Boosting Push For TSCA Amendments

With Republicans now confirmed to control both chambers of Congress and the White House next year, industry attorneys say prospects for “much-needed” revisions to TSCA are brightening -- especially given the need to reauthorize the law’s user fee program before it is due to expire at the end of fiscal year 2026. Any fee bill could open the door for Congress to also revisit broader questions around the meaning and proper implementation of key provisions in the reformed Toxic Substances...

EPA Seeks Data On Tire Chemical 6PPD In Early Step Toward TSCA Rule

EPA is asking stakeholders to provide a wide range of information on the tire component 6PPD and related substances that could inform a future TSCA rule to limit their danger to protected salmon species and other aquatic life -- though it still gives no detail on what restrictions the agency is considering. The advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM) , which EPA posted online Nov. 14, outlines a long list of data gaps on 6PPD’s uses, properties, toxic effects and...

EPA Finds Drinking Water Risk From 1,4-Dioxane In Redone TSCA Evaluation

EPA has reworked its Trump-era TSCA evaluation of 1,4-dioxane to find that the solvent poses unreasonable risk not only from industrial uses but also as a byproduct in products like detergent that are disposed “down the drain” into water systems, teeing up potential regulation under both the toxics law and the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). The agency Nov. 13 released the final revised evaluation , completing what has been a nearly four-year process of supplementing the 2019 Toxic Substances...

Water Systems Warn PVC Pipes Could Complicate TSCA Phthalate Evaluation

California drinking water utilities are warning EPA that its draft TSCA evaluation of the phthalate DINP needs to clearly consider potential risk from its use in polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipes -- potentially expanding a nascent battle over the pipes’ safety as replacements for lead service lines (LSLs) under the agency’s new drinking water rule. The Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA), representing more than 470 public water agencies in the Golden State, filed Nov. 4 comments on the draft evaluation...

Anti-Plastic Groups Ask EPA To Oppose PVC Water Lines Amid TSCA Review

Environmentalists and public-health groups seeking tight controls on plastic chemicals are urging EPA to “weigh in” against polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipes as replacements for lead drinking water lines ahead of an expected years-long TSCA risk evaluation of vinyl chloride, a key component in the material that the advocates say can leach into water supplies. But the leader of one such group says agency officials appear reluctant to step into that debate, leaving citizen and industry groups on both sides to...

Anti-Fluoride Group Says TSCA Suit Not ‘Ideological’ After Kennedy’s Praise

The head of one of the groups that won a landmark court decision requiring EPA to regulate drinking water fluoridation under TSCA says the path forward for the case “isn’t an ideological issue” despite Robert F. Kennedy Jr. saying a second Trump administration would urge local authorities to cease the practice. “This is a safe drinking water issue,” Stuart Cooper, executive director of the Fluoride Action Network (FAN), told Inside TSCA in a Nov. 4 interview. “So this is...

EPA Finalizes PBT Rule, Extending TSCA Chemical-Phaseout Deadlines

Update Appended EPA has finalized a long-awaited rule extending compliance deadlines for Trump-era TSCA limits on two “persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic” (PBT) chemicals that trade groups have warned could shut down entire sectors if enforced quickly, though the changes will not take effect for at least two months, leaving one of the Trump rules in effect during that window. The final rule , which EPA quietly signed and posted online Oct. 31, extends for as long as 30 years...

EPA Advisors Press NTP On Fluoride Toxicity Report Key To TSCA Ruling

Members of the EPA Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee (CHPAC) used a recent meeting to raise pointed questions on the National Toxicology Program (NTP) review of fluoride toxicity that helped drive a landmark court ruling requiring EPA to regulate drinking water fluoridation under TSCA -- a decision that some of the advisors said could undercut public health. During CHPAC’s Oct. 30-31 meeting in Washington, D.C., the panel heard from NTP officials on the program’s Aug. 21 monograph that found high...

EPA Eyes Outreach To Combat ‘Confusion’ From Updated Dust-Lead Rule

A top EPA toxics office official says the agency is aware of “confusion” stemming from its newly rewritten TSCA rule governing dust-lead levels in residential buildings and is tailoring its communications on the policy to clarify its new approach. “We wanted to help address that with how we wrote our communications materials, the press release and the rule itself,” Marc Edmonds, branch manager in the Existing Chemicals Risk Management Division at EPA’s Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, said in...

Stakeholders Fear Confusion From Redone TSCA Dust-Lead Framework

Environmentalist and industry sources alike say provisions in EPA’s new TSCA hazard and clearance levels for lead dust in residential buildings could confuse stakeholders and the public because it reworks the relationship between those targets and when they trigger cleanup mandates, including as part of other government programs that incorporate the rule. The Oct. 24 rule tightens Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) dust-lead abatement requirements and lowers what the agency previously called its “hazard standard” for the metal to “...

TSCA Prioritization Renews Debate Over PVC As Lead-Pipe Replacement

EPA’s proposed designation of vinyl chloride as “high-priority” for evaluation and regulation under TSCA is reigniting debate over the safety of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipes in drinking water systems as the agency prepares to implement its separate rule requiring replacement of nearly all lead service lines (LSLs) nationwide. Industry and environmental groups’ comments on the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) prioritization proposal for vinyl chloride and four other chemicals not only weighed in on EPA’s justification for targeting the candidates...

Environmentalists Push EPA To Assess Releases In Vinyl Chloride Evaluation

Environmentalists are pressing EPA to formally deem vinyl chloride a “high priority” for TSCA risk evaluation and regulation, while renewing calls for the review to consider accidental releases -- such as the 2023 East Palestine, OH, chemical spill -- after the agency said it would decide whether to include such incidents in its analyses on a case-by-case basis. “We strongly support this designation and urge you to move forward as expeditiously as possible with evaluating the full array of risks...

Trade Groups Press EPA To Loosen Workplace TCE Limits In Final Rule

Chemical-sector groups are urging EPA and the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to ease the strict workplace exposure standard that the agency proposed in its TSCA rule for trichloroethylene (TCE), by either easing the final regulation or allowing for greater flexibility on enforcement. A more lenient approach is not only reasonable but better fits EPA’s newly revised “framework” rule governing Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the American Chemistry Council’s (ACC) Chlorine panel argued in a written presentation...

Final Dust-Lead Rule Sets Strict Hazard Level But Eases Abatement Target

EPA has published its judicially mandated final rule reworking Trump-era TSCA dust-lead restrictions for residential buildings, tightening the dust lead hazard standard (DLHS) to encompass “any reportable level of lead” despite industry objections but opting for less-stringent abatement standards than it floated in 2023. While the rule text was not available at press time, EPA said in an Oct. 24 press release that it is finalizing a Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) DLHS encompassing "any reportable level" of the neurotoxic...

OMB Backs Tougher Dust-Lead Rule, Teeing Up Affordable-Housing Fight

The White House has concluded its review of EPA’s final TSCA rule that is expected to strengthen dust-lead hazard and clearance standards for residential buildings and associated remediation of lead paint, fulfilling the judicial remand of a Trump-era policy, but teeing up new battles over application of such requirements to affordable housing programs. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) completed its work on the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) dust lead hazard standard (DLHS) rulemaking on Oct. 21, which...

EPA Eyes TSCA ‘Co-Exposure’ Method To Bolster Chemical Assessments

A top scientist at EPA’s toxics office told the agency’s Science Advisory Board (SAB) this week that a nascent screening tool for chemical “co-exposures” could boost efforts to ensure that TSCA risk evaluations meet the law’s requirement for those reviews to protect vulnerable populations -- though he emphasized that the tool needs substantial refinement to be fit for regulatory use. Jason Todd, senior science lead within EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP), highlighted the draft Toxic Substances...

Chamber Asks Court To Block ‘Misleading’ Prop. 65 Acrylamide Warning

The California Chamber of Commerce is asking a federal judge to grant summary judgment in its long-running free-speech challenge to the state’s Prop. 65 warning for the food chemical acrylamide, saying regulators’ reworked warning text is “false and misleading” in light of the lack of scientific consensus about acrylamide’s human health impacts. Prop. 65’s “cancer warning requirement for acrylamide, in all its forms, compels CalChamber’s members to provide a false and misleading message that disparages their products and seeks to...

Washington State, Environmentalists Warn California Over 6PPD Alternatives

Washington state regulators and environmentalists are warning the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) to carefully review tire manufacturers’ potential replacement chemicals for the anti-cracking compound 6PPD, arguing that some of the alternatives could be equally toxic to human and aquatic health. “Both 6PPD and the related compound 7PPD are known to be reproductive toxicants, yet 7PPD is included as a potential alternative in preliminary [alternatives analysis (AA)] reports submitted to DTSC,” states Oct. 9 comments to DTSC from...

Facing Delay Of PBT Deadline Rule, EPA Pushes DecaBDE Ban To January

EPA is postponing through Jan. 6 enforcement of a Trump-era mandate for nuclear facilities to phase out insulated wire and other components made with the flame retardant decabromodiphenyl ether (decaBDE), conceding that a rule extending the Oct. 31 deadline for decaBDE and another “persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic” (PBT) flame retardants will not take effect this year. But the agency appears to be taking no such action for the other target of that rule, phenol, isopropylated phosphate, or PIP (3:1) --...

Court Weighs TSCA ‘Serious Risk’ Mandate In PFAS Contamination Suit

Environmentalists are asking a federal district court to hold that TSCA requires EPA to quickly regulate PFAS contamination in fluorinated plastics independent from its grant of a rulemaking petition on the subject, in a novel test of the law’s mandate for the agency to address chemicals that threaten “serious or widespread harm” on an expedited schedule. Allowing EPA to avoid litigation under the widespread-harm provisions in section 4(f) of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) simply because it is in...

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