ISSUE: Inside TSCA

Safer Choice Reactivation Garners Support, Despite Tight TSCA Budget

EPA’s elevation of the voluntary Safer Choice program to a separate division within the chemicals office has generally met support from industry and some environmentalists, despite one group’s fears that bolstering it means diverting money that could otherwise aid TSCA implementation -- a conundrum one expert says is unavoidable. Liz Hitchcock, the director of Safer Chemicals Healthy Families (SCHF), said even with the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) office facing severe resource constraints, her group is standing behind its recent...

New TSCA Workplace Exposure Limits May Hint At Reworked TCE Approach

EPA has quietly released workplace exposure limits for five chemicals with TSCA rules in development, appearing to lay groundwork not just for those proposals but also a potential reversal on trichloroethylene (TCE), where the agency has prepared two limits -- one based on the Trump-era risk determination and a stricter second option using research the prior administration rejected. Late last month, EPA quietly posted to chemical-specific regulatory dockets internal memos outlining its development of Existing Chemical Exposure Limits (ECELs) for...

Republicans Attack EPA Asbestos Rule, Raising Doubts On Proposed Bill

Key Republicans are voicing harsh criticism over EPA’s proposed TSCA rule that would require industry to quickly cut off the few remaining uses of chrysotile asbestos, casting doubt on the prospects of Democrats’ newly introduced bill that would impose an even broader ban on the same deadline just days before a Senate hearing on the legislation. In a June 1 letter , top GOP members of the House and Senate committees that oversee EPA argue that the agency’s proposed two-year...

Activists Hail Colorado PFAS Law As Model For Other States

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) has signed broad legislation restricting the sale of various consumer products containing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), winning praise from consumer advocates and environmentalists who say the new law should be a model for the Biden administration and other states. “I hope to see more states and the federal government follow Colorado’s lead and take strong action to turn off the tap on PFAS contamination across the country,” said Emily Rogers of the U.S. Public...

EPA Issues First TSCA Order Under National PFAS Testing Strategy

EPA has released its first TSCA test order for a per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance (PFAS) under the “comprehensive” nationwide testing strategy it announced in 2021, directing a group of companies to begin a set of “tiered” toxicity studies for a key chemical in firefighting foam known as 6:2 fluorotelomer sulfonamide betaine. The June 6 test order is part of what EPA previously said will be an initial set of as many as 24 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) orders targeting...

Industry Urges White House To Speed PMNs In Sustainable Chemistry Push

Industry groups are pressing the White House to speed up EPA’s TSCA reviews of pre-manufacture notices (PMNs) for new chemicals as part of its sweeping new sustainable chemistry initiative, saying delays in those approvals are blocking them from bring more environmentally friendly substances to market. In some of the first publicly released responses to an April 6 request for information (RFI) from the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) on a wide range of sustainable-chemistry issues, both...

Animal Welfare Groups Eye Industry Suits To Set Bar For TSCA Test Orders

Animal welfare groups are hoping a growing wave of industry-led litigation over EPA’s latest round of TSCA chemical-testing orders will produce first-time precedent on how high a bar the agency must clear to justify live-animal tests rather than advanced alternatives like computational modeling or cell-culture analysis favored by the advocates. As of press time, companies and trade associations have filed at least two petitions asking federal appeals courts to review Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) test orders that EPA issued...

ACC Defends Push To Reinstate Trump-Era PPE Policy

The American Chemistry Council (ACC) is pushing back on labor and environmental groups’ claims that its TSCA policy agenda would endanger worker safety, saying it is merely urging EPA to stop “disregarding critical and essential information” on existing workplace protections, and that accusations it is overstating the impact of OSHA rules are baseless. In a June 3 post , the chemical-sector trade group aims to shore up its arguments for EPA’s return to a Trump-era policy of assuming a baseline...

House Republicans Claim EPA Has Stonewalled Formaldehyde Inquiries

Four House Republicans say EPA has failed to respond to oversight questions and document requests on its controversial draft Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) assessment of formaldehyde, and are renewing those demands while also joining industry calls for the agency to extend its comment deadline on the draft. “While we have not received a response to the prior letter nor received the requested briefing to our offices prior to the dissemination of the draft assessment, these concerns have grown with...

Unions Say Industry’s Push To Reverse TSCA PPE Policy Relies On ‘Myths’

Unions, environmentalists and a slew of academics and former OSHA officials are urging EPA to stand behind its reversals of Trump-era TSCA policies governing evaluation of workplace chemical exposures, arguing that an industry call to unwind the new stances is based on “myths” about existing worker-safety rules and voluntary protections. “Workers’ lives are at stake,” concludes a June 1 letter from a wide-ranging coalition of labor and environment advocates, addressed to EPA chemicals chief Michal Freedhoff. “We urge you to...

Environmentalists Push EPA To Close ‘Loopholes’ In TSCA PFAS Orders

Earthjustice is urging EPA to tighten about 200 TSCA consent orders issued over the past two decades governing the use and disposal of various per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance (PFAS) by closing what the group says are “loopholes” that increase risks from exposure. Any revised orders, which govern use and disposal of ongoing uses individual substances, would be in addition to the raft of significant new use rules (SNURs), much broader rules governing a host of potential uses, for many PFAS...

California Lawmakers Advance Bills Requiring PFAS Product Bans, Reporting

The California Assembly has passed a scaled-back bill that would prohibit the sale of most clothes and other textiles that contain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) beginning in 2025, and a separate measure requiring manufacturers and other companies to report all PFAS-containing products and substances they bring into the state. Passage of the legislation to the state Senate, despite varying degrees of opposition from industry groups, underscores California lawmakers’ growing concerns about PFAS contamination as the chemicals have been discovered...

EPW Sets Hearing On Asbestos Ban Bill

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW) has scheduled a June 9 subcommittee hearing on the asbestos ban bill introduced last month by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), signaling an aggressive timetable to move the legislation despite its lack of co-sponsors and stricter terms than a 2019 version that collapsed without a vote. EPW had not added the hearing to its calendar at press time, but the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO) highlighted it in a June 1 newsletter, saying...

In Potential Precedent, Vinyl Institute Challenges TSCA Testing Orders

The Vinyl Institute (VI) is challenging a pair of TSCA orders requiring its members to conduct new tests on a chlorinated solvent in what sources say appears to be one of the first suits over EPA’s use of expanded authority to mandate such testing after Congress included it in its 2016 overhaul of the law. VI quietly filed a May 23 petition for review with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit targeting EPA’s order mandating...

EPA Triggers Emerging Viral Pathogen Guidance For Monkeypox

EPA has invoked its emerging viral pathogen (EVP) guidance to authorize certain disinfectants to claim efficacy against the virus that causes the rare but spreading disease monkeypox -- triggering the same authority that allowed some products to be labeled as effective against COVID-19 in the early months of the pandemic. The agency announced on May 23 that it was triggering the EVP guidance for monkeypox, in response to recent cases in the United States. The disease is endemic in some...

Ag Groups Urge EPA To Weigh Animal Uses In Formaldehyde Assessment

Agriculture groups are raising new claims that EPA’s draft hazard assessment of formaldehyde downplayed or even ignored the ubiquitous chemical’s use in “animal industries,” and failed to gather input from the Agriculture Department (USDA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the two agencies most familiar with those sectors. “In our initial review of EPA’s formaldehyde assessment, we note that there is no descriptive reference or acknowledgement of the presence, use, benefit or possible hazards associated with formaldehyde applications in the...

EPA Seeks NAS Input On Expanding Use Of AI In Chemical Reviews

The top official at EPA’s chemical assessment division said the agency is looking to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for advice on how to incorporate the “next wave” of machine learning and other artificial intelligence (AI) technologies into its risk analyses, including under TSCA and the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) program. In an opening address to NAS’ May 25-26 workshop on the use of AI in systematic reviews -- the process of identifying and evaluating published studies relevant...

NAS Urges New Research On ‘Complex’ Indoor Chemical Exposures

A new study from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) warns that there are major data gaps on risks posed by indoor exposures to a variety of chemicals and mixtures, including to high-profile substances like phthalates, in part because even well-studied contaminants can behave differently in indoor environments. The May 24 report , Why Indoor Chemistry Matters , aims to provide a “status report for indoor chemistry research” and lays out a host of research gaps it says must be...

EPA Official Sees 10-Year ‘Horizon’ For TSCA New Chemicals Initiative

A science advisor at EPA’s chemicals office says the agency’s recently launched effort to “modernize” its TSCA reviews of new chemicals could take as long as a decade to conclude, forecasting a long process that will continue through multiple administrations, though she added that some of the reforms could be ready in as few as three years. During the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods’ (ICCVAM) annual symposium on May 26, Anna Lowit, a senior science advisor...

EPA Eyes Novel Developmental Neurotoxicity Tests For Regulatory Use

EPA scientists say they are working with other agencies to adapt a novel battery of tests for chemicals’ developmental neurotoxicity (DNT) potential for regulatory use, offering a potential avenue to bolster the toxicological data underlying TSCA evaluations of substances seen as potential DNTs as well as similar work by other programs. Speaking during the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods’ (ICCVAM) annual symposium on May 26, several EPA presenters said their work on DNT testing is a...

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