Toxics

EPA efforts to expand toxic chemical regulations and reform its risk-assessment process, as well as the debate over revising the Toxic Substances Control Act, are just some of the topics featured in our Toxics section.

Topic Subtitle
EPA efforts to expand toxic chemical regulations and reform its risk-assessment process, as well as the debate over revising the Toxic Substances Control Act, are just some of the topics featured in our Toxics section.

EPA says environmentalists have limited standing in TSCA suit

EPA is seeking to renew and strengthen its defense of its Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) framework rules on how the agency evaluates existing chemicals under the revised law, arguing broadly that environmentalists lack standing on many of their challenges because they have yet to be harmed by the rules. “The Rules under review are process rules. They establish certain steps EPA will take when evaluating risks of existing chemicals and interpret the phrase ‘conditions of use’ to generally exclude...

Three Years After TSCA Reform, EPA Struggles To Provide Hoped-For Certainty

Three years after Congress reformed the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), handing EPA a host of new authorities to regulate industrial chemicals, agency staff are struggling to meet the law’s deadlines, many rules face litigation, and states and retailers continue to lack confidence that the new regime will provide the certainty they are seeking. Lynn Goldman, who served as EPA’s toxics chief during the Clinton Administration, told a June 24 conference in Washington, D.C., on the third anniversary of the...

Rejecting Industry Calls, ATSDR Backs EPA’s Strict Risk Approach On TCE

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) is backing EPA’s 2011 assessment setting strict risk values for the ubiquitous solvent trichloroethylene (TCE), rejecting industry calls to ignore a controversial toxicology study that EPA’s risk program used when it set TCE risk values to protect against fetal heart malformations. In addition to marking a defeat for the chemical industry, ATSDR’s decision also underscores stark divisions across the federal government. Defense Department (DOD) officials are seeking to develop occupational exposure...


States sue EPA to spur rule for asbestos data collection

Attorneys general (AGs) representing 10 states and the District of Columbia are suing EPA to compel the agency to draft a new rule requiring data collection on the importation and use of asbestos, challenging the agency’s rejection of the states’ January petition seeking such a rulemaking. In addition, the new lawsuit is aimed at influencing EPA’s pending risk evaluation of asbestos required by the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). “It is widely acknowledged that asbestos is one of the...

HSIA resists environmentalists’ intervention in methylene chloride suit

The trade association representing makers and users of the paint-stripping chemical methylene chloride is opposing a recent motion from environmentalists to intervene in its challenge to EPA’s recent ban on sales of the products to consumers, arguing they do not have standing and should not be allowed to intervene. “The proposed intervenors ask to intervene by right. But they do not -- so far as their motion reveals -- have standing to defend EPA’s regulation of methylene chloride,” attorneys for...

EPA Finds Few Risks In New Draft TSCA Reviews, Sparking Legal Threats

EPA’s two newest draft risk evaluations of chemicals under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) preliminarily finds few if any conditions of use present unreasonable risk for the largely phased-out flame retardant HBCD and the solvent 1,4-dioxane, whose uses will likely remain on the market as a result. The findings are sparking new criticisms from environmentalists, who renewed threats to sue the agency for precluding a range of uses from its risk evaluations and, as a result, any possible...

Advisors Back EPA Crafting Of TSCA Data Plan But Seek Quick NAS Review

Science advisors are backing EPA’s development of a unique systematic review approach for assessing the quality of the data it uses as it evaluates chemicals’ risks under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) but are urging officials to ensure the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) quickly assesses its methods. However, EPA officials told the advisors that the NAS review may not occur until after the agency completes at least some the first group of 10 chemicals it is reviewing,...


Senate approves PFAS, CCS measures on defense bill

The Senate June 27 approved Defense Department authorization legislation that includes provisions requiring EPA and other federal agencies to monitor for and regulate perfluorinated chemicals under the Safe Drinking Water Act and Toxic Substances Control Act but does not include a mandate to declare the chemicals “hazardous substances” under the Superfund law. Final passage of the bill, which cleared 86-8, sets up a likely showdown with the House, which is slated to debate an amendment requiring EPA to list per-...

Top EPA toxics official announces retirement

The director of EPA’s toxics office, Jeff Morris, has announced plans to retire at the end of the year, agency sources say, removing another top official from the office just as the agency faces a series of statutory deadlines under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Neither Morris nor an EPA spokesman responded to requests for comment by press time. Morris told Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT) staff June 27 that he would retire in December after...

Perchlorate Plan Tests EPA Discretion To Forgo Setting SDWA Standard

EPA’s proposed rule to regulate perchlorate in drinking water, which includes an option not to regulate, could test the agency’s discretion to forgo setting an enforceable standard, an area of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) that drinking water sources say is still evolving. The agency released the proposal in May to comply with the terms of a settlement agreement with environmentalists and published it in the Federal Register June 26. EPA is proposing to set a maximum contaminant...

House Weighs Host Of PFAS Restrictions As Senate Limits Debate

Correction appended House Democrats are floating a series of amendments to a pending defense bill that seek to regulate per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), including one that would address PFAS under the Superfund law, setting up a potential clash with the Senate, where GOP leaders appear to be limiting debate on amendments. Both the House and Senate versions of the fiscal year 2020 national defense authorization act already include provisions setting a deadline to phase out the Defense Department’s...

Dunn Sees ‘Heavy Lift’ Meeting TSCA Deadline For First 10 Risk Evaluations

EPA’s toxics chief says the agency is facing a “tall order” and a “heavy lift” as it works to meet the revised toxics law’s December 2019 deadline for evaluating risks of the first 10 existing chemicals subject to assessment, opening the door to the possibility that the agency may not meet the deadline without using a six-month extension the law allows. “It is a tall order to complete the amount of work that we have,” Alex Dunn, assistant administrator for...

Pallone vows to pressure EPA to strengthen PBT proposal

House energy committee Chairman Frank Pallone (D-NJ) is strongly criticizing EPA’s proposal governing several persistent and bioaccumulative toxics (PBT) under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), warning he will “hold the EPA’s feet to the fire” to ensure a final rule complies with legal mandates to adequately regulate the chemicals. “These toxic chemicals pose serious risk to Americans’ lives and livelihoods, and therefore demand a much more serious response than the one EPA has offered.” Pallone said in a...

EPA toxics chief touts PBT rule as TSCA model

EPA toxics chief Alex Dunn is touting the agency’s newly proposed rule governing persistent and bioaccumulative toxics (PBT) under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) as a model of the mitigation strategies available to the agency as it works to implement the three-year old revisions to the law The June 21 proposal is “a great example of what I think you will see more of from EPA as we move into chemicals management,” she told a June 24 conference hosted...


Senate Democrats criticize EPA’s TSCA implementation

On the third anniversary of the revised Toxics Substance Control Act’s (TSCA) enactment, five Senate Democrats are strongly criticizing the Trump EPA’s implementation of the new law, and are demanding answers from Administrator Andrew Wheeler on a series of “examples of how EPA’s implementation has fallen short.” Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Ed Markey (D-MA), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Tom Udall (D-NM), the co-sponsor of the reform legislation, charge in a June 21 letter to Wheeler that...


EPA’s First Draft TSCA Evaluation Draws Sharp Criticism From Reviewers

Advisors reviewing EPA’s first draft chemical risk evaluation under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) have raised sharp concerns about several aspects of the draft assessment of pigment violet 29 (PV29), with some urging officials to gather more data because the draft does not support its threshold finding that the chemical doesn’t require risk management. During the course of their June 18-21 meeting in Arlington, VA, peer reviewers questioned EPA’s ability to make decisions with the limited information available...

Pages

Not a subscriber? Request 30 days free access to exclusive environmental policy reporting.