ACC Releases ‘State of TSCA Report: Fix Implementation Now Before It Is Too Late’

The American Chemistry Council (ACC) is urgently calling on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reverse misguided policy changes and get TSCA implementation back on track. As part of this effort, ACC issued today the “State of TSCA Report: Fix Implementation Now Before It Is Too Late.”

The report contains six key problems with the EPA’s approach to TSCA implementation and six key solutions ACC proposes to get TSCA back on track. Chemistry is inextricably linked to innovation and scientific advancements needed to accomplish a wide range of our nation’s and the world’s goals. If the US is to remain a global leader in innovation, TSCA implementation is critical.

“Americans agree with us that chemistry is essential,” said Chris Jahn, president and CEO, ACC. “According to a recent Morning Consult poll conducted on behalf of ACC, seven in ten adults agreed that chemistry is essential to our economy and plays a vital role in innovation and the creation of products and technologies needed to accomplish a wide range of supply chain, climate, sustainability, energy efficiency, and infrastructure goals.[1] But we can’t accomplish any of this without TSCA being implemented as Congress intended.”

“Six years after Congress overwhelmingly passed the bipartisan Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act to modernize TSCA, EPA is implementing policy changes that are out of touch with regulatory and economic reality,” said Dr. Kimberly Wise White, VP of regulatory and scientific affairs, ACC. “We are urgently calling on EPA to reverse these misguided policy changes and get TSCA implementation back on track.”

Recent EPA policy changes include:

• Ignoring the existence, applicability, and jurisdiction of other federal laws, and industry’s compliance with those laws, when it evaluates the conditions of use of new and existing chemicals.
• Improperly branding entire chemicals as unsafe—even when safe uses have been identified—instead of making safety determinations on a use-by-use basis.
• Making incorrect assumptions about worker protections and workplace environments instead of using real data and exposure scenarios.
• Lacking in their approaches to use best available science and weight of the evidence
• Stalling reviews of new chemicals, stopping new innovations from being available for use and from being manufactured in the US.
• Increasing fees with no accountability and no corresponding improvements to service

Promoting the safe use of the essential products of chemistry is a shared responsibility of manufacturers, the government and those who use or sell chemical products. TSCA can either be a catalyst to addressing our nation’s and the world’s pressing challenges or it can create an unnecessary barrier to progress. Implementing TSCA in the sensible, risk- and science-based manner the 2016 bipartisan amendments call for is the best way to catalyze progress.

“We’re calling on Congress to get EPA the resources it needs to administer TSCA,” said Ross Eisenberg, VP of federal affairs, ACC. “However, our support for additional funding for the TSCA program comes with the expectation that EPA will meet its statutory requirements. EPA must be transparent about how resources are being spent today and how future resources will be allocated within the Agency to achieve statutory requirements. This includes improving the throughput and timelines in the new chemical program, using the real-world data and current industrial practices when assessing workplace risk, and demonstrating that it is consistently applying the scientific standards embedded in the statute when making safety determinations.”