Chemicals policy reform

Our nation's main statute governing chemicals policy — the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) — is seriously flawed and needs fundamental reform.

Unlike every other major environmental law, the statute has never been significantly amended since it was adopted, in 1976.

TSCA is badly broken and fails to ensure chemical safety in the U.S.

Specifically, the statute:

• has failed to deliver the information needed to identify unsafe — as well as safer — chemicals,


• forbids the federal government from sharing much of the limited information it does obtain,


• imposes a nearly impossible burden on government to prove actual harm in order to control or replace a dangerous chemical and


• thereby perpetuates the chemicals industry's failure to innovate toward inherently safer chemical and product design.

Towards a solution

In April 2013, Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) introduced the Safe Chemicals Act.

Then, in a surprise move in May 2013, Senators Lautenberg and David Vitter introduced the Chemical Safety Improvement Act with strong bipartisan support.

EDF views this bill as a hard-fought compromise that, on balance, would give the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) critical tools it needs to address the risks chemicals pose to health and to significantly strengthen health protections for American families.

Under the proposed legislation, for the first time:

• EPA would be required to review the safety of all chemicals in commerce
• EPA would have to find that a new chemical is likely to be safe before it could enter the market
• EPA would be able to issue orders to require testing of chemicals, rather than having to go through an onerous rulemaking process
• The bill would significantly tighten conditions under which chemical companies can hide information from the public

However, the bill has some key deficiencies.  For example:

• There are too few deadlines to direct EPA to initiate and complete actions
• EPA would have only limited ability to address disproportionately high exposures to chemicals suffered by many communities in America

On the balance, however, EDF is urging support for the Chemical Safety Improvement Act.

EDF reports spotlight urgent need for reform

Major advances in chemicals policies in other parts of the world are leaving the U.S. behind in the increasingly global chemicals economy. For more than a decade, EDF's experts have pressed for reform, issuing a series of groundbreaking reports and papers:

• Our 1997 report Toxic Ignorance [PDF] raised public awareness of how few widely used chemicals had been tested and how little public data were available.


• EDF's 2007 report Not That Innocent documented the urgent need for policy reform. Our analysis contrasted U.S. policies with those in Canada and the European Union and identifed "best practices" culled from all three systems that together create a vision for future U.S. chemicals policy.


• Our September 2008 report Across the Pond assessed one of the first impacts that the new European regulation called REACH will have on U.S. companies and chemicals: REACH's identification of "substances of very high concern."


• EDF scientist Richard Denison's paper Ten Essential Elements in TSCA Reform [PDF], published in January 2009 in the Environmental Law Reporter, laid out a blueprint for new legislation to replace the outmoded Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976.

EDF partners with state and national groups to press for reform