Chemicals policy reform

Update (7/25/2012) - Progress in reforming of our main chemical safety law

EDF has long been advocating for a major overhaul of the 35-year-old Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). TSCA's outdated standards have allowed the majority of the 80,000 chemicals available for use in the U.S. to stay on the market even though they have never been tested for their health effects. They also allow chemicals known to be dangerous to continue to be used.

We're happy to report that things are looking up: In late July, the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee voted to allow the Safe Chemicals Act, a major update to TSCA, to go to a full Senate vote. The legislation would provide strong protections for public health and the environment, while substantially reducing the burdens on regulated industry. The Act, introduced by New Jersey Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, has 25 cosponsors (as of early August 2012).

Among the bill’s key provisions:

• Industry would bear the burden of proving its chemicals are safe, instead of government having to prove harm to health before being able to regulate a chemical.
• Information on the health and environmental impacts of chemicals would be required to be developed by companies and disclosed to the public.
• Industry would be required immediately to reduce use of or exposure to chemicals of greatest concern, including those that are toxic, persist in the environment, and build up in people.
• Companies would have to substantiate that any information they want to keep secret is a legitimate trade secret, and most such confidentiality claims would expire after 5 years unless resubstantiated.

Update (4/14/2011) - Landmark legislation to overhaul outmoded chemicals policy was formally introduced in the Senate. EDF and our partners promise a vigorous campaign to advance it and the Senate's companion bill to win passage in Congress.

• How the bill would fix the major flaws of TSCA (PDF version)


• More detailed side-by-side comparison [PDF] of this year's Safe Chemicals Act vs. last year's

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.

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.

More recently, EDF's chemicals blog has provided our perspective on current issues and recent developments on chemicals policy reform.

EDF partners with state and national groups to press for reform

We are also engaged in efforts at the state and federal level to develop and enact comprehensive chemicals policy reform.

EDF is a founding member of the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families campaign, a broad coalition of state and national environmental groups, associations of health professionals, advocates for health-affected individuals and environmental justice organizations. The group has launched a broad effort to achieve comprehensive reform of TSCA. The campaign is advocating for a set of legislative proposals in Congress summarized in its platform [PDF].