Smithsonian.com
July 18, 2016
A new chemical bill makes
major strides, but doesn’t fix the root problem
Last month, President Barack Obama
signed a chemical bill that was meant to solve a problem few people knew they
had. That problem was the substandard safety of everyday chemicals—an
issue that affects anyone who uses household cleaners, has a couch or
wears clothing. In a month filled with dramatic political news, this seemingly
small legislative achievement received little media attention. Yet it actually
represents a major reform, providing the decades-old Toxic Substances Control
Act (TSCA) with a much-needed retrofit.
In the European Union, safety laws
guarantee that both industrial and household chemicals are
vetted for their potential risks to human health and the environment before
they appear on the market. In the United States, however, chemicals are
generally “innocent until
proven guilty”—a maxim that’s good for people, but bad for potential
toxic chemicals. Scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency have found
that the majority of chemicals in use today have not been sufficiently examined
for human health toxicity or environmental
exposure.
How can this be?
Originally passed in 1976, the old
TSCA was meant to help the EPA regulate the safe production and use of
industrial chemicals. But the act was founded on scientific assumptions and
practices that are far outdated today. Perhaps worse, TSCA also grandfathered
in a long list of “existing” chemicals—which made it extremely difficult for
the EPA to pull them from the market even if they were later shown to be
harmful. (It has been easier for the EPA to require companies to develop data
on chemicals that are new to the market, but many hurdles still
exist.)
As a result, people have been
exposed to toxic chemicals left under-regulated by the EPA for decades—with devastating
effects. This has been the case since 1989, when a federal court
overturned the EPA’s ban on asbestos, one of the best-known
carcinogens ever used. Since then, the EPA has never attempted to
completely pull an existing chemical from the market. Lead, which is known to
harm children’s brain development at extremely low levels and was banned
from use in house
paint in 1978, is still used in ammunition and some industrial
manufacturing.
Newly developed chemicals approved
by the EPA through the TSCA review process have also proved to be hazardous.
FireMaster 550, a flame retardant, was developed as a supposedly safer
replacement chemical after the leading flame retardant for furniture foam was
banned in several states and pulled from the market. Yet in 2012,
after being reviewed and approved for use by the EPA in 1997, scientists
were uncovering evidence that it was a neurotoxic
obesogen (a
compound that can lead to weight gain by altering fat metabolism).
Despite the fact that the EPA has
recently labeled FireMaster 550 to be of “high” or “very high” concern for
reproductive, developmental, neurological and aquatic toxicity,
it remains on the market. In fact, today it's still praised by its
manufacturer as “an innovative
move to greener chemicals.”
Responding to these failures, public health
advocates
have been pushing for TSCA reform for decades. Activists pursued an uneven “patchwork
quilt” of regulations that made it hard for chemical manufacturers
and retailers to stay ahead of chemical restrictions around the country. As an
advocacy leader from the manufacturing industry told me in an anonymous
interview for my book on the topic: “We would like to have a level playing
field across all 50 states, and have preemption over anything a state might try
to develop.” To push for their preferred version of TSCA reform, the chemical
industry spent more than $125 million on
lobbying since 2014.
The new act ensures that the EPA
will now prioritize and evaluate chemicals based on risk, not cost-benefit
calculations. In other words, the agency has to affirm the expected safety of
newly developed chemicals. The act also somewhat reduces chemical companies’
abilities to hide important data behind the veil of “confidential business
information.” In addition, the act requires that the EPA rely less on animal
testing and more on high-throughput testing and screening—guidelines that are
not only more humane,
but are in line with recent developments in toxicity research in recent
decades.
These are all major
strides. “The general consensus is that this bill is ‘better than current
law,’” notes Nancy Buermeyer of the Breast Cancer Fund, a
nonprofit that aims to prevent environmental causes of cancer, including
toxic chemicals. But it still “falls far short” in important ways,
she says, as should be expected from any piece of legislation so
enthusiastically supported by the industry it is charged with regulating. The
act requires risk evaluations of only 20 high-priority chemicals at a time, a
fraction of the more than 80,000 chemicals currently on the TSCA inventory. It also
preempts states from enacting their own restrictions on potentially dangerous
chemicals as soon as EPA begins its review, even though such reviews can take
years, and bars future action on EPA-evaluated chemicals with few
exceptions.
Ultimately, the effectiveness of
the act will come down to how it is implemented. The EPA has already released a
timeline
for the next year. Of particular note is the establishment of a “Science
Advisory Committee on Chemicals,” which is meant to provide independent
expertise and consultation to the EPA. These efforts by EPA scientists, federal
regulators and involved stakeholders like the chemical industry and
environmental advocates will determine whether the agency can achieve its
goal of evaluating chemicals based on the “best available science.”
The new law is a step in the right
direction, but it remains to be seen whether it will do enough to hold potentially
harmful chemicals accountable.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-chemicals-us-are-still-innocent-until-proven-guilty-180959818/
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