The first major update to toxic chemical safety laws in 40 years passed the U.S. Senate Tuesday.
The federal government’s power to protect Americans from toxic chemicals in everyday products and manufacturing processes has been restricted for decades by weak laws and a 1991 court ruling that gutted the Toxic Substances Control Act. Most Americans believe that the chemicals in the products that they use and keep in their homes have been tested for safety and approved, but this isn’t the case.
Three main features of the bill, which President Obama is expected to sign, are:
- The 700 or so new chemicals that come on the market every year will have clear a safety bar first.
- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will have the power to ban dangerous uses of known carcinogens such as asbestos and formaldehyde.
- The new law stops companies from being able to claim any information they submitted to the EPA, including secret health studies of chemicals, to be “confidential business information.” It allows only legitimate trade secrets, never health information, to be protected from public disclosure.
“It is outrageous that the most powerful nation on earth has been powerless to protect its own citizens from harmful chemicals,” said Senator Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, a leader in getting the bill passed. “For decades, Americans have been at risk because there is no watchdog empowered to make sure chemicals in our everyday products are safe before they end up in our classrooms, our workplaces, and our homes.”
However, the Environmental Working Group, an environmental advocacy organization, said the chemicals policy reform legislation fails to adequately protect human health and the environment.
“No one in the public health community asked for a toxics bill that is ‘better than current law,’ because that law is so feeble it failed under industry challenge to ban a substance as deadly as asbestos,” said EWG president Ken Cook. “What we need is a law that aggressively protects people, especially children, on an urgent basis from the thousands of toxic chemicals that cause cancer, birth defects, nervous system disorders, and other problems.”
Cook said the law simply will not accomplish the commonsense goal of protecting people from toxic chemicals that cause illnesses.
Scott Faber, EWG’s senior vice president for government affairs, said the law doesn’t meet the reasonable expectations of American consumers. Faber said the bill may not provide EPA with the resources or clear legal authority the agency needs to quickly review and, if needed, ban dangerous chemicals linked to cancer and other serious health problems.
Positive provisions of the law, Faber said, are deadlines for reviewing chemicals, new tools to collect chemical data, mandatory reviews of both new and old chemicals, and new protections for vulnerable groups.
The Silent Spring Institute, a public interest research organization, also said the law falls short in many ways. Chemical safety laws in Europe require more thorough safety evaluations, and states will lose some of their powers under the new law, said Ruthann Rudel, director of research at Silent Spring.
Manufacturers have lobbied for updated legislation because several states have begun to impose their own curbs on toxic chemicals out of concern that the federal government wasn’t doing enough, according to the Washington Post article “Sweeping Overhaul of Nation’s Chemical Safety Laws Clears Final Legislative Hurdle.”
