Chemical Safety Comparison of EPA Essential Principles, TSCA, and CSIA | DENENA | POINTS
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Chemical Safety Comparison of EPA Essential Principles, TSCA, and CSIA

Continued from Part 1.

TSCA:

  • The Act established an inventory and notification framework for monitoring and assessing commercial production and importation of chemicals.
  • The TSCA excludes broad categories of chemicals like pesticides and drugs. We note that poorly regulated and monitored pesticide chemicals led to a devastating explosion in West, Texas several months ago that destroyed half the town and killed more than a dozen people. The destruction destroyed the town’s infrastructure and crippled its economy, leaving the town half depopulated and poorly equipped to rebuild.
  • The TSCA places the burden on the EPA to demonstrate unreasonable risks to health or the environment in regulating substances.
  • In 2009, the U.S. GAO mentioned that since the 1976 advent of the TSCA in 1976, the EPA has taken action to control only 5 chemicals under the Act out of the more than 84,000 chemicals in TSCA’s inventory today.
  • The Act grandfathered in more than 60,000 chemicals without safety testing.
  • The Act leaves the EPA without the needed authority to test chemicals. It has tested only slightly more than 200 of the 84,000 available chemicals.

CSIA:

  • Preempts (prohibits) judicial review of the EPA’s designation of a chemical as being of low or high priority. Our Houston chemical injury lawyers clarify that this means that states, municipalities, and individuals would lack the ability to challenge the EPS’s designations in court or to regulate or conduct enforcement against potentially toxic and dangerous chemicals at the local level, potentially leaving local populations at the mercy of profit-conscious manufacturer.
  • Would stop states from regulating the chemicals that could harm their residents for months or years before any of the CSIA federal regulations took effect leaving a huge safety gap.
  • Would have stricter waiver requirements that remove the states’ abilities to more strictly regulate or ban chemicals deemed harmful without getting a waiver from the EPA.

The Essential Principles:

  • They call for reviews using sound scientific principles and based on risk-based criteria. (The Houston chemical injury lawyers at Denena Points, PC note that risk-based criteria and economic considerations have failed to adequately protect workers and the public from dangerous chemicals.)
  • The Principles rely on manufacturer-provided conclusions regarding the safety of new and existing chemicals. While we understand that the government likely doesn’t have the resources to test all these chemicals itself, relying on the economically motivated manufacturers to provide safety assessments is like asking a hungry fox to guard the henhouse.
  • The Principles ask for risk-management decisions to account for sensitive subpopulations, the availability of less hazardous chemical substitutes, increased transparency and public access to information, sustained program funding (the perennial cry of any government agency), and encouragement of “green” chemistry.
  • And our Houston chemical injury lawyers report that the Principles fail to address the issue of preemption, a problem under the proposed CSIA.

You might have noticed that all three of the TSCA, CSIA, and EPA Essential Principles leave the public exposed to potentially dangerous hazards in the chemical industry. All three schemes rely heavily on economic concerns over safety, are relatively toothless on regulation and enforcement, and leave local governments and individuals without the means to create and enforce their own safety rules.

Indeed, the EPA and the federal regulatory schemes would effectively prohibit the states from taking action against harmful chemicals. And the Houston chemical injury lawyers at Denena Points, PC believe that individuals and officials at the local level are always in a better position to know what might be appropriate for their own area and population than removed and disinterested federal officials. The P in EPA effectively seems to stand for protecting manufacturers and their economic profits, rather than the public and the environment.

But our Houston chemical injury lawyers caution that there’s no guarantee the states would actually step up to ensure your safety, especially those heavily reliant on chemical industries for jobs and their local economic activity.