This article is brought to you by Plastics News.

Dropping their dueling bills, two senators on Wednesday introduced a new measure that would modernize the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) by requiring new tests for chemicals already on the market and granting broad new regulatory authority to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Congress has debated changing the chemical regulation law since it was originally signed in 1976, though the EPA announced reform initiatives in 2009, along with a new approach for evaluating and managing toxic chemicals safely under the existing law and a long list of chemicals the agency wanted to tackle first.

As introduced, the new measure would:

• Require safety evaluation for all active chemicals already on the market, which must eventually be labeled as high- or low-risk to human health or the environment.
• Require additional safety evaluation by the EPA for chemicals considered high-risk or particularly risky for children and pregnant women.
• Expand EPA authority to include the authority to obtain health and safety information from manufacturers, prioritize rules regulating chemicals, imposing safety requirements such as labeling, and phasing out or banning chemicals is necessary.
• Allow states and municipalities to have input on prioritization and safety assessment, including a timely response from EPA regarding local concerns.

For more information and the full article please refer to the “Plastics News” link above.

This article is brought to you by The National Law Review.

On May 9, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a Direct Final Rule identifying 15 chemical substances that will require notice prior to manufacturing, importing, or processing for an activity designated as a significant new use. These chemicals were flagged pursuant to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) significant new use rules (SNURs). The notices, referred to as Significant New Use Notices (SNUNs), must be submitted to EPA 90 days before a listed chemical is manufactured, imported, or processed for an activity designated as a significant new use. EPA states that this will provide the agency with an opportunity to evaluate the intended use and determine whether it is necessary under TSCA to prohibit or limit the activity before it occurs.

While chemicals in the rule include those that can be employed in a broad range of uses, of particular interest is the listing of one compound used in natural gas and oil well drilling and hydraulic fracturing to eliminate bacteria in the water that produce corrosive by-products. EPA included this compound due to its potential toxicity to aquatic life at concentrations above 11 parts per billion (ppb).

The rule is effective on July 8, 2013, unless written “adverse or critical” comments on any of the SNURs, including potential alternatives and likely financial burdens, are received on or before June 10, 2013. Those chemical substance(s) and new use that receive comments or notice of intent to comment will be withdrawn before the effective date and a proposed SNUR for the specific chemical substance will be issued with a 30-day comment period. For purposes of judicial review, the rule is promulgated on May 23, 2013.

For more information and the full article please refer to “The National Law Review” link above.

This article is brought to you by BusinessMirror.

More than 5,000 products, including clothing, toys and bedding, contain toxic chemicals that could be dangerous for children’s health, yet stores still stock them and consumers know little about their content, an advocacy group reported this week.

“For most products in our homes, including children’s products, we simply don’t have standards,” said Erika Schreder, science director for the Washington Toxics Coalition and author of the report released on Wednesday based on toxic-chemical data from Washington state. “Manufacturers are allowed to use just about anything they want to.”

The report, called “Chemicals Revealed,” identified more than 5,000 products, such as footwear, car seats and arts and crafts supplies, that include developmental or reproductive toxins and carcinogens.

The report also found it may take several years to complete these initial risk assessments and, at the agency’s current pace, more than a decade to complete all 83. The EPA does not have the toxicity and exposure data needed for 58 of the 83 chemicals prioritized for risk assessment, the report found.

“The one saving grace of our national chemical policy is that it at least allows the states to act. Right now they are shedding the only light we have on what toxic chemicals end up in products,” said Andy Igrejas, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, an organization of state groups devoted to reducing the toxicity of consumer goods. MCT

For the full article and more information please refer to the “BusinessMirror” link above.

This article is brought to you by SpecialChem.

Recently, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and Related Agencies held a hearing with FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg regarding the Fiscal Year 2014 budget request for FDA.

During this hearing, Subcommittee Ranking Member Sam Farr (D-CA) shared a compelling, personal story about his brother-in-law, who was an avid outdoorsman diagnosed with melanoma that ultimately proved fatal (hearing video available at C-Span beginning at 28m35s). Ranking Member Farr expressed his concern that FDA had not acted upon any of the eight pending sunscreen ingredient applications that have been pending for over a decade and asked Commissioner Hamburg to explain the delay in taking action on these applications.

While the Public Access to SunScreens (PASS) Coalition was encouraged to hear that the FDA considerssunscreen safety a priority, the Coalition was concerned that Commissioner Hamburg had no details as to when the decade-long delay would be addressed, and new sunscreen ingredients would be approved.

The PASS Coalition is a multi-stakeholder coalition of public health organizations, dermatologists, sunscreen ingredient companies, and concerned citizens who will work collaboratively with the (FDA), the White House and Congress to establish a timely and transparent framework for approval of the next generation of UV active filters for Over-the-Counter (OTC) sunscreens.

For more information and the full article please refer to the “SpecialChem” link above.

This article is brought to you by The Legal Examiner.

Every day, American consumers are vulnerable to injury or death from dangerous foreign products manufactured abroad. We’ve read and seen numerous stories about poisonous drywall and toys manufactured overseas, with no compliance with our consumer products standards. While U.S. manufacturers must comply with our laws, safety regulations, and judicial system, foreign manufacturers can skimp on safety in order to rush a product to market, knowing there is little to no threat of legal recourse for an unsafe product sold in the United States.

Foreign manufacturers should have to play by the same rules as American manufacturers and not be able to escape responsibility because they are beyond the reach of our judicial system. There’s a new push by Congress to change the status quo and hold foreign manufacturers accountable.

The “Foreign Manufacturers Legal Accountability Act” was introduced today by Congressmen Matt Cartwright (D-PA) and Mike Turner (R-OH), with Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) as an original cosponsor. This bill is similar to bills introduced in previous sessions, and I hope a bipartisan majority of Congressmen and Senators support it.

The bill would make it easier for an injured consumer to serve the foreign manufacturer with notice of pending claims, so the consumer can proceed with a lawsuit. Foreign manufacturers or producers of covered products would be required to register an agent, located in a state where the company does business, who would be able to accept service of process for civil and regulatory claims. By registering the agent, the foreign manufacturer or producer also consents to state and federal jurisdiction for civil and regulatory claims. Covered products include drugs, devices, cosmetics, biological products, consumer products, chemical substances, and pesticides manufactured or produced outside of the United States.

For the full article please refer to “The Legal Examiner” link above.

This news release is brought to you by the Office of Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr.

Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today proposed reforms to strengthen and restore the intent of Proposition 65, a three decade old law enacted to protect Californians from harmful chemicals, that has been abused by some unscrupulous lawyers driven by profit rather than public health.

The administration, through the California Environmental Protection Agency, will work closely with the Legislature and stakeholders to revamp Proposition 65 by ending frivolous “shake-down” lawsuits, improving how the public is warned about dangerous chemicals and strengthening the scientific basis for warning levels.

“Proposition 65 is a good law that’s helped many people, but it’s being abused by unscrupulous lawyers,” said Governor Brown. “This is an effort to improve the law so it can do what it was intended to do – protect Californians from harmful chemicals.”

“Proposition 65 serves a vital public interest. It provides the public with information about carcinogens and toxins that may be present in the products we use in our everyday lives. But for Prop 65 to be effective, this information must be clearly stated and we need to work with the Legislature to prevent groups from exploiting or misconstruing this information for their own personal gain,” said California EPA Secretary Matt Rodriquez.

While Proposition 65 has motivated businesses to eliminate or reduce toxic chemicals in consumer products, it is also abused by some lawyers, who bring nuisance lawsuits to extract settlements from businesses with little or no benefit to the public or the environment.

For more information and the full press release please refer to the link above.

This article is brought to you by The Globe and Mail.

It’s a chemical that’s been in North American households for more than 40 years, from the body wash in your bathroom shower to the knives on your kitchen counter to the bedding in your baby’s basinet.

But U.S. federal health regulators are just now deciding whether triclosan — the germ-killing ingredient found in an estimated 75 per cent of antibacterial liquid soaps and body washes sold in the U.S. — is ineffective, or worse, harmful.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is planning to deliver a review this year of whether triclosan is safe. The ruling, which will determine whether triclosan continues to be used in household cleaners, could have implications for a $1 billion industry that includes hundreds of antibacterial products from toothpaste to toys.

The concerns over triclosan offer a sobering glimpse at a little-known fact: Many chemicals used in everyday household products have never been formally approved by U.S. health regulators. That’s because many germ-killing chemicals were developed decades ago before there were laws requiring scientific review of cleaning ingredients.

In 1978, the FDA published its first tentative guidelines for chemicals used in liquid hand soaps and washes. The draft stated that triclosan was “not generally recognized as safe and effective,” because regulators could not find enough scientific research demonstrating its safety and effectiveness.

Then, last summer, the FDA said its review of triclosan would be complete by late 2012. That target date then slipped to February, which has also come and gone. But pressure on the agency from outside critics didn’t let up.

For the full article and more information please refer to the Globe and Mail link above.

This article is brought to you by Plastics News.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s plans for evaluating potentially harmful chemicals under current law are unclear and may be unrealistic and impractical, according to a report Monday by the investigative arm of the U.S. government.

In February 2012, EPA named 83 chemicals to be examined in prioritized risk assessments under the Toxic Substances Control Act. Seven assessments were started that year, with another 18 planned over the next two years, including five flame retardants commonly used in the plastics industry.

But according to the Government Accountability Office report, it will take EPA more than a decade to get through all 83 top-priority chemical evaluations at its current rate.

According to the report, EPA does not have the toxicity and exposure data needed for 58 of the 83 chemicals prioritized for risk assessment, in large part because existing law does not require industry to develop and share toxicity data, a process that can take three to five years.

For more information and the full article please refer to the Plastics News link above.

This article is brought to you by Plastics News.

Bisphenol A has been removed from California’s list of harmful chemicals, at least for the time being.

A California judge granted a preliminary injunction Friday in the American Chemistry Council’s case against a division of the state’s Environmental Protection Agency.

The Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment had quietly announced its decision to include the controversial polycarbonate component on the so-called Proposition 65 list on April 11. But ACC asked the courts to freeze the listing until after a decision in its pending lawsuit, filed against OEHHA in Sacramento County Superior Court on March 15.

ACC’s lawsuit says the new attempt to get BPA on the Prop 65 list — using a different mechanism but the same scientific studies — amounts to circumventing the state’s scientific process by allowing administrative staff to override the scientific panel’s 2009 decision.

For the full article please refer to the Plastics News link above.

This article is brought to you by Bloomberg BNA.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s chemicals office will use the risk assessments it is developing for an initial group of 14 chemicals to evaluate, reduce, and manage risks in these and similar compounds that may already be in commerce or which companies would like to make or import, a senior chemicals official said April 18.

EPA has launched risk assessments on specific uses of 14 chemicals. The 14 are among a larger group of 83 “work plan” chemicals the agency announced in March 2012 it would gradually evaluate, Morris said (36 CRR 269, 3/5/12).

The conundrum of having identified chemicals that may pose a risk coupled with the inability to require manufacturers to provide data needed to determine whether the compounds actually pose a health or environmental risk “points out a gap in our information database about chemicals” and a challenge posed by the limited authorities the agency has under the Toxic Substances Control Act, Morris said.

Similarly, when the agency announces a chemical that is on the market poses a health or environmental concern, it frequently receives premanufacture notices (PMNs) from companies that would like to make or import a new chemical that may be slightly different from the existing one, Morris said.

OPPT hopes the data companies and other interested parties will provide due to the release of draft risk assessments will be helpful in analyzing the PMNs, he said. “Maybe, maybe not.”

The agency has scarce exposure data, however, Morris said. EPA is working with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, with the goal of making the information obtained as a result of the draft risk assessment as useful as possible not only to consumer uses of NMP but also to workplace exposures, he said.

When other committee members said EPA should be able to act on the basis of hazard information combined with market use and other exposure information it can estimate, Morris said “putting forward a [regulatory] case based heavily on hazard and little exposure data has not proved successful.”

For more information and the full article please refer to the Bloomberg BNA link above.