Plastics Business
For the first time in 40 years, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Washington, DC, is moving to establish a process to evaluate chemicals that were grandfathered in when the Toxic Substances Control Act was enacted in 1976 and may pose a risk.
When the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) was enacted, it grandfathered in thousands of unevaluated chemicals that were in commerce at the time. The old law failed to provide the EPA with the tools to evaluate chemicals and to require companies to generate and provide data on chemicals they produced.
The EPA is proposing three rules to help administer the new process – the inventory rule, the prioritization rule and the risk and evaluation rule. If the EPA identifies unreasonable risk in the evaluation, it is required to eliminate that risk through regulations. Under TSCA, the agency must have at least 20 ongoing risk evaluations by the end of 2019.
For more information, visit www.epa.gov.