Trump EPA Advances One Obama-Era Regulation: On Chemicals
Trump EPA Advances One Obama-Era Regulation: On Chemicals
(Bloomberg) -- As the Trump administration works to reverse a slew of Obama-era regulations, it has decided to go ahead with at least one initiative: a mandated review of tens of thousands of chemicals, from those that deter flames to those that clean clothes.
The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday is rolling out three final rules on how it will evaluate risks, select chemicals for study and keep the information in a database. It also is set to unveil blueprints for assessing the first chemicals under the updated Toxic Substances Control Act that was passed by Congress and signed into law last June by former President Barack Obama.
That statute required the EPA to publish final rules by June 22, though it wasn’t always clear the agency would meet that deadline. The move dovetails with EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s goal of refocusing the agency on some core priorities, including cleaning up toxic pollution and overseeing chemicals used in consumer products and at industrial facilities.
The actions demonstrate the administration’s "commitment to providing regulatory certainty to American businesses while protecting human health and the environment,” Pruitt said in an emailed statement. "The new process for evaluating existing chemicals outlined in these rules will increase public confidence in chemical safety without stifling innovation."
The assessments are a concern for both consumers worried about the safety of ingredients in the products they buy and manufacturers seeking swifter scrutiny of newly introduced chemicals.
An Obama administration proposal would have required that the EPA study chemicals under all conditions of use, including practices that are implausible or clearly unwise, but that approach ran the risk of overwhelming the agency, said Nancy Beck, an EPA deputy assistant administrator in the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention.
"If you try to do everything, you’re going to end up doing nothing well," Beck said. "If things are no longer manufactured, produced or distributed, which would make it hard for us to regulate, why would we look at those uses, since they’re not in the flow of commerce?”
Under the final rules, Beck said the EPA administrator has the discretion to make decisions about which chemicals and uses are appropriate for risk evaluation.
Beck said that approach ensures the EPA’s resources are targeted on chemicals posing the greatest hazard. "We’re going to be focused on those conditions of use that are most likely to present risk," Beck said.
The final rules include some changes that could add clarity for businesses that manufacture and use chemicals. For instance, though the 2016 chemical law said the EPA must make decisions using scientific standards, basing its determinations on the "best available science" and the "weight of the scientific evidence," those terms were left undefined.
The new regulations, by contrast, specify that "best available science" must be "reliable and unbiased," involving supporting studies conducted with sound, objective practices and, when available, peer review.
Some environmental activists had warned that locking in definitions in a final rule could handcuff the agency, boxing it in to a specific approach. But EPA officials said the final rule provides them more flexibility, laying out a standard without tying their hands.
The final rules also create more openings for public comment.
Environmental groups have worried the final rules would tilt too far in favor of industry, partly because Beck’s previous employer before joining the EPA was the American Chemistry Council, an association that represents manufacturers such as the Dow Chemical Co. and DuPont.
Because "these rules may provide EPA with a lot more latitude and discretion" there needs to be oversight to ensure that flexibility isn’t abused, said Richard Denison, lead senior scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund. "We have serious concerns about that, given Administrator Pruitt’s track record and given the agency’s budget being cut to the bone" and because "a political appointee who had a major influence over these rules is now in the driver seat to oversee the implementation of them."
To contact the reporter on this story: Jennifer A. Dlouhy in Washington at jdlouhy1@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net, Elizabeth Wasserman, Mark Drajem