Chemicals come under the Govt scanner.

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EPA's reviews of new chemicals provide limited assurance that health and

environmental risks are identified before the chemicals enter commerce.

 

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From the Government Accountability Office

 

Chemicals play an important role in everyday life, but some may be harmful to

human health and the environment. Chemicals are used to produce items widely

used throughout society, including consumer products such as cleansers, paints,

plastics, and fuels, as well as industrial solvents and additives. However, some

chemicals, such as lead and mercury, are highly toxic at certain doses and need

to be regulated because of health and safety concerns. In 1976, the Congress

passed the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to authorize the Environmental

Protection Agency (EPA) to control chemicals that pose an unreasonable risk to

human health or the environment. GAO reviewed EPA's efforts to (1) control the

risks of new chemicals not yet in commerce, (2) assess the risks of existing

chemicals used in commerce, and (3) publicly disclose information provided by

chemical companies under TSCA.

 

EPA's reviews of new chemicals provide limited assurance that health and

environmental risks are identified before the chemicals enter commerce. Chemical

companies are not required by TSCA, absent a test rule, to test new chemicals

before they are submitted for EPA's review, and companies generally do not

voluntarily perform such testing. Given limited test data, EPA predicts new

chemicals' toxicity by using models that compare the new chemicals with

chemicals of similar molecular structures that have previously been tested.

However, the use of the models does not ensure that chemicals' risks are fully

assessed before they enter commerce because the models are not always accurate

in predicting chemical properties and toxicity, especially in connection with

general health effects. Nevertheless, given the lack of test data and health and

safety information available to the agency, EPA believes the models are

generally useful as screening tools for identifying potentially harmful

chemicals and, in conjunction with other information, such as the anticipated

potential uses and exposures of the new chemicals, provide a reasonable basis

for reviewing new chemicals. The agency recognizes, however, that obtaining

additional information would improve the predictive capabilities of its models.

 

EPA does not routinely assess the risks of all existing chemicals and EPA faces

challenges in obtaining the information necessary to do so. TSCA's authorities

for collecting data on existing chemicals do not facilitate EPA's review process

because they generally place the costly and time-consuming burden of obtaining

data on EPA. Partly because of a lack of information on existing chemicals, EPA,

in partnership with industry and environmental groups, initiated the High

Production Volume (HPV) Challenge Program in 1998, under which chemical

companies began voluntarily providing information on the basic properties of

chemicals produced in large amounts.

 

It is unclear whether the program will produce sufficient information for EPA to

determine chemicals' risks to human health and the environment. EPA has limited

ability to publicly share the information it receives from chemical companies

under TSCA. TSCA prohibits the disclosure of confidential business information,

and chemical companies claim much of the data submitted as confidential. While

EPA has the authority to evaluate the appropriateness of these confidentiality

claims, EPA states that it does not have the resources to challenge large

numbers of claims. State environmental agencies and others are interested in

obtaining confidential business information for use in various activities, such

as developing contingency plans to alert emergency response personnel of the

presence of highly toxic substances at manufacturing facilities. Chemical

companies recently have expressed interest in working with EPA to identify ways

to enable other organizations to use the information given

the adoption of appropriate safeguards.

 

From

:http://www.citizens.org/news/newsletter/2005/august/articles/082005hl10.cfm