Health and labor groups say proposed EPA chemical review rollbacks endanger communities, workers

Health, environmental and labor groups are voicing their opposition to the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed changes to the nation’s premier chemical safety law, saying the changes will leave workers and everyday Americans more vulnerable to hazardous chemical exposures. 

The concerns are focused on changes to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), a federal law under which the EPA evaluates chemicals to make sure human and environmental health will be protected before chemicals are put into the marketplace. In September the EPA proposed getting rid of TSCA amendments added during the Biden administration and solicited public comment on the changes. The public comment period closed Friday.

The EPA’s proposed changes include removing an amendment that required the agency to consider every use and exposure route of a chemical when evaluating risk. Other proposed changes include scaling back how much information manufacturers need to provide for a proposed chemical; considering personal protection and safety equipment use when evaluating workplace chemical risks; and allowing the agency to determine if certain uses of a chemical carry unreasonable risks instead of making a single risk judgment based on all of the chemical’s uses. 

The EPA argues the 2024 amendments it wants to get rid of have negatively impacted innovation. The agency already announced it will fast-track chemicals under TSCA that are used in data centers. 

In comments submitted to the agency, many industry groups supported the changes, arguing that TSCA chemical reviews are resulting in lengthy delays for new chemicals to hit the market, saying the delays harm American competitiveness. 

But dozens of comments sent to the agency expressed concern that the changes would put workers in harm’s way by assuming that personal protective equipment (PPE) is always worn properly, would ignore the reality that people have multiple exposure routes to chemicals and would neglect to account for all the ways chemicals escape into the environment. Several groups — including environmental groups such as Earthjustice and Sierra Club, as well as labor groups under AFL-CIO and the United Steelworkers — asked the EPA to extend the public comment deadline, arguing the 45 days provided was insufficient. 

The proposed changes come against a backdrop of growing Congressional Republican support to amend TSCA, which was last updated in 2016. 

Suhani Chitalia, a senior manager of federal affairs at the Environmental Defense Fund, said complaints about chemical reviews are nothing new but current politics are. 

“That has just been a continued industry argument for the past nine years,” Chitalia said. “The difference is this year industry sees an historic opportunity based on the political climate and an empathetic Congress toward these companies.” 

Worker health 

One of the proposed EPA changes is to assume PPE is worn properly when evaluating the potential chemical risks to workers. Several comments sent to the EPA said that this is a flawed assumption.

“That has just been a continued industry argument for the past nine years.” -Suhani Chitalia, Environmental Defense Fund

The Toxics Use Reduction Institute of Massachusetts (TURI), which helps with the state’s workplace chemical safety, wrote that they’ve found PPE is “an inadequate and inefficient approach to protecting workers from chemical exposures.” They cite workers wearing gloves made of material that wouldn’t protect them, and respirators worn incorrectly. 

“Staff frequently work with small manufacturers via on-site visits … they consistently observe improper use of PPE, or no use at all,” said Colin Hannahan, a policy analyst at TURI. “Assuming the workers are properly wearing PPE 100% of the time may not lead to a risk evaluation which properly captures worker exposure.”  

The California Nurses for Environmental Health and Justice wrote in its letter to the agency that the EPA should “be realistic and assume no PPE and industrial controls are being used … EPA should protect people’s health, not industry’s”

Several industry groups supported the changes of assuming PPE use in chemical risk assessment. The Semiconductor Industry Association wrote that such changes would more accurately reflect “real world” chemical exposure risks in the workplace. 

Other labor groups, however, weighed in with concern at any attempts to weaken TSCA. The American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), which represents 63 labor unions and roughly 15 million workers, sent a letter along with several other labor groups to the House Committee on Energy and the Environment saying they are “deeply concerned about recent discussions regarding implementation of and potential revisions to” TSCA. 

The groups, including massive unions such as the International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW) and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), said industry arguments on TSCA are misleading. 

“Despite Congressional intent that the public have a role in the new chemical review process, the current process has become a two-way conversation between chemical manufacturers and EPA,” they wrote. “If anything, EPA needs to make the review process more transparent.” 

Considering all uses and exposures 

The EPA argues it should have discretion in deciding which “conditions of use, exposure routes and exposure pathways it will consider in risk evaluation,” a move that would allow the EPA to exclude some uses of a chemical from its reviews. Several comments urged the EPA to reconsider these changes and take all of a chemical’s uses and all of a person’s possible exposures into account in determining a chemical’s risk.

“Despite Congressional intent that the public have a role in the new chemical review process, the current process has become a two-way conversation between chemical manufacturers and EPA.” – AFL-CIO

Maythia Airhart, director of the Hazardous Waste Management Program in King County Washington, wrote that the changes would exclude chemical uses and possible exposures from risk evaluations “without clear documentation or justification.” 

“This change could leave out exposure routes of particular relevance to small businesses and local residents, specifically consumer product use, wastewater contamination, and community exposure,” she wrote. 

Hannahan added that evaluating all potential uses of a chemical also encourages manufacturers to develop safer chemicals. 

“Excluding a condition of use which appears low risk may result in a company not having the proper motivation to undergo the process to develop and implement a safer solution,” Hannahan said. “TSCA is a strong regulatory mechanism for driving upstream solutions to pollution.” 

Industry groups argued that risk assessments should be narrowed to chemicals’ most significant uses and likely exposure routes. 

“We have watched as the agency has employed multiple overlapping conservative defaults and assumptions to arrive at risk benchmarks well below levels accepted as protective in the US,” wrote Cindy Squires, president and CEO of the American Composites Manufacturers Association. “The agency should focus on significant risks.” 

Future of TSCA

The proposed changes come as Congressional Republicans consistently signal a desire to revisit the law. House Republicans said they’re working on draft TSCA legislation and, in recent hearings, Republicans on the Senate Committee for Environment and Public Works have echoed industry concerns that TSCA is hampering the development of new chemicals. 

“The current chemical safety system buries new, often safer, innovations under years of scrutiny and restrictions,”  Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican from West Virginia, said in an October hearing. 

Any changes to the law will be in the hands of former industry lobbyists at the EPA. Nancy Beck, a former chemical industry executive with the American Chemistry Council (ACC) is the agency’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention’s (OCSPP) principal deputy assistant administrator, and Lynn Ann Dekleva, formerly with DuPont and the ACC, is the office’s deputy assistant administrator. Douglas Troutman, awaiting Senate confirmation to be the OCSPP’s assistant administrator, most recently served as an interim CEO and lobbyist at the American Cleaning Institute, an organization that represents the cleaning products industry and frequently pushes back against the regulation of chemicals, including TSCA.

Chitalia said that the changes to TSCA are only to serve industry — not everyday Americans. A recent Environmental Defense Fund poll of 1,000 registered voters, for example, found 82% supported TSCA. 

“There’s general consensus among the public that public safety is important,” Chitalia said. “The only push on the hill is coming from industry. There are no other groups right now asking for TSCA to be reopened.”

Featured image: EPA administrator Lee Zeldin. (Credit: Joshua Sukoff/flickr)