EPA, industry score low on toxics test
The chemical industry fails to deliver on its promise to identify chemical hazards.
Even by the standard of a "gentleman's C", it's a failure. The chemical industry deserves a "D" for not providing the U.S. EPA with data it promised years ago as part of a voluntary chemicals testing program, according to a new report card from Environmental Defense (ED), an advocacy group. The poor performance of the EPA-sponsored High Production Volume (HPV) Chemical Challenge adds fuel to calls from environmentalists, academics, and even some industry representatives for overhauling U.S. chemicals management laws, experts say.
The HPV Challenge was designed as a stopgap to address weaknesses in the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) after a series of studies, including those from the National Academy of Sciences and the General Accounting Office (PDF size: 5.3 MB), condemned the lack of information on the health hazards of commonly used chemicals, says Richard Denison, a senior scientist and the author of the report card. Passed in 1976, TSCA sets out procedures for regulating toxic chemicals used in commerce. Because TSCA limits EPA's ability to ask companies for information, the agency has managed to demand hazards data on only 200 of the more than 80,000 chemicals on the TSCA inventory, Denison says.
Hoping to head off calls for more onerous mandatory measures, chemical producers joined ED and EPA to launch the voluntary HPV Challenge in 1998, according to Daryl Ditz, senior policy advisor at the nonprofit Center for International Environmental Law. The challenge enlists the manufacturers of chemicals produced in or imported to the U.S. in quantities exceeding 1 million pounds per year to voluntarily develop and make public a "base set" of data on hazards, such as acute and reproductive toxicity. The data rely on testing of acute or subchronic toxicity, for example, and the ecological endpoints include only toxicity to aquatic organisms.
Now, more than 2 years after industry's 2004 deadline for submitting information on the 2200 chemicals, less than half of the final data sets have been submitted, the report card notes. No companies volunteered to compile hazard tests for the 10% of HPV chemicals, mostly from the coal, dye, and pigment industries, that were originally listed in the program but weren't agreed to by companies—the so-called orphans. ED gave EPA a "C–", for a tardy launch of the HPV database and for compelling data development for only 16 of the 265 orphans.
Although the HPV Challenge turned out to be more time-consuming than industry expected, it has produced more data in a shorter time frame than any other program, says James Cooper, senior manager of chemicals policy at the Synthetic Organic Chemical Manufacturers Association, a trade group.
Many who believe that the U.S. should tighten its rules for the ever-expanding list of chemicals on the market aren't satisfied by the industry's efforts. "If Environmental Defense, a contributor to the program, gives it a bad grade, it's significant and means that the HPV Challenge has fallen far short of what it promised," Ditz says. The low score is a blow to voluntary programs, which current EPA and industry officials have touted as faster and more efficient than regulatory programs, Denison says. "Voluntary programs only work when there is a regulatory backup, and here, TSCA's regulatory backup is quite weak," he says.
"Even if industry had lived up to the HPV Challenge 100%, it still would not have provided enough information to protect health," adds Bruce Jennings, a senior advisor to the Environmental Quality Committee of the California state legislature. The program lacked a depth and diversity of tests, such as exposure information and neurological and endocrine-disruption endpoints, he says.
Meanwhile, last year Canada completed a review of 23,000 chemicals after 8 years of study, less than the duration of the HPV Challenge, Jennings says. The narrow scope of the HPV Challenge also places it behind the EU's chemicals management law, Registration, Evaluation, and Authorisation of Chemicals (known as REACH), which compels industry to provide detailed tests on 30,000 chemicals, Ditz says.
The failure of TSCA and the HPV Challenge, as well as the growing regulatory gap between the U.S. and other countries, is raising pressure for reform of chemicals management laws, Jennings says. Bills introduced in the California legislature this year would encourage use of "green" chemicals and mandate detailed testing by industry. A TSCA reform bill is expected to be introduced in the U.S. Congress this year that will spark hearings on EPA's implementation of the chemicals law, but it is unclear how quickly Congress would adopt new legislation, Denison says.
