Late last week, the U.S. Senate passed legislation by unanimous consent to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) of 1976 before the text was made public. The news was a startling development in a years-long effort to reform our nation’s broken law, a law many experts viewed as ineffectual from the outset. 

“Although improved, the Senate bill remains seriously flawed,” said Rachel Gibson, Health Care Without Harm’s Safer Chemicals Program Director.  “Our primary goal for TSCA reform continues to be the protection of public health, particularly vulnerable populations.  Based on that measure, the bill falls short of providing critical public health protections our country desperately needs.”  

The vote is a milestone because TSCA regulates all industrial chemicals in commerce, and is the only major environmental statute from the 1970s that has not been updated. The bill must be reconciled with a much different bill approved in June by the U.S. House of Representatives, before the bill can become law. That reconciliation offers an opportunity to strengthen critical weaknesses in the bill that would allow the public health community to support the bill.  

"The final legislation in any form will necessarily be a compromise and not the panacea we all hoped for at the beginning of this long legislative process,” said Gibson. “It won’t replace the importance of continued action by the healthcare sector, manufacturers, and others to expeditiously reduce toxic chemical use. Nonetheless, we urge the conference committee to use this unprecedented opportunity to ensure the strongest protections for all Americans by adopting the best of the Senate and House versions as has been articulated by the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families coalition of which Health Care Without Harm is a founding member.”

Among the bill’s weaknesses:

• The Senate bill makes it harder for the federal government to halt imported products containing toxic chemicals banned in the United States. About 95% of all toys, and 75% of all shoes and clothes sold in the United States are manufactured outside this country. Chemical safety reform should make it easier to ensure the safety of imported products, not more difficult.  This “toxic toys” provision should be struck from the final legislation.
• States will still be blocked from taking action while the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency studies a chemical, potentially delaying urgent public health interventions. The Senate bill takes away states’ rights to protect their citizens when the federal government is not acting.  It blocks states like California and Minnesota from restricting dangerous chemicals after the U.S. EPA simply begins to study a chemical’s danger. This means that known dangerous chemicals will remain unattended at any level of government for years.  
• The Senate bill will require the U.S. EPA to green-light the use of chemicals ‘likely’ to meet a safety standard, without a thorough safety review.
• The bill requires the U.S. EPA to jump through new legal hoops before it can order a chemical company to test a chemical.
• The bill contains many provisions inserted for various industry groups, which will waste precious time and resources at the U.S. EPA and reduce what is available for the core tasks of testing, evaluating, and restricting toxic chemicals.

For a detailed analysis of the bill’s strengths and weakness, you can stay up to date by following our colleagues at Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families. Health Care Without Harm is an active member of this coalition.