Hi, I'm going to be speaking to you today about a fairly monumental event that involved the updating of a 40 year old law called the Toxic Substances Control Act, that was finally amended to bring it into the 21st century. That law was our main US chemical safety legislation and it covers almost all of the chemicals that we encounter on a daily basis. Chemicals in consumer products, chemicals in paint, carpeting, furniture, but it does have a few important exclusions. It doesn't cover drugs, cosmetics, food or food additives, or packaging. All of those are regulated by the FDA under a different law. And it also doesn't cover pesticides. Those are regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency, but under a different law as well. But just about everything else is regulated by the Toxic Substance Control Act, or TSCA. This law was originally passed in 1976, it was signed when Gerald Ford was president. And finally updated in 2016. It was updated via a law called the Frank R Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, and Senator Lautenberg, who passed away in 2013, was the long time champion of reform of TSCA, so it's aptly named in his honor. Now, TSCA has in principle, a very broad scope. It applies to what I call the full life cycle of chemicals. Everything from their manufacturing, their processing, their distribution and commerce, their use, and then ultimately when they end up being disposed of, or products containing them are disposed of, it covers that as well. And it potentially gives the Environmental Protection Agency an enormous reach of authority. EPA can use TSCA to regulate individual chemicals, mixtures of chemicals, or even products that contain chemicals. It can require testing and monitoring, it can review and even regulate both new chemicals coming under the market for the first time, and existing chemicals that are already in use. And it can also regulate the imports and exports of chemicals and chemical products. Finally there are authorities under TSCA that allow EPA to collect information and to share that information when it doesn't represent trade secrets. Which are to be protected and we'll have a lot more to say about that a little bit later. Now TSCA is the foundation for what we often call our national chemical policy, but I want to emphasize that that's more than just a law. In fact, TSCA sets in motion activities that affect all three branches of government. The legislation is enacted by Congress and it always provides a particular agency with the authority to implement the law. Now TSCA itself as a legislative vehicle is about 100 pages long. But it is, in turn, turned into regulations, and those regulations specify in detail how EPA is implementing the law, and the last time I looked the TSCA regulations were about 1500 pages in the code of federal regulations. Those regulations are adopted though an administrative rule-making process that entails public notice and comment and a significant burden on the agency to justify what it's doing through those rules. And then finally when those rules are final, anyone can challenge them in court if they believe them to be erroneous. And that means the courts get involved through the development of what's called case law, and that has a significant impact on the ultimate interpretation of the words of Congress by the agency in question.
