The Senate Subcommittee on Superfund, Toxics, and Environmental Health convened a hearing last week with leaders of businesses that manufacture or use chemicals to hear their business views on reforming U.S. chemical safety law. The hearing was the third in a series of oversight hearings leading up to the possible introduction of legislation to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

Entitled “Business Perspectives on Reforming U.S. Chemical Safety Laws,” the hearing featured testimony from Charlie Drevna, President of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association.  His remarks addressed the call from some observers for a European-style replacement regulatory regime. The European Union has started to implement new legislation – Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals (REACH), but many of the perceptions of REACH are incorrect. For example, rather than relieving the government of the burden of chemical safety, REACH only increases the burden on industry while it does not reduce the burden on government. No government authority is going to receive a chemical dossier from industry and take it at face value. Furthermore, REACH places so much burden on industry that small- and medium-sized chemical manufacturers are already facing significant difficulties complying with the program. REACH, contrary to some commentary, is unlikely to spur innovation in safer chemicals. Innovation is a function of spending on research and development and ease of entry into the marketplace. Toxicity and other laboratory testing is considered part of research and development and typically comes out of R&D budgets. That leaves less money for new, and often safer, product development. REACH is a regulatory concept that has never been attempted anywhere in the world, at any time. Authorities in Europe have already been inundated with so much information that they simply cannot keep up.

Dr. Neil C. Hawkins, Vice President, EH&S and Sustainability  for The Dow Chemical Company testified that an ideal chemical safety program would base its decisions on a consistent scientific
evaluation of both hazard and potential exposure (an evaluation of risk), using a weight-of-evidence approach. A weight-of-evidence approach requires critical evaluation of the entire body of available data for consistency and biological plausibility. Studies conducted and funded by industry are necessary and valuable contributions to the understanding of potential public health and environmental effects related to the manufacture and use of its products. Industry scientists have expert knowledge of the chemicals they manufacture, especially as this relates to the development and interpretation of the science needed to comply with governmental requirements around
the world. Research should be judged on the basis of scientific merit, without regard for funding source or where the studies are conducted (e.g. academia, government, or industry).

Also testifying was Linda Fisher, Vice President, Safety Health and the Environment for DuPont.  She stressed in her remarks that as the agency contemplates exposure reductions it is important that the EPA be required to take into account the societal benefits from the use of chemicals and the time and complexity of bringing substitutes to market. Congress should avoid presumptive bans or rigid phase-out schedules. Bans and deadlines for phase-outs or substitution that fail to account for the realities of transitioning to new ingredients, receiving needed customer and regulatory approvals, or modifying manufacturing facilities, are counter-productive. Such actions could lead to unnecessarily disrupting markets, reduce public access to valued products, and cede markets to global competitors.

The issue of confidential business information, or CBI, also needs attention. The ability to preserve legitimate CBI and prevent piracy of intellectual property is critical to U.S. competitiveness and innovation. If companies simply give innovation away there is little reason to innovate.  Intergovernmental sharing of CBI data with proper protections, whether between state and federal governments or nation to nation, should be facilitated.