A variety of companies and chemical industry trade groups weighed in last week on a bill to amend the decades-old Toxic Substances Control Act.

Several dozen interested parties, including the National Association of Manufacturers, American Chemistry Council, and American Petroleum Institute, sent a letter to the U.S. Senate noting their objections to S. 847 — dubbed the Safe Chemicals Act — that the Environment and Public Works Committee recently sent to the Senate floor.

We have posted about this bill before.  It would give the EPA revised authority to regulate a broader range of potentially toxic chemicals.  But it would establish an unworkable safety standard, and would require an enormous amount of additional government resources to implement. The bill would also dramatically increase the time it would take for EPA to review new chemicals and undermine long-standing protections of trade secrets, seriously hampering innovations in new products and technologies.

In their letter, the groups said that the bill that did not reflect the input of the Republican Senators or many of the stakeholders on all the very complex issues involved in updating TSCA. On July 25th, the EPW Committee held a markup of S. 847, and then voted along party lines to approve the bill.

The industry groups said they wholeheartedly support the continuation of a bipartisan process to discuss the right concepts needed in legislation to effectively reform the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate chemicals. But they believe that S. 847 as reported by the Committee does not accomplish this goal.  They continue to support sound, science and risk-based legislation to update TSCA, and will work with Senators on such new legislation.