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What REACH can teach us about TSCA: Retrospectives of America's Failed Toxics Statute

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

James T. O'Reilly
James T. O'Reilly*
Affiliation:
University of Cincinnati College of Law, and can be reached [email protected].
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Extract

Comparative risk assessments in the chemical safety field sometimes adopt a lofty view of the purposes of legislation. This personal essay is not lofty, and it is not just another professor's comparison of the purposes of the European Union's REACH with American regulatory programmes. I write today as an individual, as the last active remaining participant of the small group of industry players in 1975–76 who helped to negotiate the details of the 1976 US Toxic Substances Control Act (“TSCA”). As advocates for industry we won the key arguments over the law's terms and conditions, but the decades since have not shown TSCA to be a triumph for anyone.

Type
Articles
Information
European Journal of Risk Regulation , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , March 2010 , pp. 40 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

1 EU Reg. 1907/2006.

2 15 United States Code 2601 et sqq., hereinafter “TSCA”. The section numbers used in this article such as section 8 can be found within the text of the Act online, http://www.gpoaccess.gov.

3 Although several labour unions and two environmental NGOs had a small presence, the actual work on the wording was largely that of industry team members and the professional staffs of elected officials.

4 15 U.S.C. 2605.

5 15 U.S.C. 2607.

6 15 U.S.C. 2604.

7 15 U.S.C. 2613.

8 42 U.S.C. 11023, 11044.

9 40 C.F.R. 704.5(a).

10 15 U.S.C. 2605(c).

11 15 U.S.C. 2607(e).

12 TSCA sec. 2 provides general exceptions; the Inventory of chemicals covered also contains exclusions, 40 C.F.R. 710.26.

13 California Health & Safety Code 25249.

14 The US budget spends most of its funds on “entitlement” social spending, debt repayment and other non-discretionary allocations, as well as a large fraction on war and defense issues; the leftover remainder are discretionary domestic and non-domestic expenditures.

15 40 C.F.R. 704.5.

16 15 U.S.C. 2607(e).

17 Available on the Internet at http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgibin/usc.cgi?ACTION=RETRIEVE&FILE=$$xa$$busc15.wais&start=9656327&SIZE=22866&TYPE=TEXT.

18 19 C.F.R. 12.123; 40 C.F.R. 707.20.

19 40 C.F.R. 710.4.

20 See discussion in H.R. Rept. xxx.

21 15 U.S.C. 2605(c)(2).

22 15 U.S.C. 2607(c).

23 15 U.S.C. 2602(8).

24 40 C.F.R. 710.3(d).

25 House Report 94–1341, US House Committee on Interstate & Foreign Commerce, at 141 (1976).

26 40 C.F.R. 2.306.

27 40 C.F.R. Part 2.

28 40 C.F.R. 2.306.

29 US EPA, Office of Inspector General report-10-P-0066, “EPA Needs a Coordinated Plan” (Feb. 2010).

30 House Report 94-1341, US House Committee on Interstate & Foreign Commerce, at 7 (1976).

31 O'Reilly, James T. and Buenger, Caroline, RCRA & Superfund Practice Guide 3d (2009 Supp.).

32 Pending S. 510, 111th Cong. 2d Sess. (2010).