Articles

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced on Jan. 13, 2025, that it signed a much-anticipated memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), formalizing coordination on EPA’s work to assess and manage existing chemicals under Section 6 of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). A closer read of the MOU leaves us wanting more than what is there....

It’s been almost nine years since Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) stakeholders celebrated President Obama’s enactment of the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act (Lautenberg) on June 22, 2016. Because the road to amending TSCA was long (almost a decade), contentious and complicated, stakeholders may have been more relieved that the process was finally over than interested in the fine print....

A key force propelling reform of the Toxic Substances Control Act through Congress in 2016 was a bipartisan belief, shared by the business and environmental communities alike, that the Environmental Protection Agency needs more information to do its job of protecting the American public from adverse effects caused by chemical exposures. After all, it has been domestic policy under TSCA for almost a half century that “adequate information should be developed . . . and...

It has been almost nine years since Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) stakeholders celebrated President Obama’s enactment on June 22, 2016, of the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act (Lautenberg). Because the road to amending TSCA was long (almost a decade), contentious, and complicated, stakeholders were perhaps more relieved that the process was finally over than inclined to focus on the fine print. This article discusses mid-course corrections that are desperately...

For all the reasons you might imagine, 2025 is an especially challenging year to speculate on what to expect regarding global industrial, agricultural and biocidal chemical regulatory and policy initiatives. We give it our best shot in this article....

In April 2024, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) opened an enormous can of worms for entities even remotely association with the generation, transport, use or disposal of two legacy per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS): perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS). In designating the PFAS as “hazardous substances” under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), the EPA greenlit the initiation of...

Much speculation is growing about what to expect from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2025 under the Trump administration. Donald Trump’s presidential campaign focused on downsizing the federal government, especially the EPA. The first Trump administration tried hard to cut the agency’s workforce and funding while working to decrease regulations it viewed as burdensome.  The new administration will likely follow a similar path, taking significant steps to roll back...

The number of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) on the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) list is expected to expand greatly. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed on Oct. 8, 2024, to add 16 PFAS and 15 PFAS categories representing more than 100 individual PFAS subject to reporting under the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) and the Pollution Prevention Act (PPA) to comply with the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020...

We heard a loud, collective sigh of relief when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unexpectedly published a direct final rule on Sept. 5, delaying the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) reporting deadline by an additional eight months.  The rule delayed the deadline from May 8, 2025, to January 11, 2026. For any company reporting exclusively as an article importer and is also considered a small manufacturer, the...

Canada recently joined a growing list of countries requiring the reporting of certain information on the manufacture, import and use of specific per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). On July 27, 2024, Canada’s Minister of the Environment published a Canada Gazette notice announcing a mandatory survey to obtain information on 312 listed PFAS. Canada’s “Guidance manual for responding to the: Notice with respect to certain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)” states that...

Corporate entities are feeling the heat per-and poly fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are generating. PFAS manufacturers are being sued in record numbers in the US based on novel legal theories involving personal injury tort claims, product liability, environmental damage and fraud among other things. Heightened legal activity in other jurisdictions, including the UK and the European Union (EU), is expected. Manufacturers of products containing PFAS, and their downstream users, are also becoming...

On July 10, 2024, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a compliance guide for its final methylene chloride risk management rule issued under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). The final rule is complicated, and the compliance guide is a useful document for stakeholders to consider reading. ...

On June 14, 2024, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued proposed restrictions under Section 6(a) of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to protect workers and consumers from exposure to N-methylpyrrolidone (NMP) (89 Fed. Reg. 51134). To address the unreasonable risks the EPA identified, the agency proposes a combination of worker and consumer protections. Given NMP’s ubiquitous applications, this is an important TSCA proposal....

The standard of judicial review for most critical TSCA determinations under section 19 is “substantial evidence in the record taken as a whole”. This is a tough standard, considerably more rigorous than the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) standard under section 706, where agency action will be set aside if it is “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law.” The recent Loper...

On 28 March, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued its long-awaited first final risk management rule under the Toxic Substances Control Acta (TSCA), banning the import and eventual use of chrysotile asbestos. This is the only form of asbestos known to be used in the US. You may be thinking now that because your company does not import or use asbestos, this does not affect you. You should care about it because the EPA’s approach...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the primary federal agency committed to safe exposure to chemicals in the food supply, has recently stepped up efforts to ensure food safety, especially in the post-market assessment area. Stakeholders in commercial chemical operations and product lines involving chemicals used for or found in the food supply should be prepared for increased inspections and enforcement in this area. Chemicals in Food The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act...

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently issued final risk management rules under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) banning certain uses of two chemicals: chrysotile asbestos and methylene chloride. The identity of these two chemicals is less important than the process by which the EPA concluded that the banned uses of these chemicals pose unreasonable risks to human health and the environment, and the nature and intrusiveness of the workplace and other restrictions the...

A federal district court recently issued an Order to enjoin enforcement of California’s Proposition 65 warnings related to titanium dioxide in cosmetics and personal care products. This is the third case successfully challenging Prop 65 warnings on First Amendment grounds, with previous cases involving glyphosate and acrylamide, as discussed in our FIFRA blog. These are important cases with implications for companies facing Prop 65 warnings for other substances where the underlying...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued on May 8, 2024, a final rule under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to address the unreasonable risk of injury to health presented by methylene chloride under its conditions of use (COU). To no one’s surprise, the EPA banned most uses of the chemical. However, surprisingly, the EPA also adopted a de minimis threshold to account for impurities and the unintended presence of methylene chloride. The final...

A critical element of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Draft National Strategy to Prevent Plastic Pollution (Strategy) is to “improve post-use materials management.”  The Strategy identifies potential voluntary actions EPA believes can be implemented to prevent plastic waste. Plastics recycling, both mechanical and “advanced,” is core to achieving improved post-use plastics materials management. Post-use plastics management, in turn, is core to achieving...