EPA Action Plan For HBCD, NPE Under TSCA and EPCRA

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released action plans to address the potential health risks of benzidine dyes, hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD) and nonylphenol (NP)/nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPEs). The chemicals are widely used in both consumer and industrial applications, including dyes, flame retardants, and industrial laundry detergents. The plans identify a range of actions the agency is considering under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

The range of actions on these chemicals include adding HBCD and NP/NPE to EPA’s new Chemicals of Concern list, issuing significant new use rules for all three chemicals, and, for HBCD and benzidine dyes, imposing new reporting requirements on EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory and potentially banning or limiting the manufacture or use of the chemicals.

In addition to EPA actions, the Textile Rental Services Association has committed to voluntarily phase out the use of NPEs in industrial liquid detergents by Dec. 31, 2013 and industrial powder detergents by the end of 2014.

EPA first announced that it planned to develop the Chemicals of Concern list last December, which indicates that the chemicals may present an unreasonable risk of injury to health and the environment, under a previously unused TSCA authority.

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Aldicarb Phase Out Agreement

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Bayer CropScience, the manufacturer, have reached an agreement to end use of the pesticide aldicarb in the United States. A new risk assessment conducted by EPA based on recently submitted toxicity data indicates that aldicarb, an N-methyl carbamate insecticide, no longer meets the agency’s food safety standards and may pose unacceptable dietary risks.

To address the most significant risks, Bayer has agreed first to end aldicarb use on citrus and potatoes and will adopt risk mitigation measures for other uses to protect groundwater resources. New measures to protect shallow drinking water wells in vulnerable areas of the southeastern U.S. coastal plain and lower application rates will be immediately added to product labels for use on cotton, soybeans, and peanuts.

The company will voluntarily phase out production of aldicarb by December 31, 2014. All remaining aldicarb uses will end no later than August 2018. Additionally, EPA plans to revoke the tolerances associated with these commodities.

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Formaldehyde Standards for Composite Wood Products Act

The Formaldehyde Standards for Composite Wood Products Act became effective July 7, 2010. It amended the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to make the formaldehyde emission standard contained in the California Code of Regulations applicable to hardwood plywood, medium-density fiberboard, and particleboard sold, supplied, offered for sale, or manufactured in the US. The Act directed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to promulgate implementing regulations that ensure compliance equivalent to compliance with the California standard, including provisions relating to labeling, chain of custody requirements, sell-through provisions, ultra low-emitting formaldehyde resins, no-added formaldehyde-based resins, finished goods, third-party testing and certification, auditing and reporting of third-party certifiers, recordkeeping, and enforcement.

The Act also requires the EPA, by July 1, 2011, in coordination with Customs and Border Protection (CBP), to revise regulations promulgated under TSCA concerning import certification of any chemical substance, mixture, or article containing a chemical substance or mixture as necessary to ensure compliance with this Act.

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Safe Chemicals Act of 2010 - Overview

The Safe Chemicals Act has been introduced by Senator Lautenberg, chair of the Subcommittee on Superfund, Toxics, and Environmental Health, which would amend the existing Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Some of the key provisions of the proposed law include:

• Requires manufacturers to develop and submit a minimum data set for each chemical they produce, and provides EPA with authority to require any data beyond the minimum data set needed to determine safety of a chemical.
• Requires EPA to categorize and prioritize chemicals, based on their hazard and exposure characteristics. EPA would identify and prioritize chemicals by their likely risk, based on anticipated use, production volume, toxicity, persistence, bioaccumulation, and other properties that indicate risk.
• Requires expedited action to reduce the use of or exposures to chemicals of highest concern.
• Requiring all chemicals to be shown to be safe in order to remain in or enter commerce, with the burden of proof safety resting on chemical manufacturers and users.
• Establishes a public database that will house both chemical information submitted to EPA and decisions made by EPA about chemicals, and narrows the conditions under which data submitted by industry can be claimed to be confidential business information (CBI).
• Requires EPA to establish a program to develop market and other incentives for safer alternatives, and a research grant program targeted at priority hazardous chemicals for which alternatives do not presently exist.
  

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Environmental Justice Guidance Document

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released interim guidance to help agency staff incorporate environmental justice into the agency’s rulemaking process.

The guidance document, “Interim Guidance on Considering Environmental Justice During the Development of an Action”, seeks to advance environmental justice for low-income, minority and indigenous communities and tribal governments who have been historically underrepresented in the regulatory decision-making process. The guidance also outlines the multiple steps that EPA program offices can take to incorporate the needs of overburdened neighborhoods into the agency’s decision-making, scientific analysis, and rule development.

EPA is also seeking public feedback on how to best implement and improve the guide for agency staff to further advance efforts toward environmental justice.

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TSCA Amendment proposed - Compound 1080 and Sodium Cyanide Elimination Act

A bill has been introduced in the US House of Representatives to amend the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)to prohibit the use, production, sale, importation or exportation of the poison sodium fluoroacetate (known as "Compound 1080") and to prohibit the use of sodium cyanide for predator control.

This bill would add sodium fluoroacetate to polychlorinated biphenyls and mercury as substances banned by Section 6 of the Toxic Substances Control Act, 15 U.S.C. § 2605. In addition, the bill would prohibit the use of sodium cyanide in a predator control device, a defined term in the bill.

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Chemicals of High Concern List Under Toxic Free Kids Act

The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) has published a list of almost 1,800 chemicals, and materials, such as diesel engine exhaust, soots, tars, and mineral oils, it has determined to be Chemicals of High Concern.

The Minnesota Toxic Free Kids Act of 2009 required that the MDH, after consultation with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA), generate a list of Chemicals of High Concern by July 1, 2010. The chemicals on the list must meet these criteria identified in Minn. Stat. 2009 116.9401:

"Chemical of high concern" means a chemical identified on the basis of credible
scientific evidence by a state, federal, or international agency as being known or suspected with a high degree of probability to:

• harm the normal development of a fetus or child or cause other developmental
  toxicity;
• cause cancer, genetic damage, or reproductive harm;
• disrupt the endocrine or hormone system;
• damage the nervous system, immune system, or organs, or cause other systemic toxicity;
• be persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic; or
• be very persistent and very bioaccumulative
  

The law also instructed MDH to “consider chemicals listed as a suspected carcinogen, reproductive or developmental toxicant, or as being persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic, or very persistent and very bioaccumulative by a state, federal, or international agency. These agencies included the California Environmental Protection Agency, the Washington Department of Ecology, US Department of Health, the US Environmental Protection Agency, the United Nation's World Health Organization, and European Parliament Annex XIV concerning the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation, and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH)

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