Most people probably assume that man-made chemicals get tested for safety.
After all, the EPA, with its huge bureacracy, has been successful over the
years in banning pernicious substances like PCBs.
The reality is that a majority of the 75,000 industrial chemicals that are in
everyday use have not even been tested for basic health effects like cancer and
toxicity, according to a detailed study conducted by the Environmental Defense Fund. And many
chemicals have never been tested for neurotoxicological or developmental
effects that these substances could pose to humans and the environment. The EPA
has just recently started to address the issue of testing endocrine
disrupting chemicals.
According to the report "Toxic Ignorance" published in 1997, approximately 75
percent of 3,000 chemicals produced in high volumes did not go through the most
rudimentary tests for toxicity. Less than half of these chemicals were tested
for reproductive toxicity, carcinogenicity, neurotoxicity and immunotoxicity --
all basic requirements under the internationally accepted definitions for
minimum screening set by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development Chemicals Program.
"The public cannot tell whether a large majority of the highest-use chemicals
in the United States pose health hazards or not -- much less how serious the risks might be, or whether those chemicals are actually under
control," the EDF report says.
To learn more about the failings of chemical testing in the U.S., it's
necessary to know some fundamentals of the baroque system of rules established
by the EPA. First, all new chemicals pass under the agency's nose in the form
of premanufacture notices, which are filed by the companies that produce the
substances. These notices list information about the compound's chemical
structure, byproducts and its uses. It is only optional, however, for
manufacturers to include actual data on the chemical's toxicity. Thus, more
than half of the notices submitted contain no toxicity data at all.
The EPA does have the authority to require additional testing before a chemical
goes on the market. In some cases, the EPA will perform its own tests. The
agency also has the power to obtain information from manufacturers to learn
more about a chemical's risk, such as unpublished studies the industry knows
about and worker exposures. When the EPA senses that something really is amiss
with a chemical, when there is proof that the chemical poses serious danger to
the environment or humans, the EPA can take action and regulate or ban the
substance. But this rarely happens.
In fact, of the 75,000 man-made compounds used in commerce, only five chemicals
or chemical classes have been regulated or banned outright. This list includes
dioxin waste disposal, hexalvalent chromium use in cooling towers, PCB
manufacturing, metal fluids and lead paint.
Another testiment to the dearth of regulation is that in the last 20 years the
EPA has requested tests on only 263 industrial chemicals. One of the reasons
for so few tests lies in the language of the Toxics Substances Control Act, the
law which gives the EPA the authority to regulate these chemicals.
Considered much less stringent that a separate act that regulates pesticides,
TSCA requires that the EPA provide convincing evidence of a chemical's danger
before the agency can take any action. The law, however, does not give the
agency much power to gather this evidence. For example, the EPA may get its
initial information about a chemical from the premanufacture notice. But as
stated earlier, companies are not required to list toxicity information on the
notice. Unless the EPA has data on a similar substance with which to compare
the new chemical, then the agency has literally no information to go on. This,
some critics say, is the Catch-22 of the TSCA.
Another reason for the EPA's lack of activity lies with the agency's less than
aggressive stance in regulating industrial chemicals. Tens of thousands of
chemicals were grandfathered in under current EPA legislation. It is only now
that the agency is getting around to testing these potentially harmful -- or
safe -- chemicals. Until they do, we won't know whether these substances are
hazardous or not.
For its part, the chemical industry has responded to calls for increased
testing. On May 21, 1998, the Chemical Manufacturing Association, a nationwide
group representing chemical companies, got into the Earth Day spirit with an
announcement
that it would push its members to increase testing. The plan would up the rate
of testing to 100 chemicals a year by 2003.
CMA President and CEO Fred Webber said in the statement that CMA members
"understand that our industry has a responsibility to develop strong scientific
data if we expect government to improve the quality of its decision making."
Still, this new industry testing plan will have a hard time keeping up with the
huge number of approximately 2,000 new chemicals that are produced every year,
according to the EPA. That's one reason EPA is working hard to develop a screen
that can test whole classes of chemicals for health effects such as endocrine
disruption.
Along with this, the EDF report calls upon the chemical industry to initiate
its own system of tests on high volume chemicals. "Chemical safety can't be
based on faith," the report says. "Government policy and government regulation
have been so ineffective in making progress against the chemical ignorance
problem, for so long, that the chemical manufacturing industry itself must now
take direct responsibility for solving it."
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