EDF Says EPA's Proposed Priority Chemicals List Violates TSCA Criteria

摘要

Environmentalists are charging that the list of 20 existing chemicals that EPA has proposed as high priority candi-dates for the next round of assessments - and possible regulation - marks a "serious statutory violation" because the agency is not giving "sufficient preference" to criteria detailed in the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Signaling a new litigation front over EPA's implementation of the law, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) writes in its June 19 comments, posted in EPA's docket earlier this month that the high priority candidates EPA has proposed fail to include two categories of chemicals that EPA is directed to prioritize in Congress' 2016 revisions to TSCA. "By failing to give sufficient preference to the chemicals identified in TSCA section 6(b)(2)(D), EPA has committed a serious statutory violation," EDF says. The group says TSCA section 6(b)(2)(D) directs EPA to prioritize "(i) chemical substances that are listed in the 2014 update of the TSCA Work Plan for Chemical Assessments as having a Persistence and Bioaccumulation Score of 3; and (ii) chemical[s]... listed in the ... Work Plan for Chemical Assessments that are known human carcinogens and have high acute and chronic toxicity."