The weight of evidence

摘要

Last week, US Senator Frank Lautenberg (Democrat, New Jersey) introduced legislation to overhaul one of the key US chemical regulatory laws. The 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which covers chemicals other than medicines, cosmetics and pesticides, essentially assumes that compounds introduced into the marketplace are safe until proven otherwise: potential risks to thernenvironment or human health are acted on only if the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can uncover and prove them. The Lautenberg legislation, and complementary legislative language being drafted in the House of Representatives by Bobby Rush (Democrat, Illinois) and Henry Waxman (Democrat, California) would place the burden of proof where it belongs, requiring industries to provide a certain quantity of safety data before releasing a new chemical into wide use.