Policy Concentrates CHEMICAL REGULATION
Senate sends chemical safety legislation to Obama President is expected to sign the bill into law
human health or the environment. But in practice, the agency hasn’t been able to regIn a move that will mandate federal safety Currently, EPA is caught in a dilemma: It ulate chemicals in commerce since a court assessments of chemicals found in everymust document that a substance may pose ruling in 1991 overturned EPA’s ban of asday products from laundry detergent to a risk before it can demand that chemical bestos, a known human carcinogen. TSCA toys, a Senate vote last week sends legislamakers conduct toxicity or exposure tests. requires the agency to select the “least tion to President Barack Obama. burdensome alternative” when The President is expected within regulating, the court found, giving days to sign the measure, which regulated industries wide berth marks Congress’s first major overin attacking whatever option EPA haul of a federal pollution control chooses with ideas of their own. statute in a decade. The legislation “After four decades of living unwill fundamentally change U.S. der a stagnant chemical safety law, regulation of the products of the I am so very glad to have passed a chemical industry, from commodity law that strengthens our country’s substances that have been in use for international competitiveness, decades to novel commercial comprovides desperately needed regpounds discovered and developed ulatory certainty for industry, and by research chemists. mandates that the federal govern“Most Americans believe that ment use better science and prowhen they buy a product at the vide more transparency,” says Sen. hardware store or the grocery store, David Vitter (R-La.). Vitter, whose that product has been tested and state is home to a sizable chunk of determined to be safe. But that isn’t Udall, at podium, and Vitter, left, hammered out many the U.S. chemical industry, was a the case,” explains Sen. Tom Udall details in the chemical safety legislation now awaiting linchpin in brokering the biparti(D-N.M.), who championed the the President’s signature. san deal now headed to the White legislation. House. The measure mandates that the EnvironThe pending new law will modernize a The U.S. chemical industry and number mental Protection Agency assess the safety somewhat obscure statute, the 1976 Toxic of environmental groups support the legisof chemicals in commerce. It also gives EPA Substances Control Act (TSCA), that has lation for making long-needed revisions to new authority to require chemical manufaced growing criticism for years. On pathe chemical law. Other activists criticize it facturers to test their products for possible per, the existing law gives EPA authority to for not being protective enough of people’s risks to human health and the environment. restrict or ban chemicals that pose risks to health.—CHERYL HOGUE
PESTICIDES
European Union officials did not garner enough votes last week to temporarily reauthorize use of the herbicide glyphosate in the EU while the European Chemicals Agency reviews the health effects of the substance. Authorization to use the controversial chemical in the EU is set to expire at the end of this month unless the European Commission acts. The EU stalemate over reapproval of glyphosate, which is used on many food crops, follows conflicting assessments about the herbicide’s potential to cause cancer. The World Health Organization’s International
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Agency for Research on Cancer declared last year that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic.” But last month, an expert panel arranged by WHO and the Food & Agriculture Organization of the United Nations concluded that the chemical “is unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans from exposure through the diet.” Twenty EU countries voted to temporarily reauthorize glyphosate, but seven countries, including Germany, France, and Italy, abstained. Without the votes of those three populous countries, the proposal failed to amass enough support to represent 65% of
the EU’s population, and therefore did not pass. Farmers are outraged by the EU’s failure to reapprove glyphosate. Pekka Pesonen, secretary-general of Copa and Cogeca, which represent EU farmers and their cooperatives, is urging member countries to vote in favor of the herbicide’s renewal at an upcoming EU appeals committee meeting. “Without glyphosate, farmers’ competitiveness would be threatened and EU food production jeopardized as no alternatives exist,” he says.—BRITT
ERICKSON
CREDIT: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Glyphosate faces uncertainty in the EU
