11/14/2024

Court Deadlines Proposed for EPA Verdicts on 22 Chemical Rules

BNA Environment & Energy Report | Pat Rizzuto | Nov. 13, 2024

Court Deadlines Proposed for EPA Verdicts on 22 Chemical Rules

Deadlines by which the EPA would have to complete 22 overdue chemical risk evaluations were proposed in two settlements submitted to a federal district court on Tuesday.

If finalized, the proposed deadlines, would require the Environmental Protection Agency to determine by the end of this year and over the next two years whether those chemicals have so much potential to harm people or the environment that companies’ uses of them must be restricted in some ways.

Statutory changes made in 2016 to the US’ primary commercial chemicals law required the EPA to start routinely examining the potential health and environmental harms of chemicals and regulating those that pose “unreasonable risk.”

Several regulatory-triggering decisions, including the EPA’s conclusion about whether formaldehyde must be regulated, would be reached by the current administration before it leaves office, while the EPA would have to complete the remaining risk evaluations during incoming President Donald Trump’s second term.

Deadlines This Year

The first proposed settlement covers 20 chemicals that the EPA teed up for risk evaluation during Trump’s first term in office.

Imminent deadlines it would set include issuing final risk conclusions by the end of this year for formaldehyde, which is used to make thousands of chemicals and other products, and 1,1-dichloroethane, a solvent. The EPA would also be tasked with releasing draft risk analyses for at least six more chemicals, including one used to make tires, 1,3-butadiene, by the end of this year.

The American Chemistry Council, which represents US chemical producers, and Hexion Inc., chemical manufacturer, already objected to the fast track deadline for formaldehyde set by the proposed settlement when an ACC panel and the Ohio-based company each submitted comments on it to the EPA. The agency’s draft formaldehyde analysis already is replete with errors, they said.

“By agreeing to this deadline, the agency would by necessity be relying on a process which already is legally deficient,” ACC’s panel wrote.

The Chemistry Council’s 1,3-Butadiene Consortium also objected to the settlement’s deadline of issuing a final risk evaluation by the end of next year. The proposed timeline would not give EPA staff sufficient time to examine and integrate available science, including considerable new data consortium members provided, it said. The result could be that the agency wouldn’t use the best available science as TSCA requires, it said.

The second proposed settlement, which covers two chemicals that companies asked the EPA to examine, would require the agency to finish both risk evaluations by Jan. 15, 2025.

The agency didn’t complete the risk evaluations for any of these chemicals under the statutory deadlines set by the 2016 Toxic Substances Control Act amendments. Reasons the agency has given include inadequate staff and other resources. Also, the Biden administration focused on filling in what it, its scientific advisers, and environmental groups had identified as critical omissions in risk evaluations of other chemicals that the Trump administration had issued.

The case is Cmty. In-Power and Dev. Ass’n v. EPA, D.D.C., No. 23-02715, Proposed Settlement Filed, 11/12/24.