08/15/2025

Trump’s EPA to Expand Actions to Speed New Chemical Reviews

BNA Environment & Energy Report | Pat Rizzuto | August 11, 2025

Trump’s EPA to Expand Actions to Speed New Chemical Reviews

The Trump administration’s EPA has seen success more quickly reviewing companies’ requests to make certain new chemicals and plans to expand its use of strategies that are speeding those decisions, a senior agency official said Monday.

The Environmental Protection Agency realized by the end of March that manufacturers’ requests to make 79 new chemicals qualifying for an expedited 30-day review hadn’t been addressed by the Biden administration, said Lynn Dekleva, deputy assistant administrator in its Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention.

Under President Donald Trump, staff grouped those 79 chemicals into categories based on features such as similar uses or characteristics, and then identified ways to more quickly decide whether to grant the companies’ requests to make them, Dekleva told Bloomberg Law in an interview.

The result: The EPA in April and May reviewed all 79 applications along with 27 more, and it completed evaluating the risks of the 106 chemicals, according to data the agency provided. The EPA made final decisions on 80% of the applications, and it’s waiting for additional information from the companies that filed the remaining 20%, the agency said.

The agency didn’t detail what determinations it made.

The speed of the EPA’s decisions has frustrated industry since the Toxic Substances Control Act was overhauled in 2016. Companies and trade associations maintain US innovation is being harmed, because new technologies need new chemicals that aren’t being approved within the timelines set by the statute and its implementing regulations.

It’s imperative to know what decisions the EPA made concerning the recent reviews of new chemicals, said Kyla Bennett, science policy director for the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

If the agency has granted all the applications, Bennett said she’d be dubious that its approvals are protecting people and the environment.

Pushing the Pace

PEER and other environmental groups blasted Trump’s first administration for pushing EPA’s staff to so quickly approve new chemicals that reviews essentially rubber-stamped the products’ entry into commerce.

Risk assessments are often the most time-consuming part of the EPA’s review, so completing more than 50 of these analyses per month is a huge accomplishment, Dekleva said.

The agency’s analyses were timely and protective of human health and the environment, said Dekleva, who was a senior director at the American Chemistry Council and manager at the E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Co. prior to joining the EPA.

Staff reached faster decisions by changing how they evaluated low volume exemption, or LVE, requests, which qualify for a 30-day instead of the standard 90-day agency review allowed under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), she said.

The EPA intends to apply the efficiencies it’s gaining by speeding LVE reviews to other types of new chemical requests it receives, Dekleva said.

The agency allows the 30-day reviews because the manufacturer agrees to certain restrictions.

These restrictions include that companies can produce only 10,000 kilograms (22,046 pounds) or less of the new chemical each year; they can make it only in the ways described on their application; and the chemical can be used only for the purposes described.

The chemical also doesn’t get added to the TSCA inventory, which lists substances any company can make in or import into the US.

Market Opportunity

A backlog of low volume exemptions built up in recent years as the agency stopped distinguishing between these applications, which qualify for the faster review but have built in restrictions, and traditional premanufacture notice (PMN) application to make new chemicals, Dekleva said.

TSCA directs the agency to complete PMN reviews in up to 180 days, although the agency often receives the applicant’s permission to take longer.

The procedural changes and more efficient reviews the EPA is making for LVEs are important, because the core parts of those analyses—such as examining a new chemical’s hazards and the ways people and the environment could be exposed to it—are the same as for TSCA’s standard 90-day PMN reviews, said Richard Engler, director of chemistry for Bergeson & Campbell PC.

An efficient LVE review process also allows companies, which get the EPA’s approval, to start making a new compound for its customers, he said.

Meanwhile, the company can file a PMN that, if granted, would allow a greater volume of the same chemical to be produced for additional uses, he said.

Yet, just because a chemical is manufactured at less than 10,000 kilograms per year or less doesn’t mean it’s not risky, Bennett said.

In past years, the EPA approved more than 600 PFAS through its LVE process, she said, referring to information the agency released in 2021 and voluntary program it established to encourage companies to voluntarily stop making those chemicals.

Procedural Changes

In addition to grouping the LVE applications, the EPA asked staff with expertise on different issues, such as human health hazards and engineering, to review relevant parts of the application at the same time, Dekleva said.

The new chemicals program typically reviewed each part of the application in a specific sequence, she said.

The agency also selected team leads to improve communication among staff reviewing different aspects of the application, she said.

And EPA has been contacting applicants if staff find what appear to be typos or other possible mistakes that could affect the agency’s review, she said. Typically, staff didn’t talk with applicants until the EPA completed its review, she said.

“We are going to apply what we learned with LVEs” to other new chemical applications as part of the EPA’s commitment to speed up permits, Dekleva said.

It will take time, she said but pointed to the track record of the first Trump administration, in which she was a top official overseeing new chemicals.

There was a backlog of 500 new chemical applications when she joined in 2019, Dekleva recalled. That backlog was reduced to 200 by the time Trump’s term ended in 2021, she said.