WASHINGTON (June 5, 2017) – The American Chemistry Council (ACC) today issued the following statement recognizing the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) recent progress to increase the throughput of new chemical pre-manufacturing notices under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Section 5, the “New Chemicals Program,” as updated by the Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act (LCSA):
“We commend Administrator Pruitt for his attention to improving the efficiency of new chemical review under an amended TSCA. U.S. businesses, jobs, and competitiveness depend on a functioning new chemicals program,” said ACC President and CEO Cal Dooley. “In just the last month, significant progress has been made to relieve the backlog, and we welcome the Administrator’s commitment to have the program functioning smoothly again by the end of July. Additional EPA staff deployed to the program have made important progress to completing reviews and allowing new chemicals—many of which are the products of years of R&D and will make technology improvements possible—to be used safely in U.S. manufactured products.
“LCSA demanded that EPA deliver a higher quality new chemicals review, with greater transparency, and on schedule—and EPA is now making solid progress towards achieving these statutory objectives,” continued Mr. Dooley. “We look forward to continuing our engagement with the Agency to support the implementation of this important, bipartisan legislation this year and moving forward.”