Lynn L. Bergeson, “The New Toxic Substances Control Act is Now Five Years Old: A Report Card – It Is a Mixed Bag, but We Are Getting There,” The Debate, from ELI The Environmental Forum , May/June 2021.
June 22 of this year will mark the fifth anniversary since President Obama signed the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act. Popularly still known by the name of the 40-year-old statute it replaced, the new version of the Toxic Substances Control Act had a vision to follow in reforming a system for evaluating and regulating chemicals in commerce that everyone, from industry to green NGOs to government officials, agreed was weak and ineffective. The new TSCA, promising to fix a broken statute, received bipartisan support and was the first major environmental law in a quarter century.