EPA Studies, California Rules May Guide “Risk” Level Absent TSCA Reform

The February 15, 2013, issue of Inside EPA quoted Lynn L. Bergeson extensively. “In lieu of reform legislation clearing Congress, Lynn Bergeson, a TSCA attorney and owner of law firm Bergeson & Campbell, told a recent legal conference that industry lawyers should be closely watching the agency’s first batch of five draft risk assessments, released last month, given that they could serve as an early indication of how EPA’s toxics office will handle risk analyses of existing chemicals — which are currently ‘grandfathered’ under TSCA. The assessments will ‘have a very influential impact on defining risk for the TSCA program for the foreseeable future,’ Bergeson told a Feb. 8 environmental standards panel during an American Law Institute Continuing Legal Education event in Washington, D.C. Bergeson, noting that TSCA is becoming an increasingly less relevant statute as chemical manufacturers struggle to meet the European Union’s Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals regime, along with California’s and other states’ growing patchwork of chemical safety requirements, asked, ‘How is California defining its alternative assessment process and will this become the de facto standard in the U.S.?’” The full article is available here.