David Fischer Quoted in Inside TSCA Article on Environmentalists Urging EPA to Group Chemicals for TSCA Review

Keller and Heckman Counsel David Fischer was quoted in the Inside TSCA article, “Environmentalists Urge EPA To Group Chemicals For TSCA Review.” The article discusses how many environmentalists are pressing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to step away from evaluating individual chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) review process and instead consider entire chemical categories to make the program less costly and more efficient. However, David argued that the Biden administration’s decision to drop a policy known as the “regulatory nexus,” a process that excludes exposures that can be regulated by other laws, has made TSCA risk evaluations less efficient. “There are lots of chemicals to evaluate,” says David, and “three years is not a lot of time, especially when doing 20-plus risk evaluations.” While EPA technically does not have to hit deadlines until 2023, David questions whether the Agency will stick to its timeline, “due to the abandoning of the regulatory nexus. Once you drag on risk evaluation, you hold off on risk management for that same number of years...and you put off putting another chemical through that machinery.”

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