In response to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, which was published in March 2013 and covered in an article by the Food Packaging Forum (FPF), the American Chemistry Council (ACC) wrote in a press release issued May 3, 2013 that manufacturers do develop test data for evaluation by the U.S. Environment Protection Agency (EPA), contrary to the report’s assertions. The ACC argues further that some data from the European Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemical substances (REACH) regulation may already be available to the EPA and that moreover not all REACH data may be relevant to the EPA.

The GAO report argued that EPA’s failure to evaluate chemicals on schedule could be traced back to the burden of developing toxicity data being placed with the EPA rather than manufacturers under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). It suggested that data from other legislative processes such as REACH could assist the EPA in assessing the safety of chemicals in a timely manner.

The ACC concedes that additionally to ensuring that all provisions from TSCA are working, there is also a need to update TSCA to ensure that the U.S. EPA has most up-to-date tools available for its chemical evaluations.

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ACC press release

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