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chemicals of concern, but has resources to review no more than 100 

 per year. In short, Mr. Chairman, TSCA requires that the EPA and 

 the U.S. taxpayers demonstrate that a chemical is harmful and 

 does require that chemical manufacturers prove that the chemicals 

 are safe to use. Yet, EPA's limited resources aside, TSCA's data col- 

 lection authorities do not provide the Agency with the tools that it 

 needs to effectively perform the role that it's been given. 



The difficulty in developing needed information, combined with 

 TSCA's high threshold for taking action, has made it very hard for 

 the EPA to regulate problem chemicals. The EPA must first dem- 

 onstrate that the chemicals pose an unreasonable risk and then 

 that its proposed control present the least burdensome approach for 

 mitigating those risks. The EPA believes that TSCA's standards of 

 evidence are very high, and the courts have in fact confirmed that 

 view in the recent asbestos case. In this instance, the EPA felt that 

 it had considerable scientific evidence of the serious health effects 

 of asbestos, but despite this, it was still unsuccessful in convincing 

 the court that it had met the standards of evidence required under 

 the Act. Another reason that few chemicals have been regulated 

 under TSCA is that the EPA has interpreted TSCA as requiring 

 the agency to look first to other authorities such as the Clean Air 

 Act and the Clean Water Act before trying to control chemical risks 

 under TSCA. Since the EPA rarely identifies risks that cannot po- 

 tentially be addressed under other statutes, it has turned to TSCA 

 on only very few occasions. 



As a consequence, the EPA has not taken advantage of the 

 broader array of regulatory authorities that TSCA provides, such 

 as restrictions on production or distribution that could be used to 

 support the EPA's pollution prevention activities. 



Apart from supporting its regulatory functions, TSCA's informa- 

 tion gathering authorities could also be used to encourage industry 

 to take voluntary measures to reduce toxic emissions. However, 

 much of the information collected under TSCA cannot be shared 

 with public health officials and the public because industry rou- 

 tinely claims such information is confidential. 



For example, a 1992 study showed that over 90 percent of 

 premanufacturer notices contained information that was claimed to 

 be confidential. The EPA believes that many of these claims are 

 not necessary to protect trade secrets and the Agency has been suc- 

 cessful when it has challenged the claims. However, such chal- 

 lenges are time-consuming and the EPA lacks the resources to do 

 this on a continuing basis. 



In closing, Mr. Chairman, I would not want to leave you with the 

 impression that all the fault lies with the law itself Historically, 

 the EPA has assigned TSCA a low priority relative to its other re- 

 sponsibilities and both resources and staffing have long been insuf- 

 ficient. Yet, even if the EPA were to do a better job in implement- 

 ing the law, TSCA's provisions would still present an obstacle to 

 more effective control of chemicals. Because TSCA could prove to 

 be a powerful tool with which the EPA could advance its pollution 

 prevention agenda, it's worthwhile for Congress to explore how 

 TSCA might be made more effective. 



