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ward to working with this Committee, EPA, and other interested parties in develop- 

 ing additional mechanisms to integrate pollution prevention into TSCA. 



My own acquaintance with TSCA goes back over 10 years, to my participation in 

 developing consensus rules to. reduce risks of PCBs. In addition, I have been in- 

 volved in attempts to utilize TSCA to take source-reduction oriented approaches to 

 reducing the risks of asbestos and dioxins. Finally, I have had the real privilege of 

 working with EPA and industry representatives in delegations to the Organization 

 for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Chemicals Programme, in 

 which many of the same issues covered by TSCA have been the subject of inter- 

 national action. 



In many (but not all) of these activities, I have become convinced that there is 

 much common ground among industry, government, and environmentalists in terms 

 of purpose and commitment to achieving real progress in the prudent management 

 of new and existing chemicals. I have also worked with exceptionally skilled and 

 dedicated scientists, analysts, and lawyers in the TSCA program at EPA over the 

 years. However, despite this commonality of purpose, the history of TSCA imple- 

 mentation is one of enormous frustration. Its few accomplishments have been 

 achieved at immense costs of time and resources, and it has never performed, as 

 anticipated, as an efficient linkage among statutes and agencies, to ensure effective 

 and scientifically based risk identification and management. Several GAO reports 

 over the past decade have detailed the failings of TSCA to generate useful informa- 

 tion or to initiate substantial pollution prevention. 



It is useful for us to understand the reasons for these contradictions: how well 

 intentioned, highly skilled persons from all parties at interest have been unable to 

 make this statute work effectively. The latter portion of this testimony identifies 

 some of legal and policy matters that require your attention in the reauthorization 

 process; first, however, are EDF's comments on scientific and technical issues. 



I am a toxicologist by training and experience; my pre- and post-doctoral training 

 was received at Johns Hopkins University and its Medical Institutions. Prior to my 

 appointment at EDF, I was for 6 years a staff scientist at the National Institutes 

 of Health. Since 1990, I have been professor of toxicology and now epidemiology and 

 preventive medicine at the University of Maryland Medical School in Baltimore; I 

 am also adjunct professor of environmental health sciences and health policy and 

 management at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. I have 

 served on several U.S. delegations to the OECD Chemicals and Environment Pro- 

 gramme and I have been a consultant to the OECD Environment Programme. 



In this testimony, I shall focus my comments upon the important need to change 

 the incentives in TSCA. As the statute is now designed, it acts to discourage the 

 acquisition of critical information on the hazards and risks of both new and existing 

 chemicals. My comments are based upon my pragmatic experience with the OECD, 

 and I hope to convince you that a new approach is both desirable and demonstrably 

 feasible. 



Over the past decade, within the OECD, we have gained experience that dem- 

 onstrates that we can acquire critical information on new and existing chemicals, 

 that will inform our decisionmaking as to the priorities and actions necessary to 

 protect human health and the environment. For too long, chemicals policy in this 

 country has been conducted in a self-imposed fog of ignorance. Both the theory and 

 practice of TSCA have rewarded ignorance rather than knowledge, and a culture of 

 denial has choked a broad range of policymaking. 



This culture of denial has assertied that we do not need information in order to 

 assess risks, a nonsensical and anti-scientific posture that can only condemn us to 

 ill-informed and unproductive debates conducted in a vacuum of real information. 

 Only when extraordinary public pressures have arisen — as in the case of dioxin — 

 has EPA utilized even the information-gathering powers of the statute. Of the Agen- 

 cy's two major attempts to use TSCA to actually control general exposure to a par- 

 ticular toxic substance, one (PCBs) was essentially dictated in the initial statute, 

 while the other was eviscerated by the Fifth Circuit (asbestos) (in a decision that 

 EDF views as erroneous but that the Justice Department apparently refused to ap- 

 peal to the Supreme Court). This is a statute that cries out for reauthorization and 

 improvement. And improvements can readily be secured. We — the U.S. — can do bet- 



