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over again in different countries, in different settings, and in occu- 

 pational and public health settings to cause enough problems and 

 we should try to move away from them. 



Senator Reid. Mr. Guerrero? 



Mr. Guerrero. My observation on this point is that we be very 

 careful and not specify a list in the statute. That is clearly an ap- 

 proach we could take, but I think it is more important for Con- 

 gress, in reauthorizing TSCA, to set up a process for establishing 

 that list. That would have EPA taking its best available data and 

 industry taking its best available data and developing a list for 

 comment and reaching some agreement and consensus on it. That 

 is better than sa3dng that there is a certain list to work with to 

 reduce the risks. You should trust the Agency's best judgment as 

 much as possible in doing that, but give it a very specific goal and 

 time frame for doing it. 



Mr. Hagerman. I would like to clarify, too, that I think it is ap- 

 propriate for the process to be specified. 



I do want to clarify, when talking about the Massachusetts ap- 

 proach, is that the approach I envisioned refers to a list of chemi- 

 cals or an approach based on risk, not toxicity. That is a point we 

 want to make very strongly because those are two distinctly dif- 

 ferent things. There are very toxic chemicals that present very low 

 risk in our society today, and the converse is also true. 



Senator Reid. Are there other ways that we could encourage 

 safer chemicals and using fewer toxic chemicals without specifically 

 designating a list of acceptable or unacceptable chemicals? 



Dr. Geiser. I think one thing TSCA could do is that there could 

 be a section of the EPA that is dedicated to trying to encourage re- 

 search and development of chemicals where we have identified a 

 chemical that we really are trying to reduce. We should be pouring 

 some investment into the research community and the business 

 community into trying to bring those chemicals to market as rap- 

 idly as possible. Those are the materials of our future. We should 

 try to invest them. 



Senator Reid. Do the other panelists have any follow-up on that? 



Mr. Hagerman. I would agree that a process that provides mar- 

 ket incentives £ind disincentives can be a very powerful force in 

 making rapid change in many cases. In my written statement, I 

 have referred to the impact of having a 5(e) consent agreement ap- 

 plying to one of our new chemicals. We find that our customers 

 don't want to work with that material simply because of the tenu- 

 ous nature of its future. 



Dr. Geiser. Mr. Chairman, the kinds of tools and incentives that 

 we talked about when we mentioned the merit of establishing a 

 broad goal in TSCA for the reduction in the use of toxic chemi- 

 cals — those tools and incentives are these types of market-based 

 approaches that can include the use of taxes, refund systems, de- 

 posits to encourage recycling, public disclosure, consumer behavior, 

 technical assistance to industry or the kinds of things that are hap- 

 pening in Massachusetts now involving the planning and audits — 

 all of those combined have merit and should be looked at as poten- 

 tial techniques for achieving the goal. 



Senator Reid. Dr. Geiser, as I understood your statement, you 

 said that we should be using the master testing list and establish- 



