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in the 80's, and continuing to the present, the Office of Pollution Prevention and 

 Toxic Substances developed a workable process for moving chemical concerns 

 through a priority setting program identified by EPA as the Risk Management or 

 RM program, A key element of the KM program is that it forces the Agency to make 

 regulatory decisions on chemicals of concern, and by so doing requires EPA to de- 

 velop priorities for actions. More recently, the Agency announced it is developing a 

 process intended to move rules more swiftly through EPA review and approval. This 

 review and approval process has often been a significant factor in slowing rule- 

 making. Thus, we believe that an assessment of the EPA's ability to implement 

 TSCA should focus more on recent years than on the first few after the passage of 

 the Act. 



Priority Setting 



Perhaps one of the major factors in hindering EPA's earlier effective implementa- 

 tion of TSCA was its apparent difficulty in setting priorities among possible chemi- 

 cal concerns. Whatever the reason, the need for setting such priorities has become 

 more critical as both EPA and industry resources for meeting the mandates of TSCA 

 have been curtailed. The need for priority setting includes information gathering ac- 

 tions as well as testing requirements and chemical control. 



In setting priorities, as previous witnesses have suggested, the focus should be on 

 chemicals which present the greatest risk, or perhaps better, on the chemicals which 

 present the greatest risk relative to the benefits derived from them. Priorities 

 should be set only after consideration of the toxic properties of chemicals of concern, 

 the extent to which humans or the environment are exposed, and the benefits deriv- 

 ing from the chemicals of concern. For example, it would be inappropriate to focus 

 on a category of chemicals based solely on their chemical structure. In our experi- 

 ence, any category of chemicals defined solely by chemical structure represents a di- 

 versity of physical properties (which relate to exposure), chemical properties (which 

 relate to toxicity and exposure), and uses (which relate to exposure). The priority 

 setting process should be a winnowing process which first looks grossly at readily 

 available information and selects large, likely diverse categories of chemicals for 

 successive further winnowing, based on more detailed information, until a feasible 

 action plan emerges. We believe the current OPPT program follows this general 

 process and includes flexibility to address "hot" chemical issues when they arise. 

 This flexibility to refine priorities, as a changing world requires, would be sharply 

 diminished or eliminated by establishment of an arbitrary list of chemicals for 

 which regulatory action such as testing or control would be required. 



It is important to recognize that EPA's current priority setting process both de- 

 fines a group of chemicals for possible action, and also affirmatively excludes others. 

 Those that are excluded are not being simply ignored, but have been evaluated and, 

 based on the evaluation criteria, have been found to be a low priority for further 

 action, unless and until the evaluation criteria change. This important point is often 

 overlooked by those who are critical of the EPA's present priority setting process. 

 For example, it is appropriate to assign most polymers a very low priority for OPPT 

 consideration as possible chemical risks. This assignment alone should assure the 

 public that tens of thousands of chemicals on the TSCA Inventory are of low concern 

 as chemical risks. 



Existing Chemical Testing 



One of the concerns expressed in the previous hearing focused on the slow pace 

 of testing of TSCA chemicals. All too often this concern seems based on a perception 

 that somehow all 72,000 chemicals on the TSCA Inventory need to be tested. I hope 

 my comments on priority setting have clarified that a reasonable screening process 

 would assign a low priority for further consideration to most of the chemicals on 

 the Inventory. In this light, the two to three hundred chemicals being tested or con- 

 sidered for testing appears more significant and appropriate. 



One screening criterion for establishing testing needs has been high production 

 volume. This criterion presumes that high production volume translates into high 

 exposure. Although Dow disagrees with this presumption, we recognize that there 

 are chemicals of substantial concern to many simply because of their high produc- 



