EPA will pick up the pace of chemical regulations in 2024

This year is shaping up to be one of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s busiest for chemical regulation since the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) was amended in 2016.

The agency is about 3 years behind schedule on issuing regulations on the first 10 high-​ priority chemicals assessed under the revised TSCA. The EPA found risks to human health for all 10. But so far, it has proposed rules to manage those risks for just half of them: asbestos, carbon tetrachloride, methylene chloride, perchloroethylene, and trichloroethylene.

The EPA will likely finalize some of those rules and crank out proposals for the remaining 5 chemicals in 2024.

Asbestos will most likely be the first to be regulated this year. In early December, the EPA sent a rule banning the use of chrysotile asbestos to the White House Office of Management and Budget for review. This type of review, which is the final step in the rulemaking process, is supposed to take 90 days but often takes longer.

The final rule is likely to come out this spring, but the chlor-alkali industry won’t phase out asbestos separation diaphragms for years. The three chlor-alkali companies that still use the carcinogenic substance— Olin, OxyChem, and Westlake Chemical—have all announced plans to transition away from it to membrane technology over the next several years.

Advocacy groups predict that chlor-​alkali producers will challenge the rule in court. “We expect this rule will be subject to litigation that could further delay or entirely prevent it from taking effect,” Linda Reinstein, president of the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, says in a statement. Reinstein is pushing Congress to pass a bill this year that would ban not just chrysotile but all forms of asbestos.

As part of a court settlement, the EPA is evaluating the risks of other types of asbestos and of legacy uses, such as in construction materials found in older buildings. The agency faces a deadline of Dec. 1, 2024, to complete that review.

The EPA could issue final rules in late 2024 banning some uses of toxic solvents, including methylene chloride. Strict worker safety protections and exemptions for critical military uses are likely.

While catching up on regulating the first 10 high-priority chemicals, the agency is also evaluating the risks of the next 20, plus a few more requested by the chemical industry.

Those evaluations are all past due. Environmental groups sued the EPA in September for missing the deadlines. They claim that the agency’s failure to meet its statutory deadlines delays its ability to ban or restrict toxic chemicals and prolongs people’s exposure to them. In their lawsuit, the groups are asking the court to order the EPA to complete the evaluations “expeditiously pursuant to deadlines established by the Court.”

The EPA did roll out a draft assessment of the first of the next 20 high-priority chemicals in December. In that assessment, the agency identified risks for the flame retardant tris(2-chloroethyl) phosphate. Draft assessments for the other 19 chemicals are in the works and could be released this year.

The EPA also announced in mid-​December that it will screen another 5 chemicals, including the high-volume chemicals vinyl chloride and acrylonitrile, in 2024 to determine whether they are a priority for risk evaluation.

In addition, in early December the agency used its authority under TSCA to go after a process used by Inhance Technologies to fluorinate certain plastic containers. The EPA claims that the company’s process creates toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) as impurities. The agency ordered Inhance to stop producing PFAS by Feb. 28, 2024. That order could change the course of a lawsuit filed against Inhance by the EPA and two environmental groups over the firm’s failure to notify the EPA that it is producing PFAS.