Obstacles to movement
Given that the EPA assumes the burden of proof, the agency is further restricted by the level of evidence required to take regulatory action. In order to regulate chemicals, Article 6 of TSCA requires the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to provide substantive evidence of all the following conditions: The chemical poses or will pose unreasonable risks to health and the environment; the benefits of regulation exceed the costs and product losses of the regulatory industry The economic and social value of the US Environmental Protection Agency; the US Environmental Protection Agency has chosen the least burdened method to deal with unreasonable sources of risk; no other regulations can adequately address this risk (TSCA 1976).
Under this burden of evidence, since 1976, the US Environmental Protection Agency has been able to use its formal regulatory powers to partially control five existing chemicals (or chemical categories): polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), chlorofluorocarbons Chemical compounds, dioxins, asbestos and hexavalent chromium (GAO 1994, USA). Among them, an amendment to the “Toxic Substances Control Act” by Congress requires the supervision of PCBs, and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) asbestos regulations were promulgated after the agency spent 10 years formulating cases. Its most important aspect was overturned by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which concluded that the US Environmental Protection Agency failed to fulfill its burden of proof under the Toxic Substances Control Regulations (Goldman, 2002).
New chemical substance
The Toxic Substances Control Act does give the US Environmental Protection Agency relatively greater powers to regulate new chemicals introduced since 1976 and new uses of existing chemicals. Before selling new chemicals, manufacturers must submit pre-production notices (PMNs). However, there is no necessary minimum data set other than the information that the producer already had when submitting the PMN. This prevents manufacturers from investigating the potential hazards of their products, because although known hazards must be reported, ignorance of hazards will not be punished. Not surprisingly, an assessment by the US Environmental Protection Agency found that 85% of pmn lacked data on the health effects of chemicals, and 67% lacked any type of health or environmental data (US EPA 2003). Limited by the limited data and the short time allowed for institutional review, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has taken some forms of action < between 1979 and 2004, manufacturers proposed 10% of the 36,600 chemicals for commercial use (the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2007). Once new chemicals enter commercial use, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency can only manage them in accordance with the standards and burdens that it assumes on existing chemicals, as described above.
Trade secret
The large number of trade secret declarations allowed by TSCA exacerbated the data and security gaps. Although some protection of proprietary information is necessary, in practice, legal permission for confidential business information (CBI) claims severely restricts access to basic information about the identity and use of chemicals. In 2005, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reported that 95% of PMNs submitted by manufacturers contained information that was claimed to be confidential (U.S. GAO 2005a). An assessment found that 90% of CBI statements in pmn conceal the identity of the chemical substance (US Environmental Protection Agency, 2003). Therefore, although there are other regulations designed to promote hazard communication through material safety data sheets (Sattler et al., 1997; Occupational Safety and Health Administration, 2004; U.S. Government Accountability Office 1991).
Minimal investment
By requiring less hazard information for existing substances than for new chemicals (data gap) and hindering effective supervision of well-known hazards (safety gap), the “Toxic Substances Control Act” has created a preference for existing chemicals Rather than a chemical market for newer and potentially less toxic chemicals. Therefore, the regulations hardly provide impetus for industrial investment in green chemistry research and development. The vast majority of chemical products produced in the United States rely on technologies developed 40-50 years ago. This fact has led the Chemical Research Council to call for the adoption of economically and environmentally safer processes, use less energy, and reduce the production of harmful by-products (chemical Research Committee, 1996). Twelve years after the committee issued the “Outlook 2020” report, the websites of the 50 largest chemical companies in the United States have shown their commitment to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, but their R&D expenditures have remained unchanged since 2000 Or decline (Lempert et al. 2003; 2005 NRC). A report by the National Research Council concluded that this trend makes it difficult to advance the science and technology needed to support this sustainable development goal (NRC 2005).
Public investment is also vital to the development of green chemistry. The experience of the United States in other fields shows that investment by the government, federal laboratories, and research universities can help stimulate innovation in new technologies (Block and Keller, 2008).
