4: Ensuring the Safety of Chemicals and Preventing Pollution

Reduce the risk and increase the safety of chemicals and prevent pollution at the source.

Other Information:

One of our highest priorities is ensuring the safety of the chemicals that make up the building blocks of modern society. Increasingly, the chemicals used to make our products, build our homes and support our way of life end up in the environment and in our bodies. Last year, the Administration announced principles for modernizing the more than 30-year-old Toxic Substances Control Act, under which we assess and regulate chemicals. To move forward and to make longoverdue progress, we are shifting our focus to filling in critical missing information on the chemicals most widely produced and used in commerce and addressing chemicals that pose unreasonable risk to the environment or human health. Pending legislative action by Congress, the EPA is strengthening its chemical safety program by coordinating with appropriate federal agencies to maximize use of current TSCA authorities, supported by the best available science, to aggressively assess and manage the risks of chemicals used in consumer products, the workplace and the environment. Additionally, under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, the EPA and the states register or license pesticides for use in the U.S. The EPA also is taking steps to increase transparency and public access to TSCA-related chemical information, committing to review and, where appropriate, to challenge and declassify Confidential Business Information claims for hundreds of annual new submissions and more than 20,000 previous submissions through FY 2015. By encouraging pollution prevention, we will promote the use of safer chemical alternatives, implement conservation techniques, promote efficient reuse of materials and better align the chemical-production processes with the principles of green chemistry.

Objective(s):

4.1: Ensure Chemical Safety

4.2: Promote Pollution Prevention

Content