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Today, a massive achievement in chemicals reform was accomplished on Capitol Hill. The Senate voted to overhaul the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) of 1976. The original act was written in the '70s when environmental problems were outrageous and fixes were obvious, the interpretation of risk information was different, the acceptability of testing practices was not questioned, and the process for evaluating chemicals was seen as legitimate.

Needless to say, none of these things are true in 2016.

In fact, overhaul of TSCA was seen as critical as early as the late 1980s. There are tens of thousands of chemicals in commerce, yet the evaluation process is so slow that only a handful are evaluated each year. Yes, you read that correctly. In an age where we now have computational toxicology, structure-activity relationships, and other approaches to predictive toxicology that can streamline the evaluation process and use fewer animals to do it at less expense, we evaluate only a handful of chemicals each year.

Part of this is due to the process involved. In the United States, we protect private property stringently. As a result, we tend to have high barriers to intervention in commercial affairs. Part of the way this plays out in chemicals regulation is placing the burden of proof for the need for chemical information collection and evaluation on the government. This can extend the timeline and increase the cost of chemical evaluation.

Moreover, we are now aware that chemicals can interact unpredictably in human and environmental systems (read: bodies or organisms). In addition, where in the 70s the general public believed there was such a thing as a level at which no health effects might occur, the general public now acknowledges there is no level of exposure at which zero health effects can occur.

The point of all this being that, as complex as chemical evaluation was in the '70s, it is more complex now. At the same time, we have much more powerful tools. We need the impetus to investigate the use and interpretation of these tools. We need to bring TSCA into the 21st century.

There has been a lot of attention given to this issue this week. On Twitter, search the hashtag #FixTSCA or visit www.fixtsca.org to see a broad array of voices on this topic. The New York Times has hailed Congressional action on TSCA. And on the Diane Rehm show this morning, the dean of the GW Milken School of Public Health, Lynn Goldman, who has been involved in the fight to reform TSCA for over 20 years, helped to explain the significance of this important achievement [podcast here].

In view of recent events concerning Edward Snowden and some of my more recent thinking about chemicals policy in the United States, I've been trying to understand how we've reached such an uncomfortable situation in protecting Americans' Constitutional rights to privacy.  While I don't know much about privacy law, the Patriot Act, or the Constitution, I do think some ideas in chemicals regulation can help explain what's going on with the privacy debate.

I have been reading and chewing on some passages in Brickman, Jasanoff, and Ilgen's Controlling Chemicals: The Politics of Regulation in Europe and the United States, and the differences between European approaches and American approaches to chemical regulation are so striking I couldn't help but speculate whether those factors contribute to the privacy challenges we are now facing.

Since the book was written in 1985, take these thoughts with a grain of salt. However, the observation Brickman et al. made which had me thinking goes something like this: because of America's laissez faire approach to business, unparalleled levels of access to legal and administrative proceedings, and commitment to protection of individuals' rights, American chemicals policy has complexity and cost unparalleled by that in other industrialized democracies. (I try to keep these posts short, so I can't break that down further.)

The key concept in that thought making Snowden, Manning, and other issues of transparency so ironic is the commitment we make to transparency and protection of individual interests. Perhaps we are so upset and appalled by the violations of our Constitution (or at least admitted lying to Congress by NSA staff) is that we are so used to openness and privileged access afforded few of the world's other citizens to their governments. Just a thought.

So, environmental policy wonks, don't get so frustrated in the face of gridlock. Apparently, that's one of the many costs of "freedom". 😉