Thirty Years is a Long Time

The rules that regulate the way chemicals are managed in this country are more than 30 years old.  It's time to modernize our nation's chemicals management system.

Ensuring the safety of our products - while maintaining the confidence of consumers - is the single most important goal of the consumer products industry.  Product safety is the foundation of consumer trust, and our industry devotes enormous resources to ensure the safe use of our products.

Consumer product companies support steps to improve the confidence in the safety of substances used to manufacture consumer products and packaging and to promote even greater innovation.  Improvements to our nation's Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) should set priorities, ensure that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has timely and adequate information on use and exposure, leverage ingredient or chemical management programs undertaken by other nations, promote innovation, integrate the patchwork quilt of laws governing product safety, and establish clear deadlines.

In particular, Congress should direct the EPA to indentify "priority" substances based upon hazard and exposure, work with the consumer products industry to ensure that EPA has adequate and timely information on use and exposure, and should revisit and clarify EPA authorities to manage substance that pose risks to public health.

A lot has changed in thirty years.  American consumers deserve a modern system.