Whatever window of opportunity exists to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act is closing. This is not only because the mid-term elections are fast approaching, or that there are too few legislative days left this session, or even that Congress is polarized and achieving passage of complicated chemical legislation seems intuitively beyond reach.

It is also because the emergence of chemical management frameworks like the EU’s Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals, Korea REACH, and Canada’s Chemicals Management Plan; state programs like California’s Safer Consumer Products Regulations; private regulatory, stewardship, and retailer initiatives; and the inevitable chemical deselection that is underway as an outgrowth of these developments have diffused the urgency and perhaps even the need for TSCA reform.

Originally published in The Environmental Forum, May/June 2014.