Yesterday, EPA announced its first proposed ban of a new chemical under the amended TSCA (Frank R. Lautenberg Act, Pub. L. No. 114-182 (2016)), which, among other changes, mandated  EPA risk assessments of all high-priority substances including chemicals already in commerce. Today’s proposed rule would ban trichloroethylene (“TCE”) for use in dry cleaning and aerosol spray degreasers for both commercial and consumer use by prohibiting its manufacture, processing and distribution. TCE has been commonly used in various degreasers since 1925.

As we previously blogged about (EPA Prioritizes Asbestos for Review Under Newly Revised TSCA and New Amendments To TSCA Invigorate Chemical Regulatory Regime And Empower EPA), under the amended TSCA if a chemical is found to present an “unreasonable risk” to human health or the environment, EPA must take regulatory action within two years to address the identified risks. The rule announced yesterday represents the first time in over 20 years that EPA has proposed restricting a chemical substance under TSCA. The proposed ban is based on a pre-amendment 2014 analysis from EPA which found that TCE posed significant risks to workers. Given that the study had already been performed in 2014, this ban was “easy low hanging fruit” for EPA to implement.

We should expect more bans on previously-studied chemicals in the near future.