The Toxic Substances Control Act was enacted in the 1970s, but since then has proven mostly ineffective at regulating toxic chemicals. A bill updating TSCA is now moving through Congress. If its provisions go into effect, the American public should know which chemicals are safe in about 800 years or so. Wait ... what?

“Under either bill — the one that has [already] passed the House or the one that's passed the Senate — the pace of reviews will be pretty glacial compared to the amount of chemicals that are in commerce,” explains Andy Igrejas, director of Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families.

The Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 lists about 84,000 chemicals. The House bill calls for EPA to review and potentially restrict at least 10 of those chemicals each year. The Senate bill has an even weaker schedule: 25 chemicals over eight years.

So, if the official TSCA inventory is around 84,000 and EPA reviews 10 chemicals per year — “at best,” Igrejas says — that’s 840 years to review the whole thing.

“The math of it is ridiculous,” Igrejas says.

Most people agree, Igrejas notes, that the official tally of chemicals in commerce — 84,000 — is a bit high. The true number is probably half that or maybe less, he explains. “So it’s a little less stark than those [official] statistics make it sound. But it is still a problem,” he says.

One of the key points of contention in the new bills is whether EPA can require testing only for the chemicals currently under review, or whether it can require testing of a batch of chemicals to decide whether they should be reviewed.

Earlier versions of the reform legislation called for a much more aggressive review schedule that could look at batches of thousands of chemicals. The chemical industry and others kept blocking that effort, however, resulting in legislation mandating a limited set of reviews.

“They would still be meaningful compared to the status quo,” Igrejas says, “because if EPA reviewed chemicals that are a problem right now and really looked at all the uses of the chemical and either banned the chemical or restricted its uses to a few things where it's really necessary, that would be potentially significant progress. ... But measured against the problem, it's certainly not enough progress.”

Still, after decades of working ceaselessly to stop EPA regulation of chemicals, the industry was at least willing to come to the table, Igrejas says. Three things changed in the country and the world to bring this about.

First, state governments started to fill the void and began to review and restrict certain chemicals, Igrejas says. And the pace of that state activity accelerated from a couple of chemicals here and there to more comprehensive laws getting passed in several states.

Then there was a phenomenon the industry calls ‘retail regulation,’ Igrejas explains, in which Walmart, Target and other large companies responded to consumer demands to avoid certain toxic chemicals and started to restrict them voluntarily.

Lastly, Europe overhauled its chemical regulation in ways that started to set a new standard for the world, so a lot of US trading partners around the world began following Europe’s lead, instead of the United States.

“All three of these things made the chemical industry say, ‘Wait a second, we'd rather have one stop shopping in Washington for how chemicals are getting reviewed than all of these changes out there in the world,’” Igrejas says.

If and when the current legislation passes, we will let you know how in, oh, 500 years or so how it has worked. Stay tuned.

This story is based on an interview that aired on PRI's Living on Earth with Steve Curwood