On January 24, AMWA submitted a comment letter to EPA regarding possible approaches for identifying potential candidate chemicals for the agency’s prioritization process under the Toxic Substances Control Act as amended by the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act (TSCA). TSCA assesses and regulates new chemicals entering into the market, as well as the distribution and use of chemicals already available.
The letter encouraged EPA to focus on potential drinking water contaminants in this identification phase, generally referred to as the "pre-prioritization process." This process is the step before the codified initial prioritization under TSCA, which requires EPA to designate at least 20 high-priority substances for further risk evaluation and 20 low-priority substances, which do not require further evaluation. These designations must be made no later than by December 22, 2019.
The agency presented six different methods as possible approaches. EPA has made it clear that any one method or a combination of multiple methods could be used. The agency held a public meeting on December 11, 2017 to put forward and discuss these approaches and gave the public until January 25, 2018 to submit comments.
At the December 11 meeting EPA stated the stakeholder engagement for TSCA’s pre-prioritization process would conclude in June 2018.
AMWA’s comments steered away from selecting which methods EPA should use, but encouraged EPA to explicitly define key terms and methodologies listed within the discussion document provided and to outline the agency’s specific data needs for the prioritization process.