Hazardous and toxic substance regulation
Hazardous and toxic substance regulation encompasses a framework of legally enforceable rules designed to protect public health, worker safety, and the environment from the dangers posed by harmful chemicals. These regulations have emerged in response to the environmental and health challenges associated with industrialization, particularly as societal awareness of these issues grew throughout the 20th century. Key areas of concern include the health of the general population, occupational safety, and the integrity of food and water supplies.
In the United States, the regulation process involves multiple federal agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which work together to create and enforce applicable laws. Important legislation includes the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) for waste management, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) for chemical safety, and the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) to ensure clean drinking water. Internationally, agreements like the Basel and Stockholm Conventions aim to address the transboundary movement and regulation of hazardous materials.
Overall, the regulation of hazardous substances is a complex interplay of science, policy, and public involvement, striving to balance industrial benefits with health and environmental protection. Understanding these regulations is crucial for navigating the ongoing challenges posed by toxic substances in our society.
Hazardous and toxic substance regulation
DEFINITION: Legally enforceable rules pertaining to substances that pose a threat to people, animals, or the environment because of their chemical, physical, or biological properties
The regulation of hazardous and toxic substances is necessary in order to protect people and the environment from the by-products of industrialization. Policymakers must find a balance between safeguarding against undesirable health or environmental effects and reaping the benefits of the activities that produce such hazards.
The survival of the human species is inseparable from the preservation of the environment. This concern may be divided into three categories: the health of the general population, occupational hazards, and the availability of food and water supplies that are pure and free from pollutants. Within these categories, industrial development has created new problems and environmental pressures, even as technological advances improve the ability to detect, study, and analyze environmental changes.
Since ancient times humans have been concerned with issues surrounding public health. The most common concerns before the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were related to food and water supplies. Tasks involving occupational hazards were left for slaves and the lower classes and did not, therefore, receive much recognition. After the Industrial Revolution, contact with occupational hazards and toxic substances became much more commonplace.
By the early twentieth century, conditions had worsened for the average working person, and those not faced with occupational hazards were beginning to feel the effects of an industrialized society that gave rise to hazardous by-products and toxic waste. Consciousness of environmental problems began to increase, but the rate of industrial development outstripped societal awareness of the hazards such development was creating.
Although Congress made attempts to regulate the hazardous and toxic wastes being generated in the United States from mining, agriculture, and industry, progress was slow because there was little public interest in the situation. Awareness of the negative impact of industrialization substantially increased during the 1960s as environmental activists such as Barry Commoner and Rachel Carson succeeded in publicizing issues relating to the deterioration of the environment. Public interest reached a peak with the celebration of the first Earth Day in 1970, and Congress began to respond to public pressure by strengthening the laws that had previously been passed to regulate air and water pollution.
Efforts to decrease hazardous and levels in the were relatively ineffective until August 2, 1978, when New York State officials ordered the emergency evacuation of 239 families living within two blocks of the Love Canal chemical in Niagara Falls. Headlines throughout the nation declared Love Canal the largest human-made environmental disaster in decades, and Americans began paying attention to the issue of hazardous and toxic wastes. The public held policymakers accountable for the disaster and the prevention of similar occurrences in the future.
Development of US Legislation
The US regulatory style is considered to be one of open conflict, with interest groups, various media, legislators, and the courts all playing important roles in the development of laws. Policymakers must also rely on the consensus of scientists in understanding the risks and magnitude of problems involving hazardous and toxic materials. This reliance complicates and considerably slows the regulation process. Policymakers must also make tough decisions on the health benefits versus economic costs of controlling hazardous and toxic wastes.
This difficult task of creating legislation that works to protect the environment and the health of citizens in a hazardous society can be broken down into a four-step process: creating a law, putting the law to work, creating a regulation, and enforcing the law. The collaboration of Congress, government agencies, and societal awareness and responsibility is needed to create effective legislation.
To create new legislation, a member of Congress must propose a bill, which, if approved by both the House of Representatives and the Senate and signed by the president, becomes a new law. The act is codified by the House of Representatives and published in the United States Code. To put the law to work, regulations for the law must be created by government agencies authorized by Congress. Regulations are rules about the law, specifying what is legal and what is not. To create a regulation, the authorized government agency, usually the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the case of hazardous and toxic substances, determines the need to form a regulation. The regulation is proposed on the Federal Register, and members of the public are allowed to provide input in the form of comments and suggested modifications. Revisions to the regulation may be made accordingly. Once a completed regulation is finished, it is published in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). Twice a year, each agency publishes a comprehensive report that describes all the regulations it is working on or has recently finished. Laws and regulations are enforced by the government agency that put them into effect.
Important US Legislation
The responsibility for regulating and enforcing hazardous materials laws in the United States is primarily split among a few federal regulatory agencies. There is some overlap between the fields that regulate hazardous and toxic materials. Federal governmental agencies that are involved in regulating hazardous and toxic substances are the EPA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and the Department of Transportation (DOT).
Several environmental laws affect hazardous and toxic materials policy in the United States. The Occupational Safety and Health Act, passed in 1970, provides standards of allowable to toxic chemicals in the workplace. This law establishes occupational exposure limits for hundreds of toxic and hazardous substances. The act also establishes labeling standards for equipment, standards for personal protection, and requirements for the health of workers. With passage of the act, OSHA and the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) were created. The 1972 amendments to the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) established a regulatory program for the EPA to control the manufacture of potentially harmful pesticides. This legislation was created to prevent the adverse environmental effects posed by new pesticides and to ensure safety standards for people using pesticides.
The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) of 1974 was established to protect and drinking-water sources from contamination by hazardous chemicals. The act sets two levels of standards to limit the amount of contamination that might be found in drinking water: primary standards with a maximum level (MCL) to protect human health and secondary standards that relate to color, taste, smell, and other physical characteristics. The Hazardous Materials Transportation Act (HMTA) of 1975 provides a high level of environmental protection during transportation managed by the DOT. By requiring special packing and routing, the act ensures the careful shipment of hazardous substances.
The 1976 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and its amendments deal with the ongoing management of solid wastes throughout the United States. With RCRA, a “cradle-to-grave” approach to hazardous waste management was introduced that was designed to protect groundwater supplies by focusing on the treatment, storage, and disposal of such wastes. RCRA focuses on five main areas for hazardous waste management: identification and classification of hazardous waste; requirements for generators of hazardous waste to identify themselves so that hazardous waste activities can be tracked and standards of operation for generators can be established; adoption of standards for the transportation of hazardous wastes; standardization of treatment, storage, and disposal facilities; and provisions for enforcement of the standards with a program of legal penalties for noncompliance. RCRA classifies waste materials based on four characteristic properties: ignitability, corrosivity, reactivity, and toxicity. The need to clean up abandoned toxic waste sites such as Love Canal, which RCRA did not address, gave rise to the of 1980, widely known as Superfund, and its amendments, including the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA) of 1986.
The Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) of 1976 requires that all chemicals produced in or imported into the United States be tested, regulated, and screened for toxic effects prior to commercial manufacture. This law bans the manufacture of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and regulates asbestos. The EPA works with other federal agencies under this law to in the gaps of the other acts that attempt to manage hazardous materials. Additional laws under which the EPA acts include the Clean Air Act (CAA) and amendments and the Clean Water Act (CWA) and amendments.
International Regulatory Efforts
A host of international agreements and guidelines shape national and regional hazardous and toxic substances regulations around the world. The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, for example, was adopted in 1989 to keep developed countries from dumping their hazardous wastes in developing countries. It addresses the transport of hazardous wastes among countries and illegalizes such transport without prior informed consent. Similarly, the Waigani Convention to Ban the Importation into Forum Countries of Hazardous and Radioactive Wastes and to Control the Transboundary Movements and Management of Hazardous Wastes Within the South Pacific Region was adopted in 1995 to halt the practice of waste traders of using the South Pacific region as a dump for hazardous and nuclear wastes. The convention also provides for the environmentally responsible management and disposal of existing wastes in this region.
The Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade, adopted in 1998, facilitates the environmentally sound management of severely restricted formulations and other extremely hazardous chemicals by requiring countries to share information regarding these substances. Exporters must supply information to importing countries and must abide by the importers’ wishes. The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, adopted in 2001, restricts and ultimately prohibits the production, use, import, and export of bioaccumulative and environmentally persistent chemicals such as PCBs, furans, dioxins, and Dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT). The Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management, a policy framework designed to foster safe practices in chemical production and use worldwide, was adopted in 2006.
To minimize the likelihood of hazardous and toxic materials transport accidents that could harm people or property or damage the environment, the United Nations Economic and Social Council developed the U.N. Recommendations on the Transport of Dangerous Goods. The council administers regional agreements regarding hazardous and toxic materials transport and works to keep various nations’ regulatory systems from impeding the flow of trade. Following the 1992 Earth Summit, at which the harmonization of chemical classification and labeling was identified as an international priority, the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals (GHS) was created to facilitate international trade, transport, and management of hazardous and toxic substances. Various modes of transport have their own regulatory schemes, notably the International Air Transport Association Dangerous Goods Regulations, the International Maritime Dangerous Goods Code, and the Regulations Concerning the International Carriage of Dangerous Goods by Rail.
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