New amendments to the Toxic Substances Control Act may include asbestos legislation, giving the EPA much more authority to regulate the well-known carcinogen.

The proposed bill would strengthen an existing law called the Toxic Substances Control Act. Originally passed in 1972, the TSCA gave the EPA authority to regulate industrial chemicals.

Critics of the act have often complained it doesn’t give the EPA enough power. The Act has required the agency to consider the effects of its regulations on industrial innovation and profit. It has also required the agency to consider chemical products safe until proven dangerous.

Under the Act, EPA has had the authority to ask companies to test chemicals, but it has not had the authority to compel such testing.

Critics fault these weaknesses for leaving holes in asbestos legislation that have allowed industry to continue manufacturing asbestos products.

While heavily regulated, asbestos is not completely banned in the U.S. The Environmental Protection Agency tried to ban all asbestos-containing products in 1989. But manufacturers challenged that ban in court, and by 1991 it had been overturned.

The problem with the EPA’s attempted ban originated in the terms of the TSCA. The court found that in enacting its asbestos ban, the EPA had not considered the economic effects of the ban, as required by the TSCA.

Strengthening Asbestos Legislation

The new asbestos legislation may make a difference in how much authority the EPA has to regulate asbestos products. Under the new legislation, the agency would no longer have to consider the potential economic effects when it decides whether or not to ban a certain chemical.

Moreover, the law would also require the EPA to certify that a chemical is safe before it can be sold – upending the older safe-until-proven-dangerous presumption.

The proposed law has a surprising amount of support from industry. In the absence of regulation left by the older and weaker TSCA, some states have passed their own asbestos legislation, creating a patchwork of different requirements that have been difficult for industry to keep up with.

Industry organizations say that more centralized regulation from the EPA would make it easier for companies to sell the same products in different states.

The Danger of Asbestos Cancer

Asbestos is a naturally-occurring substance made of six different minerals. These minerals join to form tiny fibers that can become airborne. If inhaled, these fibers can find their way into a person’s lungs and lodge in the tissue inside them.

Since the fibers are too large for the cells of the immune system to handle, the body attacks them by building up scar tissue. The buildup may continue over the course of many years, until in some cases the lungs finally cease to function.

In addition to scarring, asbestos exposure can cause cancer. Fibers lodged in the pleura, the double-layered membrane that surrounds the lungs, can lead to mesothelioma, a type of asbestos cancer that is typically fatal within one to four years of diagnosis.

Since the original TSCA didn’t give the EPA the authority to completely ban the material, new asbestos-containing products continue to be made and used, placing individuals in the U.S. at risk for asbestos exposure.