Cost of EPA’s Chemical Risk Analyses More Than Double Estimate

The EPA’s average cost to decide the risks of chemicals that US businesses use is more than twice the agency’s predictions, an increase the agency says will factor into new industry fees it will propose later this year.

The Environmental Protection Agency recently posted a document that included new information on the costs of the new type of chemical risk evaluations required under the 2016 Toxic Substances Control Act amendments. The statute required the agency, for the first time, to evaluate the health and environmental risks of chemicals made in, imported into, and used in the US and to regulate those deemed to pose an “unreasonable” chance of injury.

The average cost of those risk evaluations is $8.4 million, the agency’s document said. “EPA originally estimated the cost of existing chemical risk evaluations to be $3.7 million per chemical,” the agency told Bloomberg Law Tuesday in an emailed response to questions. The reply cited a report the agency provided Congress in 2017.

The EPA’s current per-chemical estimate to evaluate the risks of chemicals in commerce “is part of the full range of information being considered in the revised TSCA fee rule currently under development,” the agency said.

A revised rule proposing new fees that industry would pay the agency for certain chemicals-safety tasks it carries out will soon be sent to the White House Office of Management and Budget for interagency review, Mark Hartman, OPPT’s deputy director told attorneys recently. The EPA expects to finalize the rule in 2023 with the goal of having it in place by the beginning of fiscal 2024, or Oct. 1, 2023, he said.

The EPA’s top chemicals official, Michal Ilana Freedhoff, said in April at an American Chemistry Council conference that the agency expects to propose higher TSCA fees.

The EPA’s current cost estimate is based on the time and effort it has taken to complete the multiyear chemical risk evaluations for chemicals in commerce since amended TSCA, the agency said. “The current per chemical estimate should be considered an average cost based on EPA’s experience since 2016,” it said.

The EPA completed 10 risk evaluations during the Trump administration. The Biden administration, however, is revising all 10 assessments.

The revisions reflect new policies, like no longer assuming workers always have properly fitting and working personal protective equipment, and they reflect the administration’s desire to examine whether certain people, like neighbors of chemical manufacturing factories, who were omitted from the first round of analyses are exposed to enough of the chemicals that their health could be harmed.

The recently posted document that contained the chemical risk evaluation costs was the EPA’s fiscal 2021 Program Evaluations. The document offers details on how various agency programs spent their fiscal 2021 appropriations, what that funding helped the agency accomplish, and next steps.