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Dozens of CA events this weekend honor Latino Conservation Week; Kamala Harris joins Oprah Winfrey in emotional campaign event; Report finds poor working conditions in Texas clean energy industry; AI puts on a lab coat, heads to technical schools.

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Groups: U.S. Senate Chemical Bill Could "Handcuff" States

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Tuesday, April 28, 2015   

COLUMBUS, Ohio - The U.S. Senate is considering an update of the nearly 40-year old Toxic Substances Control Act, which regulates the use of chemicals in consumer products.

Supporters claim Senate Bill 697 would improve regulation, but opponents argue the devil is in the details.

Melanie Houston with the Ohio Environmental Council says while the bill is an improvement from prior versions, it still doesn't make the grade in terms of health and safety protections. She says states could lose their ability to take action on a chemical if the EPA already is examining it.

"That basically leaves a regulatory lag," she says. "It could be up to seven to 10 years where states would be essentially handcuffed from taking action to regulate chemicals at a state level, because the U.S. EPA has set it aside for review but not yet taken action on that chemical."

She adds there are other loopholes, including allowing the EPA to exempt chemicals from regulation based on a cursory review instead of a full safety examination. A markup of the bill is scheduled Tuesday in a Senate committee. A vote could soon follow.

Andy Igrejas, director of Safer Chemicals Healthy Families, says pressure has mounted to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act. He says while it's good the chemical industry came to the table, it appears as though it proposed and gathered support for reforms favorable to itself.

"There's something wrong when you have legislation that's being sold as a major public health protection, and the only people supporting it are the very industry that is supposed to be regulated by it," says Igrejas. "Yet that's what we have."

The bill's bipartisan cosponsors include Ohio Senators Sherrod Brown and Rob Portman. Houston believes they are on the wrong track.

"We have to be really strong in principle on fighting for a bill that gets the job done when it comes to public health," says Houston. "We want to challenge our senators here in our great state of Ohio to also stand up for public health, and for a bill that will get the job done completely."

The nonpartisan group Maplight says Senator Portman was a top recipient of cash from chemical companies, pulling in over $79,000 in donations in 2014. The group says senators who are cosponsors of the bill have received, on average, nearly 70 percent more money from the industry than those who are not sponsoring it.


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