On February 24, EPA announced a new effort “to modernize the process and bring innovative science to the review of new chemicals.” In addition, the effort is expected to “increase the transparency of the human health and ecological risk assessment process.” The Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP) is collaborating on this effort with the Agency’s Office of Research and Development (ORD) and other federal entities including the National Toxicology Program at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
The draft Strengthening the Science and Process to Evaluate New Chemicals Under TSCA; TSCA New Chemicals Collaborative Research Program: Problem Statement, Vision and Action Plan was released for public comment on March 9. Written comments will be accepted through April 26, 2022. In addition, stakeholders may comment at a virtual public meeting on April 20 and 21, 2022. Instructions for registering for the meeting are available here.
EPA explains that the Collaborative Research Program (CRP) “will refine existing approaches and develop and implement new approach methodologies (NAMs) to ensure the best available science is used in TSCA new chemical evaluations.” Components of this effort include:
- Updating the methodology for using data from analogous chemicals to determine potential risks from new chemicals where health effects data on the new substance are not available.
- Updating and augmenting the models used for predicting a chemical’s physical-chemical properties and environmental fate/transport, hazard, exposure, and toxicokinetics.
- Developing a decision support tool to integrate the information streams used in new chemical risk assessments into a final risk assessment.
The docket for this effort is EPA-HQ-OPPT-2022-0218.