How Will You Explain the Impact of the New Law to Your CEO?
Chemical registration in the U.S. just got more complicated and expensive.
President Obama recently signed into law the new Frank Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act of 2015 (CSA), which replaces the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) of 1976. The requirements under this law become in effect immediately.
What does this mean for your company?
- Possible business disruption likely due to holds on recently submitted and future pre-manufacturing notifications (PMN) for new chemicals and reporting significant new uses for existing chemicals (SNURs);
- Additional cost due to expensive laboratory animal and environmental testing for existing and new chemicals;
- Restrictions on product use if EPA concludes the uses are unsafe;
- Additional hurdles to retain confidentiality of business information (CBI);
- An increase in fines and criminal penalties for non-compliance; and
- Other impacts depending on your product portfolio.
What to do now?
- Know the law by having your legal department and compliance organization study the new requirements or hire experts that can explain these changes to you;
- Evaluate the impact on your company by comparing the new requirements to your existing TSCA program, evaluating the status of current and future registrations;
- Assess the level of hazard and exposure information that is currently in-place for your products and define data gaps; and
- Develop an implementation plan to coincide with implementation dates of the new CSA.
Points to consider when explaining these new requirements to company management:
- Notify senior management of the new requirements, which can be provided jointly by your legal and compliance departments and the corporate risk management department…seek help from consultants as needed;
- Express the impact in business terms as you know them today, such as factors that will impact time to market, growth and cost of compliance; e.g.,
- The length of time for registrations under CSA is undetermined and could slow new product launch
- The cost of additional testing needs to be rationalized with profitability
- Use restrictions would exclude markets
- CBI may not be retained as confidential
- Highlight the penalties for non-compliance;
- Provide a high-level plan and path forward; and
- Communicate progress regularly.
ERM is the world’s leading sustainability firm with over 60 compliance experts in the U.S. and over 170 compliance experts globally. ERM’s product stewardship and TSCA experts can assist if you have questions about the new law or need TSCA support, please contact:
John Phillips
Tel: +1 989 859 1835 Email: john.phillips@erm.com
Kate Sellers
Tel: +1 617 646 7809 Email: kate.sellers@erm.com
