Stakes high for TSCA low priority candidate chemical selections

This week’s announcement by the US EPA of its next set of chemicals for risk evaluation under TSCA saw half of those listed classified as low priority. However, even for these 20 substances, the stakes were high for getting the picks right, a recent conference heard. The reformed TSCA defines high priority substances as those that may present an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment because of a potential hazard and a potential route of exposure, under their conditions of use. Low priority substances, on the other hand, are those which the EPA determines, based on sufficient evidence, do not present this unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment.