New Bill Introduced in June 2011 Would Allow NIH to Ban 10 Chemicals per Year

by Eckhart, MD

(CNN) -- A new bill could alter the landscape of chemical regulation in the United States by empowering researchers to take swift action against the most potentially harmful chemicals in use today.

The bill, to be introduced later this month, would give the director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and a panel of experts selected by the director, the power to ban up to 10 chemicals from commerce each year by categorizing them as being of high concern.

Those chemicals would become unlawful to use 24 months after receiving that designation.

Among the chemicals that could be subject to a ban is bisphenol A, or BPA, a hormone-disrupting substance widely used in plastics that has been the target of controversy in recent months.

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The bill is to be introduced by Rep. Jim Moran, D-Virginia, and Sen. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, later this month.

The fate of the legislation, though, is far from certain. It will have to make its way through committee in both the Republican-controlled House and the Senate, where Democrats have a small majority.

CNN received an advance copy of the bill*, called the Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals Exposure Elimination Act of 2011, which has a self-executing statute under which the listing of high concern by the NIEHS automatically would outlaw the chemical or class of chemicals, and would require each regulatory agency to take action to prohibit the chemical.

*Editor's note: This is an advanced draft of the bill. It could change before being introduced.

If the bill were to become law, the NIEHS, a part of the National Institutes of Health, could have chemicals outlawed much sooner than otherwise possible.

It represents a dramatic change in approach to regulating chemicals and points both to the frustrations many have with the glacial pace of regulatory agencies and to the mounting scientific evidence available to scientists at the National Institutes of Health indicting endocrine-disrupting chemicals in some of the developed world's gravest health problems.

The chemicals, which can be either naturally occurring or artificial, are found in everyday products like detergents, flame retardants, foods and cosmetics. Researchers have found they interfere with the function of hormones and could adversely affect human health.

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NIEHS conducts original research into this class of chemicals, and funds additional research at laboratories across the country. Their scientists are widely considered to be most familiar with the latest research, but while they can inform the regulatory agencies, they have no regulatory power.

This bill would change that.