INSIGHT: US vote could alter key chems debate

02 November 2006 15:06  [Source: ICIS news]

By Joe Kamalick

 

WASHINGTON (ICIS news)--International control over US chemical industry process and product decisions could be markedly advanced if Democrats win majority control of the US Congress next week, according to legislative records and industry officials.

 

A shift from Republican to Democrat control in the US House and possibly in the Senate would impact a range of issues crucial to US chemicals, including site security legislation and access to offshore energy resources.

 

A Democrat win also will likely mean an immediate course change in how Congress would align US environmental laws with the 2001 Stockholm convention on persistent organic pollutants (POPs).

 

The Stockholm treaty immediately banned twelve persistent pollutants that included DDT and other pesticides, certain industrial chemicals and some by-products. None of the so-called “dirty dozen” pollutants is still manufactured or used in the US.

 

The US government as well as chemical industry and environmental groups support the Stockholm agreement and want US laws such as the Toxic Substances Control Act amended to comply with the treaty. However, there is disagreement on how that is to be done and, in particular, what criteria will be used to ban or restrict other chemicals in the future.

 

Legislation advanced in Congress this year, known as the Gillmor bill after its sponsor, Representative Paul Gillmor (Republican-Ohio), would give US regulators considerable leeway in implementing any future chemical bans agreed to by the more than 100 other governments that have ratified the Stockholm agreement.

 

Under the Gillmor bill, future chemicals targeted for elimination under the international Stockholm convention would be evaluated for US action on a cost/benefit basis. This would enable the US to authorise continued if limited use of a targeted chemical if in US eyes its benefits outweigh its risk to the environment.

 

The Gillmor measure also would pre-empt state law on POPs chemicals, meaning that US chemicals manufacturers and those who use chemicals targeted under the Stockholm treaty would face only federal restrictions and not a plethora of varying and conflicting state statutes.

 

The Gillmor bill was passed out of committee in the House on a strictly partisan vote, pushed forward by the Republican majority. It did not come to a vote before the full House, and the Stockholm treaty issue is not likely to be considered again until the new Congress convenes in January - perhaps under Democrat control.

 

If Democrats win control of the House in next Tuesday’s vote, it is likely that the Gillmor bill will be out of contention, replaced instead by a bill sponsored by Representative Hilda Solis (Democrat-California). 

 

The Solis measure would have the US adopt the Stockholm treaty’s standard for banning other chemicals, a criteria that turns on a target chemical’s threat to human health and the environment rather than its secondary benefits to society.

 

In addition, the Solis measure would allow individual states to enact POPs restrictions more stringent than those in the Solis bill itself.

 

When the Solis bill was introduced earlier this year, the American Chemistry Council said it “would force the US to adopt the decisions of an unelected international body under the [Stockholm] treaty.” Council president Jack Gerard warned that decisions made out of US hands would “affect American jobs and interests.”

 

Mike Walls, the council’s manager for regulatory affairs, said passage of the Solis bill would be tantamount to the US “giving up its sovereign right to regulate chemicals to protect its citizens.”

 

The outcome of next Tuesday’s elections could indeed bring a shift in the balance of power in Washington that in turn could have a decades-long, perhaps indefinite impact on US chemicals manufacturing.

By: Joe Kamalick
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