FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Posted on January 30, 2026
Statement: ADAO Urges Congress to Reject House TSCA Rollback: Chemical Safety Protections, EPA Authority, and Public Health at Risk
The Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO) strongly opposes the U.S. House of Representatives’ discussion draft to amend the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which was the subject of the January 22, 2026, Subcommittee on Environment hearing, Chemicals in Commerce: Legislative Proposal to Modernize America’s Chemical Safety Law, Strengthen Critical Supply Chains, and Grow Domestic Manufacturing. This proposal is part of House Republican-led efforts to amend the 2016 Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act and has intensified nationwide opposition among environmental groups, labor advocates, medical professionals, and state officials who warn that the draft prioritizes industry speed over science-based protections. Despite being framed as modernization, the proposal would significantly weaken existing protections and, in many cases, make it impossible for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate dangerous chemicals, thereby undermining both federal and state authority to protect public health.
“ADAO urges Congress to reject legislative changes that weaken TSCA under the guise of modernization. True modernization must strengthen, not dilute, chemical safety protections, preserve the EPA’s authority to prevent harm before it occurs, and reaffirm prevention as the cornerstone of U.S. chemical policy,” said Linda Reinstein. “Weakening TSCA would make work less safe, communities less protected, and progress toward ending asbestos-caused and other chemical-induced diseases more difficult to achieve.” The discussion draft erodes core safeguards established by the bipartisan 2016 TSCA amendments that corrected decades of regulatory failure. Those reforms ensured chemical safety decisions are grounded in science, transparency, and prevention, particularly for workers, children, pregnant women, the elderly, and other vulnerable populations explicitly protected under the law. We cannot turn our backs on these critical improvements.
Of particular concern, the proposal reinforces reliance on outdated assumptions that other regulatory systems, most notably the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), adequately protect workers. OSHA has acknowledged that many permissible exposure limits are outdated and unprotective and that personal protective equipment cannot substitute for hazard elimination or engineering controls. The 2016 TSCA amendments were enacted to address these gaps, not to defer to them.
Note: The Alan Reinstein Ban Asbestos Now (ARBAN) Act, a bipartisan stand-alone bill, would permanently ban the manufacture, importation, and use of all forms of asbestos in the United States.
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