WASHINGTON -- Senators from both US political parties today announced a joint agreement to update the Toxic Substances Control Act to require all chemicals be screened for safety prior to entering the market.

Legislation from Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and David Vitter (R-LA) would "significantly update and improve TSCA, which has proven ineffective and is criticized by both the public health community and industry," the Congressmen said.

The Lautenberg-Vitter legislation would, for the first time, ensure that all chemicals are screened for safety to protect public health and the environment. Proponents said the bill would also offer a clearer path for new chemicals to be introduced to the market, thus removing risk for the manufacturers.

The move portends the first major expansion of environmental laws in nearly 20 years. Lautenberg has been pushing to rewrite the TSCA since 2005.

In a press release, Sen. Lautenberg said,  “Our bipartisan bill would fix the flaws with current law and ensure that chemicals are screened for safety.”

The bill would permit the EPA to test all chemicals and would give chemical manufacturers "certainty" that their products are certified as safe throughout the US,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) added.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee must vote on the bill, which is currently cosponsored by 14 other senators, half Republicans and half Democrats. The American Chemistry Council, a trade group that represents companies Dow Chemical and 3M, among others, praised the senators for compromise while providing a measured endorsement of the bill.

In contrast to existing law, the Chemical Safety Improvement Act of 2013 would:

• Require safety evaluations for all chemicals in commerce, and labeled them as either “high” or “low” priority based on potential risk to human health and the environment. For high priority chemicals, EPA must conduct further safety evaluations.
• Give the EPA the authority to transparently assess risk, determine safety, and apply any needed measures to manage risks. If a chemical is found to be unsafe, the EPA can take action ranging from labeling requirements to the full phase-out or ban of a chemical.
• Require new chemicals entering the market be screened for safety and give the EPA the authority to prohibit unsafe chemicals from entering the market.
• Permit EPA to secure necessary health and safety information from chemical manufacturers, while directing EPA to rely first on existing information to avoid duplicative testing.
• Provide clear paths to getting new chemistry on the market and protects trade secrets and intellectual property from disclosure.
• Require EPA to evaluate the risks posed to particularly vulnerable populations, such as children and pregnant women, when evaluating the safety of a chemical—a provision not included in existing law.
• Give states and local governments the opportunity to provide input on prioritization, safety assessment and the safety determination processes, requiring timely response from EPA, and the bill establishes a waiver process to allow state regulations or laws to remain in effect when circumstances warrant it.

Under current law, the EPA can call for safety testing only after evidence surfaces demonstrating a chemical may be dangerous. As a result, EPA has only been able to require testing for roughly 200 of the more than 84,000 chemicals currently registered in the United States, and has been able to ban only five dangerous substances since TSCA was first enacted in 1976.  These shortfalls led the Government Accountability Office to identify TSCA as a “high risk” area of the law in 2009.