For a half century, the Environmental Protection Agency has been the nation’s preeminent protector of human health and the environment. Its standards for scientific processes and decisions have long been considered the gold standard. But that status is increasingly in jeopardy.
The EPA unfortunately has been neglected by Congress in recent years. Its funding has failed to keep pace with its statutory responsibilities. That needs to be remedied and fast.
The situation is grim. Lawmakers are not even taking enough time to consider the depth of the EPA’s challenges. EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan got little more than two hours to make the agency’s case to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees this year. Twenty years ago, the panels devoted two days for a top to bottom review.
The EPA continues to operate with appropriations that were less than the Biden administration asked for in 2022. Unless lawmakers act, the agency’s staffing crisis will get worse. Dr. Michal Ilana Freedhoff, assistant administrator for chemical safety and pollution prevention, said that she is short of toxicologists and other vital experts and that “staff are running on fumes.”
EPA’s underfunding has been severe. EPA spending in 1980, adjusted for inflation, was double its current level. In 2004, the EPA budget, in inflation-adjusted dollars, was 45 percent higher than it is today.
The result is a growing backlog of EPA decisions. Hundreds of new household and commercial chemicals, many of them destined for daily uses, are lined up for EPA approval as required by the Toxic Substances Control Act or TSCA. But the agency is months if not years behind and is constantly missing deadlines. Manufacturers cannot bring new innovations to market and consumers are losing out.
To fill the vacuum, many states are working on multiple issues to supplant EPA decisions with their own. The result is a patchwork of often-conflicting rules and regulations. These inconsistent standards create added expense for manufacturers, which is passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. That is the last thing Americans need now with inflation running at a 40-year high.
Also, consumers are ill-served from the perspective of public policy. While some state regulations are strict, other states’ rules are lax compared to what the EPA would demand. Consistent and effective consumer protection is in the best interest of everyone, including the companies that make the nation’s most well-known and trusted brand-name products.
These products include disinfectants and pest control products that are important for protecting public health. Environmentalists and manufacturers spent years debating and then agreeing to the Pesticide Registration Improvement Act or PRIA, which made the EPA’s system of reviewing and approving products more predictable. But that has not been the case lately. The EPA had nearly 1,000 employees in its Office of Pesticide Programs nearly a decade ago. Now, that same office has fewer than 600 employees.
Preventing the EPA from doing its work encourages states to enact new laws and regulations that are inconsistent and, equally important, not scientifically robust. Recently, the New York legislature ignored the EPA’s ongoing risk evaluations to impose strict requirements on unintentional trace ingredients in common household products, which could change the way those products are made and render them less effective.
A weakened EPA leaves businesses scrambling to navigate an ever-changing maze of state laws rather than adhering to a national standard established by the EPA.
Starving the EPA is not regulatory reform. Lack of funding does not — and will not — absolve the agency of its responsibility to administer and enforce laws. Rather, Congress must invest resources and time to understand what is and what is not working for the EPA and the industries it regulates. The country deserves a functioning agency.
Even industry representatives like me — the head of an association that represents household and commercial products — think the EPA should be fully funded under the watchful and informed eye of Congress.
Companies flourish on certainty and deserve to know what to expect and how long it will take to get their products to market. The EPA’s work must be credible, predictable, and timely, and the agency’s review processes should be shored up to ensure public confidence. Everyone wins when that happens — consumers, manufacturers, and the environment that the EPA was created to protect.
Steve Caldeira is the president and CEO of the Household & Commercial Products Association.