The number of new chemicals approved for the market by federal regulators was reportedly cut in half after the passage of new federal regulations in the middle of 2016.
Wired reports that the Environmental Protection Agency effectively approved 81 new substances between the beginning of 2016 and June 22, when the Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act was signed into law.
After that date, just 39 new materials were approved through the end of the year.
The Lautenberg Act replaced the 40-year-old Toxic Substances Control Act and was largely supported by both environmental advocates and the chemical industry. It also passed with bipartisan support in Congress.
But both industry groups and the EPA warned of growing pains under the new law, which, in part, requires regulators to make affirmative safety decisions for new chemicals used in commerce.
Under the TSCA, the agency could simply drop a safety review — and thereby approve the chemical — if it felt that the substance was unlikely to pose a safety risk.
Experts urged companies to exhaustively prepare their applications for new chemicals — known as pre-manufacture notices — in order to reduce the EPA's workload, but a backlog of new applications had already formed by late last year.
Analysts warned that the trend could lead to chemical companies paring back their ambitions in hopes of receiving faster approval for new materials.
"If I were advising a client, I would tell them to only try to develop something low-hazard, because those are the only ones proceeding through right now," Rich Engler, a former EPA official now serving as an industry consultant, told Wired.
