Small Chemicals Business Group Says No to New Regulations

The Society of Chemical Manufacturers and Affiliates (SOCMA) issued a call last week for Congress "to avoid imposing large, new financial burden that would threaten their businesses."  SOCMA is concerned that several pending bills, in particular "those to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and another designed to tighten chemical security laws by mandating product substitution, could significantly add to the financial burden of complying with regulation."


Organizations like SOCMA serve the batch, custom and speciality chemical industry, which are mostly smaller and mid-size companies.  Unlike the bigger multinational companies, these smaller producers have fewer resources to deal with new requirements. 

Which is why the TSCA reform proposals on the table now have provisions to help small and medium sized businesses.  Whether they are enough or sufficiently balance the needs of specialty businesses with the needs of the public to know that chemicals have been demonstrated to be safe is still open to debate.  As SOCMA notes, there is a "high likelihood that the next Congress to convene early next year will look very different from this one."  And that could mean significant differences in what the final TSCA reform bills look like.