Interest Group Use of the Toxic Substance Control Act : To Create New Environmental Regulations

A recent effort by a coalition of national environmental interest groups to create a new environmental health regulation illustrates the complex nature of this method of influencing the federal regulatory system. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), with the cooperation of several other environmental groups, petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2007 to ban certain types of air fresheners. This action was only the first step in a lengthy legal process. Later, the NRDC used the Toxic Substance Control Act Section 26 to request that the U.S. EPA remove these products from the market. This section allows any member of the public to request the U.S. EPA to take action to restrict the sale of products containing a potentially harmful substance. While this case is still pending, it demonstrates that new environmental regulations are frequently the product of a protracted, multi-stage process. Environmental groups will initially use legal procedures to request bans on potentially harmful products, and later use the courts to force the creation of new compromise federal regulations