A framework for unreasonable risk in the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to put three ingredients of a concept of unreasonable risk into a common framework. The ingredients are: baseline or existing information. the characteristics of the test or combination of tests, and the valuation of the costs and benefits of the various control options. The framework permits systematic consideration of the cost of testing and the value of new information from testing. I will focus directly on some aspects of the cost and incompleteness of information, but I will leave out others or just touch upon them as they go beyond my purpose here. Let me mention from the start that I do not think that it is always necessary to know very much about each of these three ingredients before making a finding of "presents an unreasonable risk" (this finding in Section 6a of TSCA leads to precautionary regulation) or "may present an unreasonable risk" (this finding in Section 4a leads to testing.) When the costs of information are taken into account. the framework suggests procedures that operate on highly incomplete information.

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