One-Fifth of Chemicals Are Kept Secret from U.S. Consumers

Nearly 20 percent of the 84,000 chemicals in commercial use in the United States are kept secret from consumers and virtually all public officials under a little-known federal provision designed to protect trade secrets, according to the Washington Post. Even though manufacturers acknowledge that many of the chemicals could pose a “substantial risk” to public health or the environment, the companies are not required to reveal them to consumers or state regulators. Under provisions of the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, the identities of the 17,000 secret chemicals are known to only a handful of employees of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency who are prohibited from identifying the chemicals to other federal officials, state health and environmental regulators, emergency service personnel, and the public. The chemical companies say the secrecy is necessary to protect proprietary chemical formulas. But the Post reports that momentum is growing in the Obama administration and Congress to reduce the number of secret chemicals when Congress rewrites toxic substance regulations this year for the first time in a generation. “It’s impossible to run an effective regulatory program when so many of these chemicals are secret,” said an official of the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization.