President Obama’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this morning touted EPA’s “deregulation” of the artificial sweetener saccharin as a positive development for America. Inadvertently, the president made EPA look silly for having regulated the stuff in the first place. The use of this example was also unfortunate because EPA’s decision to deregulate had little consequence. Here’s the back story.
Beginning in the 1970s, scientists discovered that if you feed large quantities of saccharin to rats, they develop cancer. As a result, products containing saccharin were required to carry a warning label, and saccharin went on the lists of “hazardous substances” potentially subject to the Superfund toxic waste cleanup and hazardous waste regulations, as did all carcinogens. This result seemed counter-intuitive and industry lobbyists working against Superfund’s renewal in 1984-87 ridiculed EPA with the question: “If I spill a truckload of Tab, do I create a Superfund site?” Of course the answer was no. EPA did not have the time, the money, or grotesque lack of judgment to even consider pursuing such idiosyncratic problems, even if they had occurred.
Meanwhile, saccharin got a lot of bad publicity, and manufacturers of saccharin hustled to perform studies showing that in the amounts consumed by humans, the sweetener was safe. But saccharin, apparently through some administrative oversight of the Bush EPA, remained on the Superfund list. In the fall of 2010, Obama’s EPA delisted it, in response to a petition from the Calorie Control Council.
The listing had no significant practical implications for anyone in industry, and the delisting was so obscure that almost no one knew about it until it came up in the president’s op-ed. If people threw out saccharin products for any reason, government officials did not come swooping down to prosecute them for violating hazardous waste laws. If you didn't hear about the rush to hire more workers in late 2010 after the saccharin burden was lifted, that's because there wasn't one. Saccharin remained one of only a handful of examples where a chemical, previously thought dangerous, was later deemed not dangerous. In fact, this problem was so negligible that although John Graham, George W. Bush's regulatory czar, used it as an example of regulation run amok, even he did not think the burden on business was great enough to bother doing anything about its presence on the EPA lists.
Moral of the story: Deregulators have their urban legends, but telling them over and over does not make them so.
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Rena Steinzor | January 18, 2011
President Obama’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this morning touted EPA’s “deregulation” of the artificial sweetener saccharin as a positive development for America. Inadvertently, the president made EPA look silly for having regulated the stuff in the first place. The use of this example was also unfortunate because EPA’s decision to deregulate had little consequence. Here’s the […]
Sidney A. Shapiro | January 14, 2011
Republican legislators have been scheming for years about ways that they can slow down, if not stop, needed health, safety and environmental regulations. But their latest effort, though creative, is perhaps their most ill-conceived. They’re calling it “The REINS Act” (in the last Congress, H.R. 3765 sponsored by Rep. Geoff Davis (R-KY), S. 3826 sponsored by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC)), […]
Holly Doremus | January 13, 2011
Cross-posted from Legal Planet. If EPA is afraid of the new Congress, you wouldn’t know it from today’s news. Assistant Administrator Peter Silva issued the Obama administration’s first veto of a Clean Water Act section 404 permit. This veto, which has been working its way through the cumbersome process for more than a year (see […]
Alexandra Klass | January 13, 2011
The report of the President’s Gulf Oil Spill Commission answered some questions and raised others. But one thing still puzzles: Why didn’t the Gulf Oil Spill start a national conversation about our dependence on oil development and the need for renewable energy? At first, it appeared it might, but the focus quickly turned to reforming […]
Rena Steinzor | January 11, 2011
Despite its strong condemnation of the industry-wide problems that caused last year’s BP Oil Spill, the report today from the President’s commission waivered on a crucial subject: it significantly embraced the essentially self-regulatory British “Safety Case” model of regulation that industry and its consultants have been promoting. So while the commission has done some terrific work, one […]
Daniel Farber | January 10, 2011
Cross-posted from Legal Planet. It’s often said that the Clean Air Act is an inappropriate way to address climate change. It would undoubtedly be desirable for Congress to pass new legislation on the subject, but the Clean Air Act is a more appropriate vehicle than many people seem to realize. There are six common misconceptions […]
Victor Flatt | January 6, 2011
On Dec. 30, the EPA announced that it was partially disapproving the Texas State Implementation Plan (SIP) that would not allow it to issue PSD permits for greenhouse gases that were now “subject to regulation.” Continuing its resistance to all things EPA, Texas filed a request for an emergency stay of the disapproval in the DC […]
Matthew Freeman | January 5, 2011
One of the top agenda items for the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives will be pressing an anti-regulatory bill they’re calling the REINS Act. The bill would subject newly minted regulations protecting health, safety, the environment and more to a requirement that Congress adopt resolutions of approval within 90 days of the […]
Ben Somberg | January 5, 2011
Representative Darrell Issa, the incoming chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has made his views on regulations fairly clear. Earlier this week, for example, he scored headlines when his office gave out a document publicizing the issues his committee will take up. From the document: “The committee will examine how overregulation has […]