Toxicity: a legal analysis

John Voorhees and Lorrie Bade

Abstract

US courts have grappled with the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA or Agency) efforts to expand its authority to define toxicity and to classify toxic chemicals, hazardous substances, and hazardous waste materials for regulatory convenience. In some instances, the EPA has used these definitions and classifications in a manner beyond the traditional notions of contamination and inconsistent with ‘sound science’, determining that a substance is toxic when in actuality it is only indirectly toxic. What does this mean? Clean-up standards may hinge upon the difference between toxicity and indirect toxicity. Industry has had some success in legal challenges to EPA determinations based on indirect toxicity. EPA’s actions and court decisions regarding those actions may have a significant impact on the cost of cleaning up manufactured gas plant (MGP) sites.

Key words: indirect toxicity, toxicity

© 2007 EPP Publications Ltd

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Article code 730