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Bergeson & Campbell, P.C.'s (B&C®) recently published Forecast 2026 includes a deep dive into what stakeholders can expect this year regarding the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), covering a comprehensive set of topics, including existing chemical risk evaluations and rulemakings, new chemical reviews, pending legal challenges, personnel and organizational changes, and much more.
In the TSCA existing chemicals program, for example, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) appears to have delayed promulgating final risk management rules on several of the "First 10" risk evaluation substances — possibly in anticipation of the outcome of litigation challenging foundational TSCA policies and interpretations. EPA also appears to have delayed prioritization and risk evaluation work outside of the work necessary to meet certain deadlines in a court-ordered consent decree, both to allow resources to be focused and, we suspect, in anticipation of both the ongoing litigation and the construction of the final risk evaluation framework rule. Once the updated framework rule is in place, we expect EPA to press ahead with trying to finish risk evaluations for the remainder of the "Next 20" prioritized chemicals.
Organizational changes have also impacted the program. Staff and management turnover has continued. Every division in EPA's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT), including its front office, lost either its Deputy Director or Director, or both, in 2025. It is our understanding that OPPT did not lose any regulatory staff to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cuts early in the year, but several staff, including some key supervisors and senior staff, elected to take the deferred resignation offers and left EPA around mid-year for retirement or other pursuits. While hiring has been frozen, the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP) (both OPPT and the Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP)) saw an influx of scientists from EPA's Office of Research and Development (ORD).
Despite new funding, new hires, and arrival of scientists from other offices, EPA's pace of determinations for new chemical substances has not yet improved. In Fiscal Year (FY) 2025, EPA received 154 Premanufacture Notices (PMN), but completed only 135, including 114 determinations and 21 withdrawn or declared invalid, meaning that EPA's queue of PMNs under review grew by 20 in FY 2025. The current Administration has made new chemicals throughput a priority, having dedicated significant effort to work through a number of backlogged Low Volume Exemptions (LVE) in the first half of the year.
Finally, although 2025 was packed with judicial activity in the TSCA space, many of those cases are still active or pending decision. We provide an in-depth review of ongoing litigation in the full Forecast 2026, which is available to download from our website: https://www.lawbc.com/2026-forecast-for-u-s-federal-and-international-chemical-regulatory-policy/.
On Tuesday, January 27, 2026, at 11:00 a.m. (EST), B&C will present "What to Expect in Chemicals Policy and Regulation and on Capitol Hill in 2026," a complimentary webinar building upon Forecast 2026's analysis of trends and key developments in 2026. We invite you to join Lynn L. Bergeson, James V. Aidala, Richard E. Engler, Ph.D., and Ryan N. Schmit as they discuss policy shifts and uncertainties expected under TSCA, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), and the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and take your questions regarding what to expect in 2026.
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