ABSTRACT
The Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 (TSCA) authorizes EPA to control the content of products to eliminate “unreasonable risks.” Over the period 1979–89 EPA dedicated an estimated seven million dollars to conducting sophisticated analyses of the costs and benefits of banning asbestos from more than thirty product categories. The analyses showed that asbestos could be banned from a number of products at low to moderate costs.
In promulgating the final asbestos rule, EPA management perceived a number of changes in the marketplace, such as the elimination of asbestos from new car brakes without noticeable increases in cost. These changes led EPA management to believe that the actual cost of substitutes would be lower than the estimates of record. In the end, EPA decided to phase out all asbestos use in covered product categories over a nine-year period and added a waiver procedure under which manufacturers could petition the agency to extend the deadlines if substitutes were not available.
The evidence shows that the economic analyses were used to categorize products containing asbestos, decide which product groupings to regulate, and divide the covered products into three groups for phased regulation based primarily on the availability of known substitutes. However, for a variety of reasons, management did not give great weight to the estimates of cost per life saved for the individual products. Here, Christine Augustyniak describes the economic analysis and shows how and to what degree the study influenced policy.
