The Toxic Substances Control Act, enacted by the United States Congress in 1976, had an ambitious humanitarian goal: to protect people and their environment from harmful chemicals. Tens of thousands of industrial chemicals had entered the world market since the late 1940s, and the TSCA was one of the first legislative attempts to control their toxicity. Before this time, industrial chemicals were completely unregulated, and few had questioned whether any of them might ultimately prove harmful. TSCA granted the government the authority to track and regulate industrial chemicals in order to prevent harmful substances from finding their way into a wide range of consumer goods.
What began as an innovative caretaking program, however, failed in the ensuing decades to deliver on its promise. The failure is primarily the result of a momentous loophole in the screening guidelines of TSCA, which prioritized chemical company profits over more vital human and environmental interests. The TSCA, rather than outlining a procedure for testing older chemicals, exempted chemicals already on the market from toxicity screening and, by extension, from regulation. Consequently, over 90% of chemicals on the market today have neither been tested to determine their level of toxicity nor been studied to evaluate their impact on the environment. Even more problematic, the structure of the TSCA makes it more profitable for industry to continue manufacturing chemicals that may or may not be harmful than to develop alternative, guaranteed-safe formulas.
1. Which of the following most accurately states the purpose of the passage?
(a) To question the government’s ability to safeguard human and environmental health.
(b) To compare attitudes toward industrial chemicals in the 1940s and the 1970s.
(c) To argue that a policy regarding regulation of chemicals has not been effective.
(d) To summarize the history of US perspectives on industrial chemical regulation.
(e) To cite examples of regulatory policies that have been mostly unsuccessful.
2. It can be inferred that the author considers which of the following to be a reason the TSCA is not more effective?
(a) Tens of thousands of industrial chemicals entered the market in the 1940s.
(b) Before the TSCA, few people questioned whether chemicals might be harmful.
(c) No chemicals on the market today have been tested for toxicity.
(d) The rules of TSCA gave priority to the interests of chemical companies.
(e) The TSCA makes it unprofitable for companies to manufacture potentially toxic chemicals.
3. Which of the following can be inferred from the passage about industrial chemicals already on the market when TSCA was enacted?
(a) The ones still available today are unregulated.
(b) All of them had been formulated in the 1940s.
(c) Chemical companies knew they were harmful but continued selling them.
(d) The US had the largest number of unregulated industrial chemicals in the world.
(e) Environmental activists had long been concerned with the toxicity of unregulated chemicals.
4. Which of the following sentences represents the most logical continuation of Paragraph 2 above?
(a) Because of this, it is practically assured that any toxic chemical on the market before 1976 is still at large in the human population today.
(b) What is more, the Environmental Protection Agency is also severely lax in its oversight function.
(c) Not only this, but health researchers have also discovered an undeniable link between environmental factors and certain types of cancer.
(d) In the long term, however, human populations will be better served if manufacturers will adjust the composition of their most popular chemicals.
(e) Nevertheless, industrial chemical companies continue to enjoy yearly economic growth.
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16 Sep 2014, 02:28
