While Washington state has a policy and rule to phase out persistent toxic chemicals, the state regulatory agencies, with limited exception, lack the regulatory framework to act quickly to ban the sale of products containing these chemicals or others that threaten human health. State agencies derive most of their authority from federal laws that focus not on preventing pollution but on regulating it by limiting discharges into water and controlling emissions from smokestacks.

Because they are not set up to eliminate dangerous chemicals in products, state agencies have been forced to seek assistance from the state legislature to ban specific chemicals, such as PBDEs. The Departments of Ecology and Health, through Ecology’s program on persistent toxic chemicals, have sought restrictions on mercury and PBDEs. The program’s record so far: despite an eight-year history, it has won legislative approval to restrict only one chemical, mercury. This chemical-by-chemical approach is clearly not the road to timely solutions for toxic problems.

The Washington State Department of Agriculture does have clear authority to ban pesticides that harm health or the environment, and it has used this authority in the past to address particularly hazardous situations. What it lacks, however, is a framework to assess the potential hazards of pesticides and eliminate those that are likely to cause harm. The agency requires registration of pesticides used in the state but does not conduct its own assessment of toxicity unless there is already evidence of severe harm.

Taken as a whole, Washington’s agencies have no clear path forward for assessing what chemicals are too dangerous to appear in products. The Department of Ecology’s persistent toxic chemicals program and the Department of Agriculture’s pesticide registration program are a far cry from the regulatory framework needed to keep toxic chemicals out of products.