Regrettable Substitutes and Unintended Consequences
In economics, there is a phenomenon called Jevon’s Paradox, where we see increased efficiency cause reduced opportunity cost, followed by increased demand, thus having the reverse effect than intended. Government policy similarly follows this paradigm of unintended consequences, including environmental regulations. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which is tasked with developing and enforcing environmental regulations, governs chemicals used commercially and new chemicals that enter the market, under the Toxic Substances Control Act. However, the EPA has historically regulated chemicals on a case-by-case basis only, instead of banning chemical classes as a whole. What this leads to is what public health experts call regrettable substitutions. There are many examples of this, including the replacement of bisphenol-A (BPA) with bisphenol-S (BPS), which is potentially even more dangerous than BPA. The fight against BPA was largely led by mothers who lamented the hormone disruptor’s presence in baby products, like bottles and pacifiers that are high contact surfaces where the chemical can easily be absorbed into the bloodstream. By banning BPA in many products, there was the adverse effect of BPS taking its place and presenting a new danger to consumers. This flaw of the regulatory structure has been brought into the spotlight by advocates and public health experts, who argue that reviewing chemicals as an entire class would prevent regrettable substitution. Another class of chemicals, per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have also produced regrettable substitutions. Initially, there were two forms of long-chain PFASs most commonly used–perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS)–which were linked to cancer among other health outcomes. The ban of PFOA and PFOS spurred the production of short-chain PFASs that are not any safer, but have been allowed because regulation simply requires new chemicals to have a distinct structure. In addition, to ban or regulate a chemical, the burden of proof is borne by the public, not the chemical industry, and they must prove it is sufficiently dangerous to be banned. Consequently, the PFASs prevalent in commercial products today–that have also leached into our environment and are now ubiquitous–are linked with endocrine disruption, developmental delays, cancers, and reproductive problems, among other health impacts. When regulators chose to pursue policy, within their calculation must be a glance into the future. In the case of chemical regulation, there must be an acknowledgment of what unintended consequences could happen in the form of regrettable substitutes flooding the market. We need to listen to the experts and evaluate chemicals by class, as well as remove the chemical industry’s influence from the regulation of chemicals. With these changes to the status quo, public health could begin to be truly protected from harmful chemicals, and hopefully, the chemical industry could be held responsible for knowingly pushing these harmful chemicals onto consumers.
