Washington, D.C. -- Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Ranking Member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, issued the statement below following the Committee's hearing on S. 697, the Udall-Vitter TSCA bill.

Senator Boxer said: "The hearing today exposed the breadth and depth of opposition to the Udall-Vitter TSCA bill, S. 697. The chemical industry is largely isolated in its unequivocal support for the bill. Now that the problems of the bill have been aired, we need to fix it. The current bill is worse than current law.

"Problems with the Udall-Vitter bill include that it only provides for the assessment of just 25 dangerous chemicals out of the 80,000 in existence today; eviscerates the rights of the states to act to protect their people from toxic and cancer-causing chemicals; does not even mention the word asbestos, and experts say that regulation of asbestos under the Udall-Vitter bill will never happen; and does not specifically address children's cancer clusters and chemicals that build up in your body - known as persistent bioaccumulative and toxic chemicals."

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