SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH – Attorney General Sean D. Reyes joined a comment letter, led by the State of Tennessee, to the U.S. Environmental Protection Act (EPA) regarding two proposed regulations—the pesticide registration review for Ethylene Oxide (EtO) under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act and the related emissions standards promulgated under the Clean Air Act (Proposed Regulations).
According to the letter, “EtO is key to sterilizing medical devices—and there are no substitutes.” The States assert that “any regulation of EtO use and emissions threatens the medical device supply chain and thus the provision of healthcare” in their jurisdictions. They ask the EPA to “not promulgate or—at the very least, extend the compliance period for—the Proposed Regulations.”
The States argue that the Proposed Regulations “do not properly reflect their disruptive effect on the medical device supply chain; do not account for important reliance interests; that there is no reason to engage in the environmental justice analysis in the Proposed Regulations; and that the EPA should reconsider the Proposed Regulations to ensure they comply with the proper scope of federal authority under the Commerce Clause.”
General Reyes issued the following statement: “Yet again, the federal government unnecessarily risks disrupting the American economy and supply chain. Bureaucrats who never owned, ran or invested in a business now jeopardize a whole industry — not because they should but merely because they can. With a global pandemic barely in the rearview mirror, the EPA is attempting to force theoretical and untested technologies into America’s most effective system for sterilizing surgical instruments. This unproven overregulation is not only invasive and disruptive, it will endanger more people than it will help. Rather than coercion through myopic regulation, natural market pressures will do the work with less disruption, less error, and less cost. My colleagues and I will continue to protect our constituents and hold the federal bureaucracy accountable to the rule of law.”
In their letter, the attorneys general wrote: “The Proposed Regulations are contrary to this administration’s policies. As the COVID-19 pandemic showed, there is a pressing need for ‘adequate domestic stockpiles [of medical products] and capable domestic suppliers with surge capacity.’ So the Department of Health and Human Services is working ‘to build domestic manufacturing capacity’ to address ‘the lack of on- or near-shore manufacturing’ of health products. Increasing costs on medical device sterilizers, as the Proposed Regulations will, undermines that policy.”
Joining Tennessee and Utah on this letter were the States of Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia.
