Interagency Regulatory Liaison Group role in phthalates.

sumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the United States Department ofAgriculture/Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA/FSIS) the U.S. Department of Labor and its Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulate the use of chemicals in interstate commerce. Because each of these agencies arose through different enabling legislation and are concerned with a different use of chemicals, it is likely that the same chemical would be independently regulated by two or more of those agencies. In addition, because chemicals and their manufacture and use, in general, are a concern of each of those agencies, policies and requirements for safe use of those chemicals could be different for each agency. For the above reasons, in October 1977, at the urging of the executive branch, each of the agency heads of EPA, CPSC, FDA and OSHA agreed to recommend those specific areas in which interagency cooperation would be beneficial to all agencies. Some areas of concern were finally agreed upon by the agency heads. In the area of toxicity testing guidelines, it was important for each agency to require similar standards to prevent duplicative testing by industry. Cooperation could result in a development of standardized testing guidelines which, if utilized in a toxicity test, would be acceptable for safety standards among the agencies. Joint research planning