10 Years of the Lautenberg Act: What’s Changed for Asbestos
Legislation & Litigation
Written by Travis Rodgers | Edited by Amy Edel
The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act was the most significant update to the nation’s chemical safety laws in 40 years. Signed into law on June 22, 2016, it strengthened the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to evaluate dangerous chemicals based on health risks and reshaped federal oversight of asbestos after decades of limited action under the Toxic Substances Control Act.
The law didn’t produce an immediate asbestos ban. Instead, it led to years of new risk evaluations, court decisions and regulatory action that ultimately resulted in the EPA’s 2024 ban on ongoing uses of chrysotile asbestos. Those developments also expanded how the EPA evaluates chemical risks and the populations it must protect.
As toxicologist Dr. Shannon Fitzgerald, an expert in environmental science, tells us, “A decade after its passage, the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act substantially modernized the Toxic Substances Control Act and federal chemical reviews, imposing more robust, realistic and purely health-based exposure standards, while providing explicit statutory protection for the most vulnerable populations (e.g., children, pregnant women, fenceline communities).”
Why Congress Passed the Lautenberg Act
The EPA attempted to ban asbestos in 1989. The agency’s Asbestos Ban and Phase-Out Rule would’ve banned the manufacture, import, processing and sale of most asbestos-containing products nationwide. Asbestos manufacturers sued, and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned most of the ban in 1991. The court ruled the EPA hadn’t met the law’s requirement to prove the ban was the “least burdensome” option for industry, a standard built into the original TSCA.
The court’s ruling highlighted how difficult it had become for the EPA to regulate dangerous chemicals under the original TSCA. Lawmakers from both parties eventually agreed the law needed reform.
That decision severely limited the EPA’s ability to regulate toxic chemicals, not just asbestos. Under the original “least burdensome” standard, the agency had to weigh costs to manufacturers as heavily as risks to human health. Of more than 60,000 chemicals already on the market when TSCA passed in 1976, the EPA banned only 5.
The consequences extended beyond asbestos regulation. According to the World Health Organization, more than 90,000 people die every year from asbestos-related diseases worldwide, and the mineral remains mostly legal in the U.S.
Linda Reinstein, co-founder of the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, called asbestos the “poster child” and the “litmus test” for TSCA reform. Lawmakers from both parties eventually agreed the system needed fixing.
The bipartisan bill that became the Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act passed after years of negotiation and Congress named it for the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who pushed for chemical safety reform for more than a decade before he died in 2013. His widow, Bonnie Lautenberg, attended the bill signing.
What the Law Actually Changed
The Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act replaced TSCA’s cost-benefit test with a health-based safety standard. The EPA no longer has to prove a regulation is the “least burdensome” choice for industry. Instead, it has to decide whether a chemical poses an unreasonable risk to health or the environment based on the science.
The law also requires the EPA to consider vulnerable populations when it reviews a chemical, including children, pregnant women and workers who face heavier exposure. It set firm deadlines for the agency’s reviews, which advocates hoped would prevent the kind of regulatory stalling that left asbestos legal for 25 years after the 1991 court ruling.
As Dr. Fitzgerald explains, “Further landmark judicial rulings, such as the 9th Circuit decision in Safer Chemicals Healthy Families v. U.S. EPA, expanded the EPA’s mandate to include aggregate exposure risks and legacy environmental burdens, paving the way for the 2024 commercial ban on chrysotile asbestos.”
The EPA moved quickly to put the new law to use. In December 2016, just months after the bill became law, the agency named asbestos one of the first 10 chemicals to undergo a formal risk evaluation under the amended TSCA.
The Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act doesn’t ban asbestos or any other chemical. It changes the process the EPA must follow to evaluate and regulate chemicals. That distinction shaped everything that came next.
As Dr. Fitzgerald adds, however, “Despite these promising regulatory milestones, consistent heavy legislative counter-proposals like the Sound Science Act, protracted industry litigation and persistent supply chain vulnerabilities demonstrate that there is still vital work ahead if we are to achieve a safer environment for all. The 2026 recall of asbestos-contaminated children’s toys as a result of naturally occurring tremolite asbestos impurities vividly illustrates this.”
Courts Push the EPA to Expand Its Review
The EPA’s first risk evaluation focused narrowly on chrysotile asbestos, the one type still imported into the U.S., and excluded legacy asbestos already inside older homes, schools and workplaces. Health advocates argued that exclusion left millions of people unprotected. In 2019, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed in Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families v. EPA and ruled the agency couldn’t leave legacy asbestos out of its review.
That ruling forced the EPA to expand its scope and begin a second phase of evaluation covering legacy uses and other types of asbestos beyond chrysotile. Advocates won a federal court ruling in December 2020 that required companies to report asbestos imports and usage under TSCA requirements the EPA hadn’t been enforcing. That reporting requirement gave regulators better data on how much asbestos was still entering the country and how it was being used.
ADAO and other groups later sued the EPA again to keep that work on schedule. A 2021 court-approved agreement in ADAO v. Regan set a court-ordered deadline requiring the EPA to finish its Part 2 risk evaluation by December 2024.
These court cases show something important about the Lautenberg Act: passing a law and enforcing it aren’t the same thing. Much of the progress on asbestos over the past decade came only after advocacy groups sued to make the EPA follow through on what the amended TSCA already required.
Regulatory Actions and the Fight That Continues Today
The EPA’s most significant action came in March 2024, when it finalized a ban on ongoing uses of chrysotile asbestos. It’s the first time the agency has banned an existing chemical under the amended TSCA, and the first new asbestos restriction since the 1991 court ruling. The rule ends imports of raw chrysotile asbestos and phases out its remaining uses, mainly in the chlor-alkali industry, which uses asbestos diaphragms to make chlorine and sodium hydroxide for water treatment. Affected companies have up to 12 years to comply.
The EPA backed that rule with stronger data collection. In 2022, the agency finalized a reporting rule requiring companies that manufacture, import or process asbestos to disclose the types, amounts and uses of the mineral, along with worker exposure data. U.S. imports of raw chrysotile asbestos reached an estimated 300 metric tons in 2020, then dropped to a record low in 2021, partly reflecting the chlor-alkali industry’s shift away from asbestos. The EPA also signed a 5-year agreement with the World Health Organization in 2022 to address chrysotile asbestos exposure worldwide.
The chrysotile ban still doesn’t cover legacy asbestos or other fiber types. The EPA finalized its Part 2 risk evaluation in November 2024, confirming that legacy asbestos poses an unreasonable risk to human health. The agency is now in the risk management phase for Part 2. Industry groups, including the Texas Chemistry Council and American Chemistry Council, sued to overturn the chrysotile ban in October 2024. Oral arguments took place before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on June 1, 2026, the same court that struck down the 1989 ban, and a ruling hasn’t come down yet. The EPA briefly moved to pause that litigation in June 2026 and signaled it might revise the rule, then withdrew the motion in July and reaffirmed its plan to defend the ban.
The fight has also moved beyond the courtroom. As Dr. Fitzgerald noted, in May 2026, regulators found asbestos in children’s toys leading to a recall of more than 121,000 items. ADAO estimates nearly 160,000 Americans died from asbestos-related disease in just the first 5 years after the Lautenberg Act passed.
States have started filling some of the gaps themselves. Michigan’s governor signed bipartisan legislation in 2026 requiring public disclosure on asbestos abatement contracts and annual emissions reports. Advocates continue pushing Congress to pass the Alan Reinstein Ban Asbestos Now Act, which would close the remaining loopholes the Lautenberg Act left open.
