President Biden’s FY 2024 Budget Includes Additional Funding for TSCA and Funding to Address PFAS Pollution

On March 9, 2023, President Biden released his fiscal year (FY) 2024 budget. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) March 9, 2023, press release, the budget requests over $12 billion in discretionary budget authority for EPA in FY 2024, a $1.9 billion or 19 percent increase from the FY 2023 enacted level. Highlights of the FY 2024 budget include:

• Ensuring Safety of Chemicals for People and the Environment: The budget provides an investment of $130 million, $49 million more than the 2023 enacted level, to build core capacity to implement the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Under TSCA, EPA has a responsibility to ensure the safety of chemicals in or entering commerce. According to EPA, in FY 2024, it “will focus on evaluating, assessing, and managing risks from exposure to new and existing industrial chemicals to advance human health protection in our communities.” EPA states that “[a]nother priority is to implement [the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA)] to ensure pesticides pose no unreasonable risks to human health and the environment.”

• Tackling Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) Pollution: The budget provides approximately $170 million to combat PFAS pollution. This request allows EPA to continue working toward commitments made under EPA’s 2021 PFAS Strategic Roadmap, including: increasing its knowledge of PFAS impacts on human health and ecological effects; restricting use to prevent PFAS from entering the air, land, and water; and remediating PFAS that have been released into the environment.

EPA states that it will release the full Congressional Justification and Budget in Brief materials “soon.”