Sponsors (2)
Official title: To amend the Toxic Substances Control Act to prohibit the manufacture, processing, use, and distribution in commerce of commercial asbestos and mixtures and articles containing commercial asbestos, and for other purposes.
Introduced September 16, 2025 by Suzanne Bonamici · Last progress September 16, 2025
The bill substantially reduces future asbestos-related harms by banning new commercial asbestos uses while balancing defense and industrial transition needs, but it leaves legacy asbestos in place, creates transitional costs for certain industries, and includes narrow carve-outs that preserve some residual risks and limit regulatory flexibility.
Workers (especially construction/demolition) and nearby communities will face substantially lower future asbestos exposure and reduced future asbestos-related disease risk because the bill bans manufacture, use, and distribution of new commercial asbestos-containing products on enactment.
State and local governments and hospitals will likely incur fewer future remediation and healthcare costs because fewer new asbestos sources will be introduced going forward.
Operators of existing chlor-alkali facilities get a time-limited compliance window (use allowed until Jan 1, 2030) to transition off asbestos diaphragms, reducing immediate operational disruption and allowing orderly replacement planning.
Owners and operators of chlor-alkali plants will incur replacement and compliance costs to remove asbestos diaphragms by Jan 1, 2030, which could raise production costs and ultimately consumer prices.
Homeowners, building owners, construction workers, and local governments continue to face exposure risks and potentially large abatement costs because pre-enactment installed asbestos is excluded from the prohibition.
Allowing an 'impurities' carve-out in the asbestos definition may let low-level asbestos persist in some products, sustaining small but nonzero exposure risks for consumers and workers.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Bans manufacture, processing, use, and distribution of commercial asbestos on enactment, with narrow chlor‑alkali and one limited national‑security exemption.
Bans the manufacture, processing, use, and distribution of "commercial asbestos" on enactment, while carving out limited, time‑bound exceptions: existing chlor‑alkali facilities may continue using asbestos diaphragms and hold commercial asbestos until January 1, 2030, and the President may grant a single national‑security exemption (up to three years, renewable once for three more years) with conditions to limit exposure and public notice requirements. The bill narrows and clarifies several statutory definitions, excludes trace impurities and pre‑existing installed uses from the ban, prevents the EPA Administrator from using a separate waiver authority for commercial asbestos, and makes the ban effective immediately on enactment.