Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

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Mr. PADILLA. Madam President, I rise to introduce the Supercomputing for Safer Chemicals Act or the SUPERSAFE Act. Through the use of supercomputing and artificial intelligence, we have an opportunity to transform our scientific understanding of the detrimental effects associated with certain industrial chemical uses and to shift American commerce towards safer and more sustainable products and manufacturing.

The legislation would establish a SUPERSAFE Consortium to be led by the Environmental Protection Agency in consultation with the heads of relevant Federal Agencies, the National Labs, academic and other research institutions, State agencies, and other entities as determined by the EPA. The purpose of the SUPERSAFE Consortium is to identify exposures to toxic substance and chemicals that are safer to use in commerce.

Specifically, the SUPERSAFE Consortium established by this bill would use supercomputing, machine learning, and other similar capabilities to establish rapid approaches for large-scale identification of toxic substances and the development of safer alternatives to toxic substances by developing and validating computational toxicology methods; address the need to identify safe chemicals for use in consumer and industrial products and in their manufacture to support the move away from toxic substances and toward safe-by-design alternatives; and make recommendations on how the information produced can be applied in risk assessments and other characterizations for use by the Environmental Protection Agency and other Agencies in regulatory decisions and by industry in identifying toxic and safer chemicals.

Importantly, establishing a SUPERSAFE Consortium would encourage interagency collaboration and leverage the best scientific ideas through inclusion of State agencies and public and academic research institutions.

Currently, tens of thousands of untested chemicals can be used in commercial products, resulting in consumer, community, and worker exposures to potentially toxic chemicals. Too often, there is insufficient scientific data for evaluating health effects or identifying safer chemicals, and existing approaches to generating this data are slow, costly, and rely on animal testing.

We are well poised to address this problem and discover safer chemicals by establishing a SUPERSAFE Consortium to use supercomputing, machine learning, and other similar capabilities. These technologies can be developed and applied to rapidly provide information to evaluate chemical safety to identify safe chemicals that avoid the chronic diseases and environmental harm caused by toxic chemicals.

Unfortunately, too many Americans are exposed to toxic chemicals such as PFAS and lead. Congress has stepped up and provided billions to remediate toxic exposures, including via the bipartisan infrastructure law, to address PFAS and lead pollution. Establishing a SUPERSAFE Consortium in Federal law could help avoid the widespread pollution that our communities face so we can address potential pollution challenges before they become widespread.

I look forward to working with my colleagues to enact this bill as quickly as possible. ______

By Ms. COLLINS (for herself and Ms. Rosen):

S. 1705. A bill to amend the Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grant program to promote career awareness in accounting as part of a well-rounded STEM educational experience; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

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