Broadening the global reach of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) is vital to combating globalized environmental problems.
It has been 40 years since the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) was established to fulfill its jurisdictional obligations mandated by the U.S. Congress. To its credit, the EPA has successfully handled a variety of domestic issues, greatly enhancing the U.S. government’s efforts to protect the environment through the promotion of better science, education, and public awareness. On the other hand, environmental protection has become a global-scale task that requires more collective actions by the global community. The problem centers on the environmental consequences that have become significantly complex in terms of both magnitude and intensity due to the rapid economic growth in developing countries and intensified global trade activities. The complexity and depth of these worldwide contemporary issues call for an internationally focused agency in possession of appropriate technologies, sufficient financial capacity, and widespread influence to coordinate an integrated effort in developing effective solutions. Needless to say the USEPA is one of the best candidates, if not the best one, to take on the task. Armed with a fairly generous budget, a wealth of technical expertise, and an array of advanced technologies, the USEPA, considered one of the most powerful environmental protection agencies in the world, has the responsibility to lead the global community to collectively strengthen law enforcement worldwide and minimize contaminant inputs from all possible point sources. For that purpose, we argue that it is time to broaden the global reach of the USEPA to win the battle against the increasingly severe environmental problems around the world. We identify at least two types of commercial activities that justify broader authoritative power for the USEPA in order to handle global environmental issues. First, growing global commerce has enhanced the cross-boundary transport of pollutants that are embedded in raw materials and final products. For example, perfluorinated compounds, one of the newly targeted persistent organic pollutants under the Stockholm Convention, are often used as ingredients in raw materials (to improve host materials’ resistance to stain, oil, and water) and may be carried in final products from one country to another through global trading. Second, primitive and largely illegal handling of electronic waste (e-waste), mostly imported from developed countries to Asia’s developing countries, increases the global-scale mobility of chemical contaminants contained in e-waste. In many cases, insufficient law enforcement and lack of international collaboration are largely responsible for the ongoing e-waste dilemma (1). These two transport routes are likely to unintentionally enhance the point-source emissions of contaminants. Presently, numerous multinational corporations have established operations, especially heavy manufacturing functions, in developing countries that produce products for global distribution. Largely due to the lack of rigorous law enforcement and the priority to benefit from economic development in developing countries, environmental protection has caved in to financial incentives, resulting in lower control standards and consequently higher than expected pollution levels in finished products (2). Yet, the USEPA has been invisible in efforts to control pollution derived from similar types of international commerce due to its limited authority outside its own domestic territory. It is only fair to point out that the capability of the USEPA in dealing with international matters is greatly limited by the jurisdictional power and enabling legislation authorized by the U.S. Congress. A perfect example is the USEPA’s inability to deal with the illegal e-waste exporta* Corresponding author e-mail: eddyzeng@gig.ac.cn. RH ON DA SA UN DE RS Environ. Sci. Technol. 2010, 44, 6911–6913