(CNN) -- A new bill could alter the landscape of chemical regulation in the United States by empowering researchers to take swift action against the most potentially harmful chemicals in use today.

The bill, to be introduced later this month, would give the director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and a panel of experts selected by the director, the power to ban up to 10 chemicals from commerce each year by categorizing them as being of high concern.

Those chemicals would become unlawful to use 24 months after receiving that designation.

Among the chemicals that could be subject to a ban is bisphenol A, or BPA, a hormone-disrupting substance widely used in plastics that has been the target of controversy in recent months.

The bill is to be introduced by Rep. Jim Moran, D-Virginia, and Sen. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, later this month.

The fate of the legislation, though, is far from certain. It will have to make its way through committee in both the Republican-controlled House and the Senate, where Democrats have a small majority.

CNN received an advance copy of the bill*, called the Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals Exposure Elimination Act of 2011, which has a self-executing statute under which the listing of high concern by the NIEHS automatically would outlaw the chemical or class of chemicals, and would require each regulatory agency to take action to prohibit the chemical.

*Editor's note: This is an advanced draft of the bill. It could change before being introduced.

If the bill were to become law, the NIEHS, a part of the National Institutes of Health, could have chemicals outlawed much sooner than otherwise possible...