EPA to Make Public Most Chemical Identities in TSCA Health & Safety Studies

January 29, 2010

On January 21, 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a notice in the Federal Register announcing a new general practice for reviewing health and safety study submissions under section 8(e)of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) for confidential business information(CBI) claims of chemical identities list on the public portion of the TSCA Chemical Substances Inventory.

Under the new practices, CBI claims for chemical identities that are already listed on the public portion of the TSCA Chemical Substances Inventory will be examined and the EPA expects to determine that in most instances that the chemical identity is not entitled to confidential treatment. The EPA believes this new practice will make more health and safety information available to the public and is the first of a series of steps planned by the EPA to increase the transparency of chemical information.

Under the old practice, information from health and safety studies was entitled to CBI treatment if it met an exception for information that “discloses processes used in the manufacturing or processing of a chemical substance or mixture. Using this practice, companies claimed CBI treatment for the actual identity of the chemical covered by the study, so the public posting of the study would not include the name of the chemical subject to the study.

Since the identity of a chemical substance is already contained in the public portion of the TSCA Chemical Substances Inventory, the chemical name has already been disclosed and, therefore, not eligible for CBI treatment.

As result of this change in practice, entities covered by TSCA, including manufacturers and importers, may lose their ability to make a CBI claim when submitting a health and safety submission under section 8(e).