Wednesday, June 2, 2010

EPA Issues Notice to Deny Claims of Chemical Confidentiality Under TSCA


In its continuing quest to use its current authority under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), EPA has issued a notice in the Federal Register last week that outlines how it expects to "generally deny Confidential Business Information claims for the identity of chemicals in health and safety studies filed under TSCA."

This wouldn't apply if the chemical identity explicitly contains process information or discloses mixture information that would still be protected under TSCA, but basically it would require the chemical to be readily identifiable by the public. The health and safety studies themselves have never been considered CBI, but a lot of good that does if you can't figure out on what chemical the study was done.

The Federal Register Notice can be found here as a PDF. Additional information on EPA's efforts on increasing transparency on chemical information is available on the EPA existing chemicals web site. --------------------------------------------------------------------

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