EPA Reopens Comment Period for TSCA SNU Regulations
Tuesday, November 1, 2016

On October 21, 2016, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reopened the comment period on a proposed rule revising regulations governing significant new uses (SNU) of chemical substances under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), per a request from a commenter.  EPA states in its Federal Register notice that this request was “reasonable and is therefore reopening the comment period … [for] all interested persons.”  The proposed rule would amend the TSCA SNU regulations to align them with revisions to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) Hazard Communications Standard (HCS), as occasioned by OSHA's March 2012 final rule modifying the HCS to conform to the United Nations' (U.N.) Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals (GHS), changes to OSHA’s Respiratory Protection Standard, and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) respirator certification requirements pertaining to respiratory protection of workers from exposure to chemicals.  The proposed rule would also amend regulations for SNU rules (SNUR) previously proposed and issued and make a “minor” change to reporting requirements for premanufacture notices (PMN) and other TSCA Section 5 notices. 

Commentary

The brief notice reopening the comment period does little to reinforce the magnitude and consequences of these proposed changes.  Our memorandum TSCA:  Proposed Revisions to Significant New Use Rules Reflect Current Occupational Safety and Health Standards provides a detailed account of the significant and complex issues that these changes raise, briefly reiterated here:

  1. The challenges in aligning labeling, as well as legal and regulatory ambiguities.  EPA has devoted considerable effort to clarifying the application of HCS/GHS requirements to Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) but unresolved issues still remain.  The implementation of these revisions will most likely present similar challenges.

  2. EPA’s use of the hierarchy of controls (HOC) approach in the significant new use provisions, even though Congress did not include this approach in new TSCA.  The wisdom of the inclusion of the HOC approach, even though we recognize and appreciate the importance of HOC as an element in a system to manage or eliminate occupational risks, is questionable and inconsistent.

  3. Whether or not EPA's review considered the possibility that new TSCA may materially impact the content of the proposal.  There are signs, such as EPA’s inclusion of old TSCA citations, that point to them not having done this review, and there are no reassurances from EPA that new TSCA’s potential impacts were considered.

Our memorandum TSCA Reform: Proposed Changes to SNUR Procedures Would, Perhaps Inadvertently, Result in Disclosure of CBI to Third Parties/Possible Competitors also brings to light another important legal issue, concerning interesting anomalies that appear in the proposal's discussion of bona fide requests and the disclosure of information potentially considered confidential.  EPA proposes to modify the procedures for determining if a specific substance or chemical use is subject to a SNUR when the substance, production volume, or use is claimed as confidential business information (CBI).  The source of EPA’s authority to disclose CBI in the ways described in the proposed rule is unclear, as neither old nor new TSCA specifies them, such as the statutory basis and rationale for informing a bona fide intent notice (BFN) submitter of confidential use or production volume conditions.  Also, EPA does not justify why disclosure to the BFN submitter is necessary.  The current proposed SNUR provides for neither equal disclosure nor equal confidentiality as a result of BFN submission.

 

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