Proposed Amendment of TSCA Chemical Data Reporting Rule

EPA intends to establish a Negotiated Rulemaking Committee under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) and the Negotiated Rulemaking Act (NRA) to negotiate a proposed rule would limit chemical data reporting requirements for manufacturers of certain inorganic byproduct chemical substances.. The objective of the Negotiated Rulemaking Committee will be to negotiate a proposed rule that would limit chemical data reporting requirements under section 8(a) of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), as amended by the Frank. R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, for manufacturers of any inorganic byproduct chemical substances, if byproduct chemical substances are subsequently recycled, reused, or reprocessed.

What is the Negotiated Rulemaking Process?

In 1986, EPA created the Inventory Update Reporting (IUR) regulation under TSCA section 8 to collect, every four years, limited information on the manufacture (which includes import) of organic chemical substances listed on the TSCA Inventory, thereby providing more up-to-date production volume information on the chemical substances in U.S. commerce. In 2005, EPA amended the IUR to require the reporting of information on inorganic chemical substances and to collect additional manufacturing, processing, and use information. Manufacturers of inorganic chemical substances first reported under the IUR in 2006. They also reported under the CDR in 2012 and 2016. Specific reporting requirements for these manufacturers were phased in, to allow for the industry to better understand the reporting requirements and for EPA to gain a better understanding of the industry. In recent years, the regulatory requirement to report byproduct chemical substances (and the availability of exemptions from that requirement) has been a frequent topic of discussion.

In 2011, EPA also stated that it would examine CDR information related to byproduct chemical substances to identify whether there are segments of byproduct chemical substance manufacturing for which EPA can determine that there is no need for the CDR information to continue to be collected, either for 2016 or for future reporting cycles. On June 22, 2016, TSCA was amended by the Lautenberg Act. TSCA now includes a requirement that EPA enter into a negotiated rulemaking, pursuant to the NRA, to develop and publish a proposed rule to limit the reporting requirements under TSCA section 8(a), for manufacturers of any inorganic byproduct chemical substances, when such byproduct chemical substances, whether by the byproduct chemical substance manufacturer or by any other person, are subsequently recycled, reused, or reprocessed.

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