EPA Initiates TSCA Chemical Prioritization

US EPA has kicked off its prioritization process for performing risk evaluations of forty chemical substances, as required under the amended Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). In the Federal Register on March 21, EPA posted a Notice to inform stakeholders of the chemicals up for possible review.

Of the forty chemicals listed, half are candidates to be “high-priority substances” and half are candidates to be “low-priority substances.” Under the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21^st Century Act (which amended TSCA) before the end of 2019 EPA must be working on twenty risk evaluations of high-priority chemicals any one time and must designate at least twenty chemical as low-priority substances.

EPA requests that industry stakeholders submit relevant scientific informaiton about these chemicals before June 19, 2019. 

Master your responsibilites under the recently amended TSCA chemical reporting, recordkeeping, and mangement requirements. The TSCA Regulations Online Course is available anytime, anywhere. 

Once the first twenty chemicals are officially designated as “high-priority”—meaning they may present an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environmental—EPA will begin the risk evaluation process for those chemicals. If EPA determines that the chemical do, in fact, present an unreasonable risk, the agency can create new restrictions or management standards for those chemicals.

Which Chemicals is EPA Considering as High Priority?

A list of the twenty candidates for “high priority” designation (and the twenty candidates for low-priority designation) can be found starting on page 10493 of the March 21, 2019 Federal Register and includes Formaldehyde, Butadiene, Butyl benzyl phthalate (BBP), Dibutyl phthalate (DBP), 1.1 Dichloroethane, and 1.2 Dichloroethane. 

See a full breakdown of the major changes to TSCA, as amended by the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21^st Century Act, here.

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Tags: chemical management, chemicals, environmental compliance, Lautenberg Law, TSCA