EDF Health

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Lead Senior Scientist.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is publishing a notice in tomorrow’s Federal Register affirming that the Lautenberg Act requires upfront substantiation of all confidential business information (CBI) claims submitted under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), except for certain claims that the law exempts from substantiation requirements.

While EPA initially took a narrower approach on an interim basis in the flurry of activity following last June’s passage of the Lautenberg Act, today’s notice supersedes that earlier approach and clarifies the upfront substantiation requirement.

In today’s notice, EPA notes the strong support for its clarification in the statute itself as well as in the legislative history in both Houses of Congress leading up to its final passage.

This clarification hopefully won’t be controversial:  A broad swath of stakeholders have voiced support for the upfront substantiation requirement and have noted that it is a key reform made by the new law.

In November the American Alliance for Innovation (AAI) sent a letter to EPA Administrator McCarthy signed by more than 60 trade associations – including the American Chemistry Council, the Society of Chemical Manufacturers and Affiliates, the American Cleaning Institute, the American Petroleum Institute and the Consumer Specialty Products Association – noting that under the Lautenberg Act “[c]laims for CBI protection must be accompanied by an upfront substantiation.”

And back in 2013, the American Chemistry Council provided responses to questions for the record posed by then-Congressman Henry Waxman that stated that “[i]mprovements to the CBI provisions in a modernized TSCA should include … [r]equiring upfront substantiation of the CBI claim.”  The same response letter noted that:  “The American Chemistry Council and its members support up-front substantiation of CBI claims.”

Importantly, EPA’s notice makes clear that the substantiation requirement applies to all non-exempt CBI claims made since passage of the law last June, although EPA is providing an exceedingly generous length of time for companies to comply.

Given the law’s 90-day deadline for EPA review of CBI claims, there are strong policy reasons for requiring upfront substantiation of CBI claims:

• First, EPA’s own experience based on recent chemical reporting it has required demonstrates that requiring upfront substantiation reduces the number of CBI claims asserted. That means fewer claims EPA has to review and a greater likelihood that claims are only asserted for information that warrants protection.
• Second, when those reviews are conducted, EPA will already have the information it needs to review the claim instead of having to request it from the company, wasting precious days or weeks of the 90-day review period.