{"id":1257,"date":"2011-03-24T16:22:48","date_gmt":"2011-03-24T21:22:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/nanotechnology\/?p=1257"},"modified":"2024-02-12T11:01:12","modified_gmt":"2024-02-12T16:01:12","slug":"epas-right-to-know-effort-declassifies-the-chemicals-in-42-health-and-safety-studies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/health\/2011\/03\/24\/epas-right-to-know-effort-declassifies-the-chemicals-in-42-health-and-safety-studies\/","title":{"rendered":"EPA’s right-to-know effort declassifies the chemicals in 42 health and safety studies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Richard Denison, Ph.D.<\/em>, is a Senior Scientist.<\/em><\/p>\n

EPA has just released today<\/a>\u00a0the full versions — showing the identities of the chemicals in question — of\u00a041 “substantial risk” notices of health and safety studies it had previously received from companies that had denied the public’s right to know those identities by claiming them to be confidential business information (CBI).\u00a0 These notices had been submitted pursuant to Section 8(e) of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).\u00a0 One additional notice of a health and safety study that EPA had received under Section 8(d) of TSCA was also released today with its chemical identified.<\/p>\n

What’s most significant about today’s posting is that it makes publicly available the identities of chemicals associated with health and safety data that:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. the submitting companies themselves believed the data\u00a0\u201creasonably supports the conclusion that [the chemical] presents a substantial risk of injury to health or the environment<\/a>;\u201d and<\/li>\n
  2. should have been publicly available all along, based on the plain language of TSCA that disallows health and safety studies to be claimed CBI in the first place.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The declassifications posted by EPA today arise from two sources:<\/p>\n