EPA Releases Final Chemical Data Reporting Rule

Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) made available the pre-publication version of its Chemical Data Reporting (CDR) Rule  under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). The CDR requires companies that manufacture, produce or import a chemical in amounts of 25,000 pounds or greater to report volumes and other information to EPA. Chemicals subject to a specified type of EPA rule or order have a lower threshold of 2,500 pounds or more.

While issuing its final rule, EPA issued a companion notification to extend the 2020 reporting period by two months; the reporting period runs from June 1, 2020 through November 30, 2020.

The CDR rule is required by TSCA section 8(a) of the TSCA and was formerly known as the Inventory Update Rule (IUR). Under the CDR rule, EPA collects this information every four years.

EPA will host a webinar on March 31, 2020 to review CDR requirements. EPA has not yet published log-in or registration information for the webinar. For information, e-mail: ecdrweb@epa.gov.

In the final rule, EPA adopted the following amendments.

• EPA updated requirements for confidentiality claims, including when up-front substantiation is required, updated substantiation questions and data elements excluded from confidentiality.
• EPA replaced processing and use codes with codes based on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) functional use, product and article use codes. EPA is also requiring OECD codes for consumer and commercial use information.

  Reporting using the OECD codes will be required for all chemical substances during the 2024 submission period. For the 2020 reporting period, OECD codes are required for reporting any chemicals designated as high priority for risk evaluation in 2019. Otherwise, use of the OECD codes is voluntary during the 2020 reporting period.

• EPA is adding a requirement to identify the site of manufacture with an NAICS code.
• EPA modified the requirement for when a chemical is removed from a waste stream to report recycling, remanufacture, reprocessing or reuse.
• EPA added a voluntary data element when reporting byproducts to report percent total production volume as a range.
• EPA is requiring secondary submitters in a joint submission report function of the chemical and percentage in imported product.
• EPA added new naming conventions for reporting and identification of parent companies.
• EPA revised its process for reporting by co-manufactures to submit information directly to EPA in its e-CDR system.
• EPA finalized two exemptions related to by-products. The first exempts by-products recycled in a site-limited, closed system. The second is for by-products manufactured as part of a non-integral pollution control and boiler equipment.

Additionally, EPA made several editorial changes to text to enhance clarity.

More information is available from EPA’s CDR Rule website.

Contact ACA’s Riaz Zaman for more information.

The post EPA Releases Final Chemical Data Reporting Rule appeared first on American Coatings Association.

from American Coatings Association https://www.paint.org/cdr-final/
via IFTTT