EPA Releases Additional Approach for Assigning and Applying “Unique Identifiers”
On February 8, 2018, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced it is releasing a third alternative approach for assigning and applying unique identifiers (UID) to reconcile the competing requirements of Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Section 14(g) for comment. 83 Fed. Reg. 5623. EPA’s first and second alternative approaches were released for comment in its notice on May 8, 2017 (82 Fed. Reg. 21386). Under amended TSCA, EPA is required to develop a system to assign a “unique identifier” whenever it approves a Confidential Business Information (CBI) claim for the specific chemical identity of a chemical substance, to apply this unique identifier to other information concerning the same substance, and to ensure that any non-confidential information received identifies the chemical substance using the unique identifier while the specific chemical identity of the chemical substance is protected from disclosure.
Under the third alternative approach, EPA would assign one UID per chemical substance. EPA states that in most cases it would apply the UID to all non-confidential information concerning the same chemical substance from any company except in cases where doing so might reveal the identity of confidential substance. In those cases, which EPA expects to be rare, EPA would not apply the UID to non-confidential documents if doing so would result in a linkage that undermines the CBI claim. EPA reiterates that the basic criterion for application of the UID to submissions made by different submitters is that EPA’s act of applying the UID must not disclose to the public the confidential specific chemical identity that the UID was assigned to protect.
Comments are due by March 12, 2018. More information on CBI under TSCA is available on our blog.