The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced on October 15, 2021, that it is updating the confidential status of 377 chemical identities and will include these chemical identities on the next update of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Inventory, planned for winter 2022. The TSCA Inventory is a list of all existing chemical substances manufactured, processed, or imported in the United States. According to EPA, the Inventory contains 86,607 chemicals, of which 41,953 are active in U.S commerce.

As reported in our April 30, 2021, blog item, in April 2021, EPA announced its review of 390 specific chemical identities that were expected to lose their confidential status on the TSCA Inventory. Of the 390 chemicals under review, EPA states that it found that 13 accession numbers corresponded to substances that are already on the public portion of the Inventory or to substances reported using an invalid accession number (which was later corrected and/or the confidentiality claim was withdrawn). The remaining 377 chemical identities were reported as non-confidential by one or more manufacturers during the 2012, 2016, and/or 2020 Chemical Data Reporting (CDR) periods -- “meaning that at least one manufacturer did not request that each of these chemical identities be kept confidential, effectively saying it is not a secret that the chemical is in U.S. commerce. Therefore, these substances are no longer eligible for continued confidential Inventory status.”