by Jbs031610 c3 — March 19, 2010—As part of Administrator Lisa P. Jackson’s strong commitment to increase information on chemicals, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is for the first time providing Web access, free of charge, to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Chemical Substance Inventory. This inventory contains a consolidated list of thousands of industrial chemicals maintained by the agency.
EPA is also making this information available on Data.Gov, a Web site developed by the Obama Administration to provide public access to important government information. This action represents another step to increase the transparency of chemical information while EPA continues to push for legislative reform of the 30-year-old TSCA law.
Currently, there are more than 84,000 chemicals manufactured, used, or imported in the U.S. listed on the TSCA Inventory. However, EPA is unable to publicly identify nearly 17,000 of these chemicals because the chemicals have been claimed as confidential business information under TSCA by the manufacturers.
Under Jackson’s leadership, EPA has begun a series of aggressive steps to provide greater transparency on chemical risk information, including an announcement that EPA will reduce the Confidential Business Information (CBI) claim on the identity of chemicals. In the coming months, EPA will add TSCA facility information and the list of chemicals manufactured to the Facility Registry System (FRS), providing the public with information on the facilities in their communities using industrial chemicals.
