EPA to use unique identifiers for confidential claims

Amendments to the Toxic Substances Control Act will affect certain importers.    The Environmental Protection Agency is announcing the format of unique identifiers (UID) that it will use whenever it approves a confidential business information (CBI) claim for the specific chemical identity of a chemical substance.
   The EPA will use a numerical identifier incorporating the year the CBI claim was made (e.g. the first approved claim asserted in 2019 would be UID-2019-00001), the agency said.
   The EPA will apply the identifier to nonconfidential information related to the chemical substance, except where disclosing the identifier itself would alert the public to the confidential specific identity that the identifier was assigned to protect, the agency said.
   The identifier will be applied to other information concerning the same chemical substance and will be used to ensure that any nonconfidential information received by the EPA identifies the chemical substance using the identifier while the specific identity of the substance is protected from disclosure, the EPA said.
   Importers, manufacturers or processors of chemical substances (NAICS codes 325 and 324110) could potentially be affected, the agency said.
   The EPA is required to annually publish and update a list of chemical substances, referred to by their UIDs, for which claims to protect the specific chemical identity from disclosure have been approved, including the expiration date for such claim, the agency said.
   EPA anticipates publishing the first annual list on its website in November, the agency said.
   Passed in June 2016, the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act added a requirement to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) for EPA to assign a UID to each specific chemical identity for which the EPA administrator approves a request for protection for disclosure.