Public Engagement Webinars; Pre-Prioritization and Consideration of Existing Chemical Substances for Future Prioritization Under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)

<NOTICE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <DEPDOC>[EPA-HQ-OPPT-2023-0606; FRL-11581-04-OCSPP]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Public Engagement Webinars; Pre-Prioritization and Consideration of Existing Chemical Substances for Future Prioritization Under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA or Agency) is announcing the scheduling of two virtual public meetings to provide information regarding existing chemical pre-prioritization and prioritization activities under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Prioritization is the initial step in the process of evaluating existing chemicals under TSCA and implementing regulations. The purpose of prioritization is to designate a chemical substance as being either high priority for immediate further risk evaluation, or low priority, for which risk evaluation is not warranted at the time. The webinars will take place on two separate days, but the content presented at each meeting will be identical. EPA will explain the prioritization process and provide an overview of information that may be used to inform the considerations that ultimately support a High- or Low-Priority Substance designation, such as information on conditions of use and health effects resulting from exposure to the chemicals of interest. In addition, the list of candidate chemical substances currently being considered for future prioritization actions will be presented for stakeholders to comment on the data and scientific research available that may be used to help EPA determine which chemical substances may undergo prioritization in the near term. EPA is committed to engaging with the public to identify potentially relevant information on chemical substances being considered for future prioritization actions during pre-prioritization timeframes. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> <E T="03">Webinars:</E> Monday, September 30, 2024, (2 p.m.-4 p.m. ET), and Tuesday, October 1, 2024 (10 a.m.-12 p.m. ET). <E T="03">Registration:</E> You must register on or before September 25, 2024, to receive the webcast meeting link and audio teleconference information before the meeting, and to make oral comments during the meeting. <E T="03">Special accommodations:</E> Submit requests for special accommodations on or before September 13, 2024, to allow EPA time to process the request before the meeting. <E T="03">Oral comments:</E> To provide an oral comment during the webinar, register on or before September 25, 2024. <E T="03">Written comments:</E> Following the public webinars, written comments may be submitted during a 30-day public comment period that will open following the second public webinar on October 1, 2024. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> <E T="03">Webinar:</E> Register online for each webinar as follows: • For the webinar on Monday, September 30, 2024, register at: <E T="03">https://usepa.zoomgov.com/meeting/register/vJItduuoqzgvH1QTU561mR9PaHoG91WhfnA;</E> • For the webinar on Tuesday, October 1, 2024, register at: <E T="03">https://usepa.zoomgov.com/meeting/register/vJIsfCrrzMqHJshuXmH7qTusPv-lURNA4M</E> . <E T="03">Special Accommodations:</E> Please submit these requests to the person listed under <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> . <E T="03">Oral comments:</E> Register with the person listed under <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> . <E T="03">Written comments:</E> Submit written comments, identified by docket identification (ID) number EPA-HQ-OPPT-2023-0606, online at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> . Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. Do not submit electronically any information you consider to be Confidential Business Information (CBI) or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Additional instructions on commenting or visiting the docket, along with more information about dockets generally, is available at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/dockets</E> . <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Sarah Soliman, Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (7201M), Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP), Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20460-0001; telephone number: (202) 748-0251 email address: <E T="03">soliman.sarah@epa.gov</E> . </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Executive Summary</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Does this action apply to me?</HD> This action is directed to the public in general and may be of interest to entities that may manufacture (including import) a chemical substance regulated under TSCA ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> entities identified under North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) codes 325 and 324110). The action may also be of interest to chemical processors, distributors in commerce, users, non-profit organizations in the environmental and public health sectors, state and local government agencies, and members of the public. Since other entities may also be interested, the Agency has not attempted to describe all the specific entities and corresponding NAICS codes for entities that may be interested in or affected by this action. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. What is the Agency's authority for taking this action?</HD> TSCA section 6, 15 U.S.C. 2605, requires EPA to evaluate existing chemicals via a three-stage process. The three stages of EPA's process for existing chemicals are prioritization, risk evaluation, and risk management. See also the implementing procedural regulations at 40 CFR part 702. For more information about the TSCA risk evaluation process for existing chemicals, go to <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/assessing-and-managing-chemicals-under-tsca</E> . <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. What action is the agency taking?</HD> EPA is announcing the scheduling of two virtual public meetings to provide information regarding existing chemical pre-prioritization and prioritization activities under TSCA. Prioritization is the initial step in the process of evaluating existing chemicals under TSCA and implementing regulations. The purpose of prioritization is to designate a chemical substance as being either high priority for immediate further risk evaluation, or low priority, for which risk evaluation is not warranted at the time. The webinars will take place on two separate days, but the content presented at each meeting will be identical. EPA will explain the prioritization process and provide an overview of information that may be used to inform the considerations that ultimately support a High- or Low-Priority Substance designation, such as information on conditions of use and health effects resulting from exposure to the chemicals of interest. In addition, the list of candidate chemical substances currently being considered for future prioritization actions will be presented for stakeholders to comment on the data and scientific research available that may be used to help EPA determine which chemical substances may undergo prioritization in the near term. <HD SOURCE="HD2">D. Why is the Agency taking this action?</HD> EPA is committed to engaging with the public to identify potentially relevant information on chemical substances being considered for future prioritization actions during pre-prioritization timeframes. This action is intended to increase transparency in the TSCA prioritization process by encouraging public engagement in earlier activities. EPA values broad external input, which is critical to the prioritization process. EPA is committed to developing a sustainable program where information is continually collected by the Agency on chemicals of interest so that prioritization occurs on an annual basis to replace High-Priority Substances for which EPA has completed risk evaluations. Information provided during and following these public meetings will inform EPA's determination regarding whether chemical substances have sufficient information to support either a High- or Low Priority Substance designation during prioritization or a risk evaluation, should a chemical substance be designated as a High-Priority Substance during prioritization. <HD SOURCE="HD2">E. What is the purpose of the pre-prioritization and prioritization phases?</HD> Pre-prioritization represents the Agency's commitment to fostering a transparent collaborative effort with the public by allowing stakeholders to engage with EPA on its list of potential prioritization candidates; learn about the type of information EPA seeks to support the proposed and final designations as either High- or Low-Priority Substances; and how stakeholders can provide that information. Prioritization is the initial step in the process of evaluating existing chemicals under TSCA section 6(b) and implementing regulations at 40 CFR part 702. The purpose of prioritization is to designate a chemical substance as either high priority for immediate further risk evaluation, or low priority, for which risk evaluation is not warranted at the time. To identify candidates for the prioritization process, TSCA requires that at least 50 percent of all chemical substances on which risk evaluations are being conducted by the Administrator are drawn from the TSCA Work Plan for Chemical Assessments: 2014 Update available at: <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/assessing-and-managing-chemicals-under-tsca/tsca-work-plan-chemical-assessments-2014-update,</E> until that list has been exhausted. EPA also gives preference to chemical substances from the TSCA Work Plan chemicals with the following characteristics: • Persistence and bioaccumulation scores of three; and • Known hu ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 17k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━