Trichloroethylene; Regulation Under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA); Compliance Date Extension

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 751</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-HQ-OPPT-2020-0642; FRL-8317.2-01-OCSPP]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2070-AL32</RIN> <SUBJECT>Trichloroethylene; Regulation Under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA); Compliance Date Extension</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Interim final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA or Agency) is taking interim final action on the Regulation of Trichloroethylene (TCE) under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to revise certain compliance deadlines finalized in 2024. Specifically, EPA is amending the prohibition compliance date for the use of TCE as a processing aid in the manufacture of nuclear fuel, with corresponding changes to the compliance dates for the manufacturing, processing and distribution in commerce of TCE to support such use, to a prohibition on September 15, 2028. EPA is also amending the prohibition compliance date for the disposal of TCE to wastewater by processors of TCE and processors and industrial and commercial users of TCE as a processing aid, to begin on December 18, 2026. EPA is also amending the compliance deadline for downstream notification, and the text required to be present in Safety Data Sheets, to accurately reflect the new prohibition compliance deadline for TCE used as a processing aid in the manufacture of nuclear fuel. EPA is amending this compliance deadline to allow for 90 days after the publication of the final rule for manufacturers, processors, and distributors in commerce of TCE to make such a change. These revisions are necessary to address new information presented to EPA about inadvertent oversights in the original rulemaking and serious concerns that the facilities at issue will be unable to comply with the relevant requirements by the existing deadlines. EPA is requesting comments on all aspects of this interim final rule and will consider all comments received in determining whether amendments to this rule are appropriate after the conclusion of the comment period. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This interim final rule is effective on September 15, 2025. Comments must be received on or before October 17, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by docket identification (ID) number EPA-HQ-OPPT-2020-0642 using the Federal eRulemaking Portal 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> <E T="03">For technical information contact:</E> Gabriela Rossner, Existing Chemicals Risk Management Division, Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20460-0001; telephone number: 202-564-2426; email address: <E T="03">TCE.TSCA@epa.gov.</E> <E T="03">For general information contact:</E> The TSCA Assistance Information Service Hotline, Goodwill of the Finger Lakes, 422 South Clinton Ave., Rochester, NY 14620; telephone number: (800) 471-7127 or (202) 554-1404; email address: <E T="03">TSCA-Hotline@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 may apply to you if you manufacture, process, distribute in commerce, or are an industrial and commercial user of TCE used as a processing aid in the manufacture of nuclear fuel. Additionally, you may be potentially affected by this rule if you process TCE as a reactant/intermediate, process TCE for use as a processing aid in certain industries, or use TCE as a processing aid in such industries. The following list of North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) codes is not intended to be exhaustive but rather provides a guide to help readers determine whether this document applies to them. Potentially affected entities may include: <FP SOURCE="FP-1">• 211120—Crude Petroleum Extraction</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">• 221118—Other Electric Power Generation</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">• 325180—Other Basic Inorganic Chemical Manufacturing</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">• 325193—Ethyl Alcohol Manufacturing</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">• 325199—All Other Basic Organic Chemical Manufacturing</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">• 325211—Plastics Material and Resin Manufacturing</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">• 325998—All Other Miscellaneous Chemical Product and Preparation Manufacturing</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">• 332313—Plate Work Manufacturing</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">• 332410—Power Boiler and Heat Exchanger Manufacturing</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">• 334513—Instruments and Related Products Manufacturing for Measuring, Displaying, and Controlling Industrial Process Variables</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">• 335312—Motor and Generator Manufacturing</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">• 424690—Other Chemical and Allied Products Merchant Wholesalers</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">• 424720—Petroleum and Petroleum Products Merchant Wholesalers (except Bulk Stations and Terminals)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">• 541330—Engineering Services</FP> This list details the types of entities that EPA is aware could potentially be impacted by this action. Other types of entities not listed could also be impacted. To determine whether your entity is impacted by this action, you should carefully examine the applicability criteria found in 40 CFR 751.305 and 705.313. If you have questions regarding the applicability of this action to a particular entity, consult the person listed in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. What is the Agency's authority for taking this action?</HD> Under TSCA section 6(a) (15 U.S.C. 2605(a)), if EPA determines through a TSCA section 6(b) risk evaluation that a chemical substance presents an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment under its conditions of use, EPA must by rule apply one or more requirements listed in TSCA section 6(a) to the extent necessary so that the use or uses of the chemical substance or mixture no longer presents such risk. Unless provided otherwise by law, an agency may change existing positions ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> reconsider, revise, or rescind prior actions) so long as it acknowledges the change in position, provides a reasoned explanation for the change, and takes any serious reliance interests into account. <E T="03">See, e.g., FDA</E> v. <E T="03">Wages & White Lion Invs., L.L.C.,</E> 145 S. Ct. 898, 917 (2025); <E T="03">Encino Motorcars</E> v. <E T="03">Navarro,</E> 579 U.S. 211, 221 (2016); <E T="03">FCC</E> v. <E T="03">Fox Television Stations, Inc.,</E> 556 U.S. 502, 515 (2009). Here, and as explained further in Unit II.C, based on new information submitted by regulated entities, the Agency is amending compliance dates to address recently-received information that the original compliance dates for (1) a subset of industrial and commercial use of TCE previously categorized as miscellaneous and now specified as the manufacture of nuclear fuel and (2) the disposal of TCE to wastewater by processors of TCE and processors and industrial and commercial users of TCE as a processing aid are not practicable and do not provide adequate transition time. EPA does not believe that the Agency took a contrary position in the original rule with respect to these issues because the information and concerns discussed here were not before the Agency at the time and the Agency did not intend to create the compliance concerns addressed in this action. Further, EPA does not believe there are significant reliance interests in the current deadline with respect to the narrow issues addressed in this action. Nevertheless, EPA seeks comments on any potential reliance interests and how those reliance interests should be taken into account when assessing whether to revise this action after the close of the comment period. In addition, under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) at 5 U.S.C. 553(b)(B), an agency may issue a final rule without providing notice and an opportunity for public comment if it for good cause finds that notice and public procedures are “impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest.” Further, under the APA at 5 U.S.C. 553(d)(1), an agency may make a rule effective immediately if it “grants or recognizes an exemption or relieves a restriction,” which includes this action as it relieves restrictions by extending several of the 2024 rule's compliance deadlines. As explained further in Unit III, EPA finds good cause to make the rule immediately effective without prior notice and comment because new information has revealed that EPA inadvertently established impracticable compliance deadlines for an application of TCE in the nuclear sector not specifically considered in the rulemaking and, separately, unintentionally established a reasonable transition period under TSCA section 6(d) for certain processing conditions of use without establishing a similar reasonable transition period for wastewater activities necessitated by such processing. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. What action is the Agency taking?</HD> EPA is amending the 2024 Regulation of Trichloroethylene (TCE) under TSCA codified in subpart D of 40 CFR 751, referred to hereafter as the 2024 final rule (Ref. 1), in the following ways. First, EPA is amending the prohibition compliance date for the use of TCE as a proces ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 77k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━