Technical Amendments to the EPCRA Hazardous Chemical Inventory Reporting Requirements To Conform to the 2024 OSHA Hazard Communication Standard

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 370</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-HQ-OLEM-2025-0299; FRL-12698-03-OLEM]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2050-AH40</RIN> <SUBJECT>Technical Amendments to the EPCRA Hazardous Chemical Inventory Reporting Requirements To Conform to the 2024 OSHA Hazard Communication Standard</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to conform the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act hazardous chemical inventory reporting regulations to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's Hazard Communication Standard amendments of 2012 and 2024. The Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act and its regulations rely on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's Hazard Communication Standard for the definition of a <E T="03">hazardous chemical</E> and for the categories of health and physical hazards that must be reported under the hazardous chemical inventory regulations. This action proposes to conform the terminology used and information that must be reported on the hazardous chemical inventory forms to the Hazard Communication Standard amendments. As a result, this proposed action would also improve first responder and community safety, reduce discrepancies and confusion, prevent interpretation burdens on facilities when using (Material) Safety Data Sheets to complete annual hazardous chemical inventory reports, and improve clarity. In the “Rules and Regulations” section of this <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , we are intending to implement the proposed amendments in this proposed rule as a direct final rule without a prior proposed rule. If we receive no adverse comment, we will not take further action on this proposed rule. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be received by December 17, 2025. Comments on the information collection provisions of the proposed rule under the PRA must be received by the Office of Management and Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OMB-OIRA) on or before December 17, 2025. Please refer to the PRA section under “Statutory and Executive Order Reviews” in this preamble for specific instructions. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may send comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OLEM-2025-0299, by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov/</E> (our preferred method). • <E T="03">Mail:</E> U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Docket Center, Office of Emergency Management Docket, Mail Code 28221T, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20460. • <E T="03">Hand Delivery or Courier:</E> EPA Docket Center, WJC West Building, Room 3334, 1301 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20004. The Docket Center's hours of operations are 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday-Friday (except Federal Holidays). <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions received must include the Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OLEM-2025-0299 for this rulemaking. Comments received may be posted without change to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> including personal information provided. For detailed instructions on sending comments and additional information on the rulemaking process, see the “Public Participation” heading of the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Jennifer Barre, Regulation Implementation Division of the Office of Emergency Management (5104A), Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20460; telephone number: (240) 644-4559; email address: <E T="03">barre.jennifer@epa.gov;</E> websites: <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/epcra/emergency-planning-and-community-right-know-act-non-section-313-regulations-and-amendments.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Why is EPA issuing this proposed rule?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Public Participation—Written Comments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. General Information</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Summary of This Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Who does this regulation apply to?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. What does this regulation require from facilities?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Why is the Agency taking this action?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">E. What is the Agency's authority for taking this action?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">F. What are the incremental costs and benefits of this action?</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Revisions to 40 CFR Part 370</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. History of EPCRA Hazard Categories</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Revisions to EPCRA Hazard Categories</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Revisions to EPCRA Definitions</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Other Revisions to 40 CFR Part 370</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">E. Summary of Revisions to 40 CFR Part 370</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Statutory and Executive Orders Reviews</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Executive Order 12866: Regulatory Planning and Review and Executive Order 13563: Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Executive Order 14192: Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">E. Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">F. Executive Order 13132: Federalism</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">G. Executive Order 13175: Consultation and Coordination With Indian Tribal Governments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">H. Executive Order 13045: Protection of Children From Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">I. Executive Order 13211: Actions Concerning Regulations That Significantly Affect Energy Supply, Distribution or Use</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">J. National Technology Transfer and Advancement Act (NTTAA)</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Why is EPA issuing this proposed rule?</HD> This document proposes to amend 40 CFR part 370 to conform to the 2012 and 2024 amendments to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA's) Hazard Communication Standard (HCS) [29 CFR 1910.1200]. <SU>1</SU> The Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) statute [42 U.S.C. Chapter 116]  <SU>2</SU> relies on the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act of 1970 [29 U.S.C. Chapter 15]  <SU>3</SU> and OSHA's implementing regulations [29 CFR 1910.1200] for the definitions of hazardous chemical, physical hazard, and health hazard and the hazardous chemical reporting hazard categories. More specifically, section 311(e) of the EPCRA statute and its attendant regulation at 40 CFR 370.66  <SU>4</SU> define <E T="03">hazardous chemical</E> as any hazardous chemical defined under 29 CFR 1910.1200(c). The EPCRA statute further requires that hazardous chemical inventory reporting be grouped into categories of health and physical hazards as set forth under the OSH Act and its implementing regulations [42 U.S.C. 11021(a)(2)(A)(1) and section 11022(a)(1)]. This action proposes to adopt the OSHA definitions and hazard categories as is required by the EPCRA statute and its regulations. EPA anticipates that this proposed action will improve first responder and community safety; prevent interpretation burdens for facilities, states, local agencies, and fire departments; and improve clarity without increasing the regulatory burden under EPCRA. We have published a direct final rule to implement the amendments in this document as a direct final rule without a prior proposed rule in the “Rules and Regulations” section of this <E T="04">Federal Register</E> because we view this as a noncontroversial action and anticipate no adverse comment. We have explained our reasons for this in the preamble to the direct final rule. If we receive no adverse comment, we will not take further action on this proposed rule. If we receive adverse comment, we will withdraw the direct final rule and it will not take effect. We would address all public comments in any subsequent final rule based on this proposed rule. If the Agency receives adverse comment on a distinct provision of this rulemaking, we will publish a timely withdraw in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> indicating which provisions we are withdrawing. The provisions which are not withdrawn will become effective on the date set out above, notwithstanding adverse comment on any other provision. We do not intend to institute a second comment period on this action. Any parties interested in commenting must do so at this time. For further information, please see the information provided in the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section of this document. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Public Participation—Written Comments</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OLEM-2025-0299, at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> (our preferred method), or the other methods identified in the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section. Once submitted, comments cannot be edited or removed from the docket. EPA may publish any comment received to its public docket. Do not submit to EPA's docket at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> any information you consider to be Confidential Business Information (CBI), Proprietary Business Information (PBI), or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Multimedia submissions (audio, video, etc.) must be accompanied by a written comment. The written comment is considered the official comment and should include discussion of all points you wish to make. EPA will generally not consider comments or comment contents located outside of the primary subm ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 102k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━