Petition To Delist Hazardous Air Pollutant: 2-Butoxyethyl Benzoate (2-BEB)

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 63</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-HQ-OAR-2024-0392; FRL-7688-03-OAR]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2060-AU75</RIN> <SUBJECT>Petition To Delist Hazardous Air Pollutant: 2-Butoxyethyl Benzoate (2-BEB)</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA or Agency) is proposing to grant a petition to remove 2-Butoxyethyl benzoate (2-BEB) (Chemical Abstract Service (CAS) No. 5451-76-3) from the glycol ethers category in the list of hazardous air pollutants (HAP) in Clean Air Act (CAA). The EPA proposes to find that there are adequate data on the health or environmental effects of 2-BEB to support the request for removal. This action also details a streamlined approach to the review process of future petitions. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before February 20, 2026. <E T="03">Public hearing:</E> If anyone contacts us requesting a public hearing on or before Saturday, December 27, 2025, we will hold a virtual public hearing. See <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> for information on requesting and registering for a public hearing. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may send comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2024-0392, by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov</E> (our preferred method). Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. • <E T="03">Email: a-and-r-docket@epa.gov.</E> Include Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2024-0392 in the subject line of the message. • <E T="03">Fax:</E> (202) 566-9744. Attention Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2024-0392. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Docket Center, Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2024-0392, 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.-4:30 p.m., Monday-Friday (except Federal holidays). <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions received must include the Docket ID No. for this rulemaking. Comments received may be posted without change to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information provided. For detailed instructions on sending comments and additional information on the rulemaking process, see the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For information about this proposed action, contact Marisa Pfohl, Impacts and Ambient Standards Division (C539-02), Office of Clean Air Programs, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 109 T.W. Alexander Drive, P.O. Box 12055 RTP, North Carolina 27711; telephone number: (919) 541-7607; email address: <E T="03">pfohl.marisa@epa.gov.</E> For additional information, see <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/haps/deletion-2-butoxyethyl-benzoate-2-beb-glycol-ethers-category-clean-air-act-list-hazardous-air.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <E T="03">Participation in virtual public hearing.</E> To request a virtual public hearing, contact the public hearing team at (888) 372-8699 or by email at <E T="03">SPPDpublichearing@epa.gov.</E> If requested, the virtual hearing will be held on January 12, 2026. The EPA will announce further details at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/haps/deletion-2-butoxyethyl-benzoate-2-beb-glycol-ethers-category-clean-air-act-list-hazardous-air.</E> We note that if a hearing is requested, the planned schedule for the hearing will be provided on this website, but the EPA may close a session 15 minutes after the last pre-registered speaker has testified if there are no additional speakers. If a public hearing is requested, the EPA will begin pre-registering speakers for the hearing no later than one business day after a request has been received. To register to speak at the virtual hearing, please use the online registration form available at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/haps/deletion-2-butoxyethyl-benzoate-2-beb-glycol-ethers-category-clean-air-act-list-hazardous-air</E> or contact the public hearing team at (888) 372-8699 or by email at <E T="03">SPPDpublichearing@epa.gov.</E> The last day to pre-register to speak at the hearing will be Saturday, January 3, 2026. Prior to the hearing, the EPA will post a general agenda that will list pre-registered speakers at: <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/haps/deletion-2-butoxyethyl-benzoate-2-beb-glycol-ethers-category-clean-air-act-list-hazardous-air.</E> The EPA will make every effort to follow the schedule as closely as possible on the day of the hearing; however, please plan for the hearings to run either ahead of schedule or behind schedule. Each commenter will have four minutes to provide oral testimony. The EPA encourages commenters to submit a copy of their oral testimony as written comments to the rulemaking docket. The EPA may ask clarifying questions during the oral presentations but will not respond to the presentations at that time. Written statements and supporting information submitted during the comment period will be considered with the same weight as oral testimony and supporting information presented at the public hearing. Please note that any updates made to any aspect of the hearing will be posted online at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/haps/deletion-2-butoxyethyl-benzoate-2-beb-glycol-ethers-category-clean-air-act-list-hazardous-air.</E> While the EPA expects the hearing to go forward as described in this section, please monitor our website or contact the public hearing team at (888) 372-8699 or by email at <E T="03">SPPDpublichearing@epa.gov</E> to determine if there are any updates. The EPA does not intend to publish a document in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> announcing updates. If you require special accommodation such as audio description, please pre-register for the hearing with the public hearing team and describe your needs by Monday, December 29, 2025. The EPA may not be able to arrange accommodations without advanced notice. <E T="03">Docket.</E> The EPA has established a docket for this rulemaking under Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2024-0392. All documents in the docket are listed at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Although listed, some information is not publicly available, <E T="03">e.g.,</E> Confidential Business Information (CBI) or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. The EPA does not place certain other material, such as copyrighted material, on the internet; this material is publicly available only as pdf versions accessible only on EPA computers in the docket office reading room. The public cannot download certain data bases and physical items from the docket but may request these items by contacting the docket office at 202-566-1744. The docket office has 10 business days to respond to such requests. With the exception of such material, publicly available docket materials are available electronically at <E T="03">regulations.gov.</E> <E T="03">Written Comments.</E> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2024-0392, 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. The 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 CBI or other information for which disclosure is restricted by statute. This type of information should be submitted as discussed in the <E T="03">Submitting CBI</E> section of this document. 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. The EPA will generally not consider comments or comment contents located outside of the primary submission ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> on the web, cloud, or other file sharing system). For additional submission methods, the full EPA public comment policy, information about CBI or multimedia submissions, and general guidance on making effective comments, please visit <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.</E> The <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> website allows you to submit your comment anonymously, which means the EPA will not know your identity or contact information unless you provide it in the body of your comment. If you send an email comment directly to the EPA without going through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> your email address will be automatically captured and included as part of the comment that is placed in the public docket and made available on the internet. If you submit an electronic comment, the EPA recommends that you include your name and other contact information in the body of your comment and with any digital storage media you submit. If the EPA cannot read your comment due to technical difficulties and cannot contact you for clarification, the EPA may not be able to consider your comment. Electronic files should not include special characters or any form of encryption and be free of any defects or viruses. For additional information about the EPA's public docket, visit the EPA Docket Center homepage at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/dockets.</E> <E T="03">Submitting CBI.</E> Do not submit information containing CBI to the E ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 113k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━