US begins to declassify confidential chemical product data

24 March 2011 21:42  [Source: ICIS news]

WASHINGTON (ICIS)--US environmental regulators have begun to declassify confidential business information (CBI) submitted by chemical manufacturers in earlier years, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced on Thursday.

The agency said that it was making available to the public identities of chemicals contained in 42 health and safety studies that were previously claimed as confidential by producers.

The declassified CBI data are the first to be disclosed under a challenge issued to the US chemicals industry last year by EPA assistant administrator Steve Owens, who asked producers to review older product registrations to determine if their claims for non-disclosure of confidential information were still necessary or valid.

However, the agency said that not all of the CBI data being declassified in Thursday’s disclosure were voluntarily released by the firms that had made the initial confidentiality claims.

The agency is close to completing a final ruling on new criteria for CBI claims under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), a development that has raised concern among producers about possible loss of proprietary data to competitors.

The CBI data disclosed on Thursday was available on a special EPA website.

EPA said that it expects to make further CBI declassifications on a regular basis, but the agency did not say how frequently it might do so.

Paul Hodges studies key influencers shaping the chemical industry in Chemicals and the Economy

By: Joe Kamalick
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