EPA Adds Thousands of TSCA Chemicals, Facilities To Public Database
The Environmental Protection Agency has issued a press release announcing that it has added more than 6,300 chemicals and 3,800 chemical facilities regulated under the Toxic Substances Control Act to its public database called Envirofacts.
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(According to EPA sources, the EPA’s Envirofacts database has been available for quite some time, but this is the first time that TSCA-regulated chemicals and chemical facilities have been added to it.)
Envirofacts is Single Source for Enviro Activities Affecting Air, Water, and Land
According to the EPA, the Envirofacts database is a single point of access on the Internet for information about environmental activities that may affect air, water and land in the U.S and provides tools for analyzing the data.
It includes facility name and address information, aerial image of the facility and surrounding area, map location of the facility, and links to other EPA information on the facility, such as EPA’s inspection and compliance reports that are available through the Enforcement Compliance History Online (ECHO) database. EPA is also adding historic facility information for another 2,500 facilities.
EPA to Continue Efforts to Increase Publicly Available Information
EPA states that it has conducted a series of efforts to increase the public’s access to chemical information including reducing confidentiality claims by industry and making the public portion of the TSCA inventory available free of charge on the EPA’s Web site. (EPA sources have confirmed that the chemicals contained in the Envirofacts database are only a subset of the chemicals found on the TSCA Chemical Substances Inventory.)
EPA states that it intends to take additional actions in the months ahead to further increase the amount of information available to the public.
(See ITT’s Online Archives or 01/22/10 news, 10012230, for BP summary on reduced TSCA confidentiality. See ITT’s Online Archives or 03/17/10 news, 10031715, for BP summary of EPA’s announcement of free online access to the TSCA inventory.)
Senate TSCA Reform Bill Would Require EPA Electronic Database, Etc.
The “Safe Chemicals Act” (S. 3209), a Senate bill to overhaul the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, contains a provision that would require EPA to establish an electronic database within one year of enactment for storing and sharing information relating to toxicity, use of, and exposure to chemical substances.
S. 3209 would also require significant decisions made by EPA relating to the safety of a chemical substance to be made available to the public via the electronic database within 18 months of the date of enactment or not later than 90 days after the decision would be made by EPA.
(S. 3209 was introduced on April 15, 2010, referred to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, and has had no action since its introduction.)
(See ITT’s Online Archives or 04/16/10 and 04/27/10 news, 10041929 and 10042732, for previous BP summaries of S. 3209.)
Additional information on Envirofacts is available at http://www.epa.gov/enviro/facts/tsca/index.html.
EPA press release, dated 05/17/10, available at http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/d0cf6618525a9efb85257359003fb69d/b6e361b52038099485257726004e5a98!OpenDocument