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The US EPA has published the first list of expiring TSCA confidentiality claims, challenging companies to act swiftly to preserve secrecy amid new regulatory requirements and administrative complexities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The US Environmental Protection Agency has begun the first public phase of a new TSCA confidentiality regime, publishing an initial list of Confidential Business Information claims that are due to expire between 22 June 2026 and 31 July 2026. The agency says the list will be updated each month and that companies should check whether any of their own filings are caught, even though the public spreadsheet identifies claims only by EPA case number, submission type and expiry date. According to the agency, direct notices are also being sent through its Central Data Exchange system.<\/p>\n
The publication marks the first practical test of the 10-year expiry rule created by the 2016 Lautenberg amendments to the Toxic Substances Control Act. EPA has said that most TSCA confidentiality claims expire a decade after they were asserted unless the submitter successfully asks for more time. For chemical identity claims, the calculation can be more complicated: the expiry date may be tied to the first approved confidential claim for that substance, not necessarily the date of a later filing by another company. EPA points submitters to the confidential portion of the TSCA Inventory for the relevant “EXP” date.<\/p>\n
Companies seeking to preserve protection must act quickly. EPA requires extension requests to be filed electronically in CDX at least 30 days before a claim expires, and the request must be supported by substantiation. The agency has also put a new extension-request tool into CDX and said it expects companies to keep contact details current, preserve access credentials and restore lapsed accounts without delay. If no timely request is filed, EPA says it is no longer obliged to keep the information confidential and may release it without further warning.<\/p>\n
The agency\u2019s guidance also makes clear that not every category of information is treated the same way. Some information is exempt from substantiation and from expiry under TSCA section 14, including certain process details, sales and marketing information, supplier and customer identities, mixture composition data and some pre-commercial chemical identity information. But EPA warns that if a submitter is unsure whether a claim falls within an exemption, it should still seek an extension rather than assume the protection will continue automatically.<\/p>\n
For industry, the practical challenge is as much administrative as legal. Companies with historical TSCA filings from 2016 onwards may now need to match EPA case numbers against internal records, review older substantiations and decide whether continued secrecy still matters commercially. That is especially true for firms with mergers, divestitures or rebranding since the original submission, and for those with confidential chemical identity claims that may now be expiring on a timetable determined by another company\u2019s earlier filing. EPA has said it will review extension requests and either approve or deny them before the expiry date, but the burden is on submitters to act before the deadline.<\/p>\n
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