Washington, DC — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says if companies are submitting information on chemicals that pose substantial risks to humans and the environment, they will not be able to claim that the identities of the chemicals are confidential business information.

A recent Environmental Working Group study showed that companies had been able to claim confidentiality on some 17,000 of the 83,000 chemicals listed by the EPA.

The agency's move to reject further confidentiality claims is part of its effort to bring reform to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which was put in place in 1976, and use as much authority as allowed by the law.

The EPA's announcement applies to chemicals which are the subject of a TSCA section 8(e) submission and are listed on the public portion of the TSCA chemical inventory at the time of the section 8(e) filing.  The announcement does not address substances listed on the non-public portion of the Inventory at the time of 8(e) filing.

EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson and the agency say that the TSCA is outdated and needs to be modernized. The EPA laid out principals it plans to follow as it works toward changes to the law, and also plans to develop a list of chemicals of concern. The EPA says it will announce additional actions regarding chemical information transparency in the coming months.

Among other groups calling for reform to the TSCA is Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, a widespread coalition that recently put out a report, The Health Case for Reforming the Toxic Substances Control Act.

The report backs up the group's demand for reform to the law, showing how chronic disease rates have changes within the last 40 years, how those diseases are related to chemicals, and the costs of those diseases

[Editor's note: This article has been updated to clarify which chemicals the new EPA policy affects.]

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