Today the EPA published a 30-day ICR notice in the Federal Register (90 FR 4741-4742) for “Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Existing Chemical Risk Evaluation and Management: Generic Information Collection Request for Surveys (Renewal). The 60-day ICR notice was published on May 15th, 2024. This is the first renewal of this ICR (originally approved February 28th, 2022). Un-explained changes have been made in the burden estimate.
The table below shows the apparently ongoing revisions to the burden estimate for this ICR.
EPA uses this ‘generic’ ICR to collect information from industry, academia and the public to support their risk assessments under the TSCA Existing Chemical Risk Evaluation and Management program. They call this a ‘generic’ collection because it would be used for a variety of different chemical risk assessments.
Burden Details
The Supporting Document (pg 11) for the currently approved version of this ICR provides the following explanation of the burden estimate:
“The total estimated hourly burden imposed by this collection of information over the next three years for surveys is 22,080 total hours or 7,360 hours annually. There are about 800 respondents per year, which is calculated by estimating two surveys a year with 400 respondents per survey. The total number of respondents for the 3-year collection would be about 2400.”
Those numbers (800 respondents and 7,360 burden hours, or 9.2 hours per response) are not reflected in the ‘approved’ burden estimate published by OIRA (600 and 1200 respectively).
The Supporting Document (pg 10) on the current Docket for the 60-day ICR notice provides the following description of the 60-day ICR burden estimate:
“EPA is required to evaluate the risks of at least twenty existing chemicals starting in 2022, with a requirement to complete these risk evaluations within three and a half years of beginning the risk evaluation. Including manufacturer-requested evaluations, we assume that 25 risk evaluations will be completed over the next three years. To support this, EPA assumes that an average of twenty interviews and two focus groups with seven participants each will be needed per risk evaluation. EPA assumes that each interview would require an average of 0.5 hours and each focus group would require 2 hours. The average focus group size and duration is the same as that assumed for focus groups done through the Office of Policy in their generic ICR (EPA ICR No. 2205.21, OMB Control Number 2090-0028).”
This supports the reported burden estimate in the same document (pg 2) of 850 responses and 950 annual burden hours. These are the same numbers as reported in the 60-day ICR notice.
The Supporting Document for the current ICR notice has not yet appeared in the Federal eRulemaking Portal docket, nor has OIRA yet reported receipt of the final document for this ICR renewal (that should occur shortly). It does look, however, that the numbers reported in today’s notice resemble those described in the Supporting Document for the original ICR, the only difference being that more risk evaluations are expected to be done each year. That would reflect the recent TSCA risk assessment history.
Public Comments
The EPA is soliciting public comment on this ICR notice. Comments may be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal (www.Regulations.gov; Docket # EPA-HQ-OPPT-2018-0611). Comments should be submitted by February 18th, 2025.