Buried in Data: Chemical Companies Are Struggling Under TSCA's Reporting Demands

Every four years, a quiet but grueling exercise plays out across the American chemical industry. Manufacturers, processors, and importers sit down to compile mountains of data: four years' worth of production volumes (PV), processing and conditions of use information, supply chain details, and administrative contacts, to be exact. All of the data is submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Chemical Data Reporting (CDR) rule, the data collection tool established by Section 8(a) of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

For large multinationals with complex product portfolios, the process can consume enormous resources - and the smaller the company, even with fewer chemicals to submit, the greater the impact on overall budget and bandwidth. Dimitrios Karakitsos, a former U.S. Senate staffer who helped draft the 2016 Lautenberg amendments to TSCA and is now a partner at Holland & Knight, told 3E, “There certainly have been complaints … [A]t times, the agency has moved beyond reasonable foreseeability and expanded [existing chemical reporting] into every possible use of a molecule.”

This could change when TSCA comes up for renewal in September 2026. The second Trump administration made it clear in its first few weeks that one of its priorities was to alleviate “unnecessary” regulatory burdens, and Republican members of Congress (although not exclusively) have pushed for a reformed TSCA, one that would free chemical companies from lengthy, costly processes such as risk assessments for new chemicals and possibly some of the burdens of TSCA 8(a) reporting.

Broad, But Not Quite a Census

The CDR bears some explanation. At first glance, it looks like a census of American chemicals - 8,650 from 2020 to 2024 - published every four years in data sets big enough to crash a personal laptop, which are intended to inform the EPA and Congressional decision-making. The reports are comprehensive, measuring production volumes, examining industrial and commercial uses, requesting worker exposure indicators, noting parent company identification, processing activities (including recycling and disposal), and spelling out various administrative details.

While the reporting cycle seems straightforward on paper, it is anything but. Chemical companies often manage hundreds or even thousands of substances across global supply chains. Each reporting cycle demands fresh data pulls, legal review of confidentiality claims, and careful coordination between regulatory affairs; environment, health, and safety (EHS); and IT teams. For global companies, the process runs in parallel with regulatory reporting requirements in the European Union, Asia Pacific, and other jurisdictions, creating a compounding compliance burden that strains even well-resourced teams.

The reporting requirements can also change from cycle to cycle. “For the 2024 CDR reporting cycle, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) use codes were required for all reported chemicals, whereas in the 2020 CDR cycle, these codes were only required for 20 designated high priority chemicals,” explained Ranglalakshmi Muthuswamy, regulatory specialist at 3E.

That comes as small consolation to teams racing to compile this data by the EPA deadline, while knowing that TSCA CDR data is not quite as comprehensive as it seems. For one thing, only chemicals that meet a certain production or import threshold (generally 25,000 pounds per site per year) must be reported. Changes made in 2020 also offer exemptions to small businesses, further reducing the number of chemicals reported.

The published data, in fact, can be misleading without a nuanced understanding of how it is gathered.

“Companies often claim the company name or location is confidential, so you are only seeing what they allow to be public,” said Terry Wells, director of chemical compliance at 3E. “Also, the report [records] imports on a corporate basis as one site in most cases, since imports are often controlled by a corporate function. So, the imports could be distributed to multiple locations but are simply controlled by the corporate HQ.”

This second point explains why the 2024 data shows New Jersey outstripping Texas, the longtime number one, as the state producing the most chemicals. Nothing on any company's factory floor or at the Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal changed. According to 3E analysis of the data, Reckitt Benckiser, headquartered in Parsippany, N.J., seems to have improved the granularity of its import reporting without a meaningful change in volume. A slight rejigging of that one company's filing data pushed New Jersey imports up 123%.

Keeping It Confidential

Another important factor for CDR filers and analysts alike to keep in mind is confidential business information (CBI), the trade secrets that TSCA is bound to keep safe from publication for a period of 10 years. Part of filing for CBI status is substantiation, effectively proving to the EPA that a certain piece of information would pose a legitimate risk if published.

The timeline for substantiation submissions has changed, adding to reporting burdens. “Most CBI claims submitted in 2024 required upfront substantiation, and certain data elements - such as site North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes - were no longer eligible for confidentiality claims,” said Muthuswamy.

Incidentally, this change in the past reporting cycle may have contributed to the report's ambiguities. With the coming expiration of CBI claims, “EPA has put hundreds, if not thousands of substances on the TSCA inventory by CAS registry numbers in the last few years instead of just by premanufacture notice,” said Wells. “That is likely why you may see a lot of substances reported for the first time.”

What a New TSCA Might Change

Recent EPA proposals would recalibrate several of TSCA 8(a)'s compliance thresholds in ways likely to matter most for midmarket and multinational chemical producers.

Most consequentially, the EPA proposes to update the definition of a “small manufacturer” to better reflect contemporary revenue and production realities. The agency explicitly stated as early as 2019 that the revised size standards are intended to expand the universe of entities qualifying for exemptions or reduced reporting obligations, thereby lowering the overall reporting burden. For specialty chemical manufacturers that have scaled operations since prior CDR cycles, the definitional shift could either preserve or eliminate exemptions that have governed compliance strategies for more than a decade, depending on revenue mix and production profiles.

The proposal also directly addresses byproduct reporting, an area that the EPA itself has described as administratively complex and prone to conservative over‑compliance. The agency would add targeted exemptions for certain categories of byproducts (particularly those sent for recycling), drawing heavily on recommendations developed during a 2017 negotiated rulemaking process with industry participation. For chemical processors that have historically reported byproduct volumes defensively to mitigate enforcement risk, the clarified exemptions promise meaningful reductions in data collection, documentation, and downstream compliance costs.

Finally, as Muthuswamy alluded, the most operationally efficient change for multinationals may be the EPA's proposal to replace legacy U.S. processing and use codes with internationally harmonized codes developed through the OECD. The EPA's alignment of CDR functional, product, and article use codes with OECD frameworks is intended to enable companies to reuse data prepared for the EU's Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) framework, as well as similar global laws.

For global regulatory affairs teams, this harmonization alone could make CDR less of a headache. Further easing of TSCA's reporting burden, however, will depend on the version of the act that faces Congressional review and a renewal vote in September. The deadline is still five months off, which means plenty of time for last-minute changes.