EPA to Publish Chemical Safety RFI

I got an interesting email from the EO 13650 Working Group yesterday giving me advance notice of the EPA’s press release (issued today) about their pending publication of a Request for Information (RFI) for possible revisions to the EPA’s Risk Management Program (RMP). This is part of the Agency’s response to the requirements of the President’s Executive Order on Increasing Chemical Safety and Security (EO 13650).

Now, anyone that has been following the activities of the EO 13650 Working Group has been expecting this RFI. The EPA submitted the document to the OMB for approval back in May. That approval has not yet been announced, though we may see the announcement of that approval tomorrow on the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs web site.

According to today’s press release the RFI has been signed and forwarded to the folks at the Federal Register for official publication. It is not going to be in tomorrow’s Federal Register, so the earliest that it could show up is in the Monday edition (which will be released on-line on Saturday). From the date of publication there will be a 90-day comment period. There will almost certainly be requests to extend that comment period due to the breadth of the information requested.

An unofficial draft of the RFI is available on the EPA web site. The documents takes pains to acknowledge that this is not the official document and that there may be minor differences between the draft and the version that will be published in the Federal Register. Still it’s nice to have the draft available so that we can opine on the contents quickly and informatively when it is published.

So I guess it is time to start reading the lengthy (115 pages) document. I’ll probably start reporting on it in detail on Saturday.