From raincoats to yoga pants: What the EPA’s new PFAS rule means for retail

Read the full story at The Fashion Law.

A broad new per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (“PFAS”) reporting rule has companies across industries in the orbit of the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”). On October 11, the EPA published a final rule, Toxic Substances Control Act Reporting and Recordkeeping Requirements for Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances, which requires any entity or person that has manufactured PFAS – also known as “forever chemicals” – for a commercial purpose since January 2011 to submit PFAS uses, production volumes, byproducts, disposals, exposures, and existing information on environmental or health effects to the EPA. 

The new PFAS reporting rule applies to anyone that has manufactured, for “a commercial purpose,” a chemical substance or mixture containing a chemical substance defined as PFAS at any time since January 1, 2011. Beyond that, the reporting requirements extend to entities that have imported articles containing covered PFAS chemicals into the U.S., as well as to PFAS-containing byproducts and impurities produced during the manufacturing process. And still yet, the EPA’s reporting rule does not establish any de minimis thresholds or minimum production volumes, which means that any entity that has manufactured in (or imported into) the U.S. a PFAS or an article containing a PFAS will have to report to the EPA. 

“The rule’s breadth, coupled with its retrospectivity, will likely create new recordkeeping and reporting questions for manufacturers, especially because it does not include de minimis exemptions,” Dentons’ Amy Rubenstein, Robin Thomerson, and Bradley Strait stated in a recent note. “As a result, any amount of PFAS that is manufactured (or imported) must be reported to EPA.”