U.S. EPA Announces Plan To Tighten PFAS Reporting Requirements

In connection with the release of its 2020 Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) National Analysis that evidenced a 10% decline in environmental releases of TRI chemicals between 2019 and 2020, U.S. EPA announced that it intends to initiate a rulemaking that will, among other things, remove the de minimis exemption for reporting the 172 per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) that were added to TRI by the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. 

The TRI analysis report noted that 38 facilities reported managing 800,000 pounds of PFAS in 2020 but only 9,000 pounds of PFAS were reported as having been released. In response to what U.S. EPA claims to be a "seemingly limited scope of PFAS reporting", U.S. EPA stated that it intends to "use existing data to generate lists of potential productions and recipients of PFAS waste, and has contacted facilities with potential reporting errors, as well as those that were expected to report but did not." In addition, U.S. EPA