*** EO12866/13563 Review Draft – Deliberative – Do Not 

Cite, Quote, or Release During the Review ***

Economic Analysis of the Significant New Use Rule 

for Toluene Diisocyanate (TDI) and Related Compounds 

(EPA DOCKET EPA-HQ-OPPT-2010-0520)

Draft – 7/28/14

—Does not contain TSCA CBI— 

Rin2070-AJ91_EO12866_TDI-SNUR_NPRM_EA_2014-07-29.docx 

Prepared by: 

Economic and Policy Analysis Branch 

Economics, Exposure and Technology Division 

Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics 

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 

1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. 

Washington, DC 20460 
*** EO12866/13563 Review Draft –Do Not Cite, Quote, or Release During the Review ***

i

Contributors 

The EPA analyst responsible for this report was Stephanie Suazo. Analytical and draft 

preparation support was provided by Abt Associates Inc. under EPA Contract No. EP-W-08-010. 
*** EO12866/13563 Review Draft –Do Not Cite, Quote, or Release During the Review ***

ii

Executive Summary 

This report estimates the costs of a Significant New Use Rule (SNUR) being proposed by the 

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for toluene diisocyanate (TDI) and related 

compounds. The proposed rule will apply to the seven chemicals listed in Table ES- 1: Toluene 

Diisocyanate Related Compounds Subject to this Action with a Proposed Significant New Use of 

“Any Use in a Consumer Product” and Table ES- 2 below. 

Table ES- 1: Toluene Diisocyanate Related Compounds Subject to this Action with a 

Proposed Significant New Use of “Any Use in a Consumer Product” 

Chemical Name Chemical Abstracts Index Name 

Chemical Abstract 

Service Registry 

Number (CASRN) 

Toluene diisocyanate 

trimer Benzene, 1,3-diisocyanatomethyl-, trimer 9019-85-6 

Poly(toluene diisocyanate) Benzene, 1,3-diisocyanatomethyl-, 

homopolymer 9017-01-0 

Toluene diisocyanate 

dimer 

1,3-Diazetidine-2,4-dione, 1,3bis(3-

isocyanatomethylphenyl)- 26747-90-0 

Tolulene diisocyanate 

“cyclic” trimer 

1,3,5-Triazine-2,4,6(1H,3H,5H)trione, 1,3,5-

tris(3isocyanatomethylphenyl)- 26603-40-7 

Table ES- 2: Toluene Diisocyanates Subject to this Action with a Proposed Significant Use 

of “Any Use in A Consumer Product (Except for Use in Coatings, Adhesives, Elastomers, 

Binders, and Sealants at Less than or Equal to 0.1 Percent in a Consumer Product)” 

Chemical Name Chemical Abstracts Index Name 

Chemical Abstract 

Service Registry 

Number (CASRN) 

2,6-Toluene diisocyanate Benzene, 1,3-diisocyanato-2-methyl- 91-08-7

2,4-Toluene diisocyanate Benzene, 2,4-diisocyanato-1-methyl- 584-84-9 

Toluene diisocyanate 

unspecified isomer Benzene, 1,3-diisocyanatomethyl- 26471-62-5 

EPA is proposing a significant new use rule (SNUR) under the Toxic Substance Control 

Act (TSCA) section 5(a)(2) for 2,4-toluene diisocyanate, 2,6-toluene diisocyanate, toluene 

diisocyanate unspecified isomers (these three chemical substances are hereafter referred to as 

toluene diisocyanates or TDI) and related compounds (toluene diisocyanate trimer, poly(toluene 

diisocyanate), toluene diisocyanate dimer, and toluene diisocyanate cyclic trimer). The proposed 

significant new use is any use in a consumer product of the chemical substances listed in Table 

ES- 1 or any use in a consumer product of any chemical listed in Table ES- 2 other than use in 

coatings, elastomers, adhesives, binders, and sealants that results in less than or equal to 0.1 

percent by weight of TDI in a consumer product. For this proposed rule, the general SNUR article 

exemption for persons who import or process chemical substances listed in Table ES-1 and ES-2 

as part of an article would not apply. The article exemption at 40 CFR 721.45(f) is based on an 

assumption that people and the environment will generally not be exposed to chemical substances 

in articles (see 49 FR 35014; September 5, 1984). However, TDI and related compounds are 

volatile and as such could migrate out of articles that contain them. For instance, studies of TDI 

in polyurethane products reported that after the reaction between an isocyanate and an alcohol to 

form polyurethane products, residual levels of isocyanates were detected on the surface of the 
*** EO12866/13563 Review Draft –Do Not Cite, Quote, or Release During the Review ***

iii

products, which if used could lead to exposure (Krone, 2004; Bello et. al, 2007). Because TDI 

and related compounds are known to be volatile chemical substances, have been reported to 

migrate from products, and are sensitizers, EPA would like the opportunity to evaluate such 

potential uses in consumer products for any associated risks or hazards that might exist before 

those uses would begin. Consumer products are often marketed as do-it-yourself (DIY) products 

and as a result consumers would be unaware of the potential hazards of consumer products, 

including articles containing TDI or other diisocyanates. Consequently, insufficient and 

inadequate hazard communication may lead to incorrect use and increased consumer and 

bystander exposures, particularly for sensitive groups, such as children. The proposed SNUR 

requires manufacturers, importers, or processors of the seven chemicals to notify EPA at least 90 

days prior to the occurrence of any significant new use. A firm intending to engage in these 

activities would be required to submit a Significant New Use Notice (SNUN), incurring an 

estimated submission cost of $8,589 per chemical, and potentially other minor costs, such as 

export notification and consumer notification costs. The required notification will provide EPA 

with the opportunity to evaluate the intended use and, if necessary, to prevent or limit potentially 

adverse effects from that activity before it occurs.

In addition to any firms that may make a SNUN submission, the proposed SNUR may also affect 

firms that do not make a submission. By avoiding a significant new use, a firm can avoid 

submission and testing costs but may incur other compliance costs. The firm may also incur 

“hidden” costs; for example, it could forego profitable opportunities to use the chemical in an 

application that would be a significant new use, or limit production volume to avoid a significant 

new use. 

Costs are estimated at the firm level and reflect the burden of a SNUR on the firms that make a 

submission. The hidden costs to the firms that do not make a submission are not quantified. EPA 

receives fewer than ten SNUNs per year. The number of firms affected by not making 

submissions to EPA is not known; therefore, costs are not aggregated across the affected entities.
*** EO12866/13563 Review Draft –Do Not Cite, Quote, or Release During the Review ***

iv

Table of Contents 

Contributors ...................................................................................................................................... i 

Executive Summary ........................................................................................................................ ii 

1 Introduction............................................................................................................................. 6 

1.1 Statutory Authority and Significant New Uses under the Proposed SNUR................... 7 

1.2 Summary of Methodology ............................................................................................. 8 

1.3 Organization of this Report ............................................................................................ 8 

2 Industry Compliance Costs ..................................................................................................... 9 

2.1 Wage Rates .................................................................................................................. 10 

2.2 Unit Industry Compliance Costs .................................................................................. 11 

2.2.1 Rule Familiarization ............................................................................................ 11 

2.2.2 CDX Registration, CDX Electronic Signature, and Pay.gov Account Setup ...... 11 

2.2.3 Form Completion and Submission Fee ............................................................... 12 

2.2.4 Recordkeeping for Companies Choosing to Submit a SNUN ............................. 14 

2.2.5 Recordkeeping for Companies that do not Submit a SNUN ............................... 14 

2.2.6 Customer Notification ......................................................................................... 15 

2.2.7 Import Certification ............................................................................................. 15 

2.2.8 Export Notification .............................................................................................. 15 

2.3 Article Importation and Processing .............................................................................. 18 

2.3.1 Affected Entities .................................................................................................. 18 

2.3.2 Potential Compliance Activities (Article Importers) ........................................... 19 

2.3.3 Potential Compliance Activities (Processors of Articles) ................................... 22 

2.4 Summary of Per Submission Costs, by Option ............................................................ 23 

2.5 Likelihood of SNUN Submission ................................................................................ 23 

2.6 Potential for Subsequent Regulatory Actions .............................................................. 24 

3 Agency Costs ........................................................................................................................ 25 

3.1 Labor Rates for EPA Staff ........................................................................................... 25 

3.2 SNUN Processing Costs ............................................................................................... 26 

3.3 Export Notification Cost .............................................................................................. 30 

4 Benefits ................................................................................................................................. 31 

5 Additional Analyses .............................................................................................................. 32 

5.1 Regulatory Flexibility Act ........................................................................................... 32 

5.2 Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA) .................................................................. 33 

5.3 Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) ................................................................................. 33 

5.4 Executive Order 13132, Federalism ............................................................................. 33 

5.5 Executive Order 12898, Environmental Justice ........................................................... 33 

5.6 Executive Order 13045, Protection of Children ........................................................... 34 

5.7 Executive Order 13175, Tribal Governments .............................................................. 34 

5.8 Executive Order 13211, Energy Supply, Distribution, or Use ..................................... 34 

5.9 Executive Order 13563, Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review .................... 34 

6 References............................................................................................................................. 36 

Appendix A: Inflators and Wage Rates ......................................................................................... 40 

 
*** EO12866/13563 Review Draft –Do Not Cite, Quote, or Release During the Review ***

v

List of Tables 

Table ES- 1: Toluene Diisocyanate Related Compounds Subject to this Action with a Proposed 

Significant New Use of “Any Use in a Consumer Product” ........................................................... ii

Table ES- 2: Toluene Diisocyanates Subject to this Action with a Proposed Significant Use of 

“Any Use in A Consumer Product Other Than Use in Coatings, Adhensives, Elastomers, Binders, 

and Sealants at Less than or Equal to 0.1 Percent in a Consumer Product” .................................... ii

Table 1: Toluene Diisocyanate Related Compounds Subject to this Action with a Proposed 

Significant New Use of “Any Use in a Consumer Product” ........................................................... 6

Table 2: Toluene Diisocyanates Subject to this Action with a Proposed Significant Use of “Any 

Use in a Consumer Product Other than Use in Coatings, Adhesives, Elastomers, Binders, and 

Sealants at Less than or Equal to 0.1 Percent in a Consumer Product”” ......................................... 6

Table 3: Loaded Industry Wage Rates, December 2012 ............................................................... 10

Table 4: Rule Familiarization Burden and Cost for SNUR Submitters ......................................... 11

Table 5: CDX Registration, CDX Electronic Signature, and Pay.gov Account Setup Burden and 

Cost for First-Time Submitters ...................................................................................................... 12

Table 6: Industry Cost Estimate to Complete the SNUN Form .................................................... 13

Table 7: Industry Cost Estimate to Complete and Submit the SNUN Form ................................. 14

Table 8: Annual Per-Chemical Costs of Recordkeeping Requirement for Companies that Choose 

not to Submit a SNUN ................................................................................................................... 15

Table 9: Derivation of Total Mailing Cost for 12 Notices ............................................................ 17

Table 10: TSCA 12(b) Export Notification Cost per Notification ................................................ 18

Table 11: Examples of Industries that may Import Articles Containing TDI ............................... 19

Table 12: Range of Costs Associated with an Importer’s Identification of Chemicals Subject .... 21

Table 13: Compliance Options and Associated Costs Incurred by a Firm Due to the Proposed 

SNUR ............................................................................................................................................ 23

Table 14: Derivation of Loaded Agency Wage Rates ................................................................... 26

Table 15: Derivation of Inflation Factors for Agency Extramural Costs ...................................... 27

Table 16: Agency Costs for SNUN and Other Submission Review and Processing .................... 28

Table 17: TSCA 12(b) Export Notification Cost: Agency Burden per Activity (2012$) .............. 30

Table A-1: Derivation of Loaded Wage Rates .............................................................................. 42

Table A-2: Derivation of Inflation Factors .................................................................................... 44
*** EO12866/13563 Review Draft –Do Not Cite, Quote, or Release During the Review ***

6

1 Introduction 

This report estimates the costs of the proposed Significant New Use Rule (SNUR) for seven toluene 

diisocyanate (TDI) chemicals and related compounds: (1) Toluene diisocyanate, (2) Toluene diisocyanate 

trimer, (3) 2,6-Toluene diisocyanate, (4) 2,4-Toluene diisocyanate, (5) Poly(toluene diisocyanate), (6) 

Toluene diisocyanate dimer, and (7) Toluene diisocyanate “cyclic” trimer. The CAS RN and common 

names of these chemicals are found in Table 1 and Table 2 below. 

Table 1: Toluene Diisocyanate Related Compounds Subject to this Action with a Proposed 

Significant New Use of “Any Use in a Consumer Product” 

Chemical Name Chemical Abstracts Index Name 

Chemical Abstract 

Service Registry 

Number (CASRN) 

Toluene diisocyanate trimer Benzene, 1,3-diisocyanatomethyl-, trimer 9019-85-6 

Poly(toluene diisocyanate) Benzene, 1,3-diisocyanatomethyl-, 

homopolymer 9017-01-0 

Toluene diisocyanate dimer 1,3-Diazetidine-2,4-dione, 1,3bis(3-

isocyanatomethylphenyl)- 26747-90-0 

Tolulene diisocyanate “cyclic” 

trimer 

1,3,5-Triazine-2,4,6(1H,3H,5H)trione, 

1,3,5-tris(3isocyanatomethylphenyl)- 26603-40-7 

Table 2: Toluene Diisocyanates Subject to this Action with a Proposed Significant Use of “Any 

Use in a Consumer Product (Except for Use in Coatings, Adhesives, Elastomers, Binders, and 

Sealants at Less than or Equal to 0.1 Percent in a Consumer Product)” 

Chemical Name Chemical Abstracts Index Name 

Chemical Abstract 

Service Registry 

Number (CASRN) 

2,6-Toluene diisocyanate Benzene, 1,3-diisocyanato-2-methyl- 91-08-7

2,4-Toluene diisocyanate Benzene, 2,4-diisocyanato-1-methyl- 584-84-9 

Toluene diisocyanate 

unspecified isomer Benzene, 1,3-diisocyanatomethyl- 26471-62-5 

TDI and its related polyisocyanates are generally supplied by their manufacturers as raw materials to 

formulators who take advantage of the diisocyanates’ chemistry to combine them with other chemicals 

and create different polyurethanes with a wide variety of applications (EPA, 2011). The chemicals are 

commonly available in unreacted forms as part of product mixtures, and are widely used in construction, 

automotive, and other similar applications that require an end-use reaction as part of the functional 

performance of a product (EPA, 2011). Diisocyanates are well-known dermal and inhalation sensitizers in 

the workplace and have been documented to cause asthma, lung damage, and, in severe cases, fatal 

reactions (EPA, 2011). 

In the past, consumer exposures have not been a focus of concern with respect to diisocyanates, because 

of the assumption that consumers were generally exposed to products containing only cured 

polyurethanes, which are generally considered to be inert and non-toxic (Krone and Klinger, 2005). 

However, an increase in consumer availability of, or exposure to, polyurethane products intended to 

further react and undergo “curing” has occurred in the marketplace (EPA, 2011). For example, products, 

such as coatings, elastomers, adhesives, and sealants, may contain TDI compounds that are not 

completely reacted when applied and can provide potential exposures to the consumer (Krone, 2004; 

Bello et. al, 2007). The 2012 Chemical Data Reporting (CDR) database indicates that TDI chemicals are 

used in the following consumer or commercial categories: (1) adhesives and sealants, (2) paints and 
*** EO12866/13563 Review Draft –Do Not Cite, Quote, or Release During the Review ***

7

coatings, and (3) foam seating and bedding products (EPA, 2013). Consumer products are often marketed 

as do-it-yourself (DIY) products and as a result consumers would be unaware of the potential hazards of 

consumer products, including articles containing TDI or other diisocyanates. Consequently, insufficient 

and inadequate hazard communication may lead to incorrect use and increased consumer and bystander 

exposures, particularly for sensitive groups, such as children. 

EPA believes that the use of any of these chemicals substances beyond the limited ongoing uses could 

significantly increase the magnitude and duration of exposure to TDI and that such an increase should not 

occur without an opportunity for EPA to review. The proposed SNUR requires manufacturers, importers, 

or processors of the seven chemicals to notify EPA at least 90 days prior to the occurrence of any 

significant new use. A firm intending to engage in these activities would be required to submit a 

Significant New Use Notice (SNUN). The required notification allows EPA to evaluate the intended use 

and, if necessary, to prevent or limit the potential consumer and general population health affects that may 

result from exposures to uncured TDI and related compounds. For this proposed rule, the general SNUR 

article exemption for persons who import or process chemical substances listed in Table 1 and 2 as part 

of an article would not apply. The article exemption at 40 CFR 721.45(f) is based on an assumption that 

people and the environment will generally not be exposed to chemical substances in articles (see 49 FR 

35014; September 5, 1984). However, TDI and related compounds are volatile and as such could migrate 

out of articles that contain them. For instance, studies of TDI in polyurethane products reported that after 

the reaction between an isocyanate and an alcohol to form polyurethane products, residual levels of 

isocyanates were detected on the surface of the products, which if used could lead to exposure (Krone, 

2004; Bello et. al, 2007) . Because TDI and related compounds are known to be volatile chemical 

substances, have been reported to migrate from products, and are sensitizers, EPA would like the 

opportunity to evaluate such potential uses in consumer products for any associated risks or hazards that 

might exist before those uses would begin. . 

1.1 Statutory Authority and Significant New Uses under the Proposed SNUR 

Section 5(a)(2) of TSCA (15 U.S.C. 2604(a)(2)) authorizes EPA to determine that a use of a chemical 

substance is a “significant new use.” EPA must make this determination by rule after considering all 

relevant factors, including those listed in TSCA section 5(a)(2). Once EPA determines that a use of a 

chemical substance is a significant new use, TSCA section 5(a)(1)(B) requires persons to submit a SNUN 

to EPA at least 90 days before manufacturing, importing, or processing the chemical substance for that 

use (15 U.S.C. 2604(a)(1)(B)).The general SNUR provisions are found at 40 CFR Part 721, Subpart A. 

EPA may promulgate a SNUR for a substance when potential use could result in significant changes in 

human exposure or environmental release levels and/or that concern exists about the substance’s health or 

environmental effects (40 CFR §721.170). According to TSCA Section 5(a)(2), the determination that a 

chemical use qualifies as a significant new use must consider all relevant factors, including: 

 The projected volume of manufacturing, importation, and processing of the chemical 

substance; 

 The extent to which a use changes the type or form of exposure of human beings or the 

environment to a chemical substance; 

 The extent to which a use increases the magnitude and duration of exposure of human 

beings or the environment to a chemical substance; and 

 The reasonably anticipated manner and methods of manufacturing, processing, 

distribution in commerce, and disposal of a chemical substance. 
*** EO12866/13563 Review Draft –Do Not Cite, Quote, or Release During the Review ***

8

EPA is proposing to define the significant new use as any use in a consumer product of the chemical 

substances listed in Table ES-1 or any use in a consumer product of the chemical substances listed in 

Table ES-2, except for use in coatings, elastomers, adhesives, binders, and sealants that results in less 

than or equal to 0.1 percent weight of TDI in a consumer product. Consumer products, in general, are 

products readily available for purchase by the consumer. A company would be expected to submit a 

SNUN for any of the seven chemicals included in the proposed SNUR prior to initiating a new use. 

1.2 Summary of Methodology 

This analysis quantifies, to the extent possible, the costs to society of the proposed rule by identifying the 

costs to industry associated with performing the required reporting and recordkeeping, and the costs to 

EPA of administering the rule. Industry costs consist of rule familiarization; registration with the Central 

Data Exchange (CDX) electronic reporting tool; collection, compilation, and submission of required 

information for significant new uses of the subject chemicals; export notification; and recordkeeping. 

Agency costs include reviewing and processing the data received as a result of the rule. Data sources for 

this analysis include burden estimates derived from previous information collection requests and 

economic analyses for related rules, compensation data acquired from government publications, and 

supplementary market research to produce an estimate of the universe of affected entities and measure the 

impact of the proposed rule on small entities. 

In addition to costs, this report qualitatively discusses the benefits of the proposed rule based on the value 

of the information it will provide. The benefits analysis was undertaken to address the implicit call for 

cost-benefit balancing contained in TSCA, as well as the requirements of Executive Order 12866. 

1.3 Organization of this Report 

The remainder of this report provides EPA’s economic analysis in support of the proposed rule. Chapter 2

presents estimates of the industry costs to comply with the proposed rule, and Chapter 3 provides 

estimates of the government costs associated with the administration of the proposed rule. Chapter 4

addresses the benefits of the proposed rule. Several additional impact analyses are presented in Chapter 5, 

including: small entity impact analysis, as mandated by the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA); a burden 

hour analysis that responds to the requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA); an analysis of 

unfunded mandates that pertains to the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA); an analysis of 

environmental justice implications that addresses the requirements of Executive Order 12898; and an 

analysis of children’s health pertinent to Executive Order 13045. 

Note that all dollar amounts in this analysis are reported in 2012 dollars. 
*** EO12866/13563 Review Draft –Do Not Cite, Quote, or Release During the Review ***

9

2 Industry Compliance Costs 

The proposed SNUR discussed in this report specifies that any manufacture, import, or processing of the 

chemicals or the importation or processing of an article for a designated significant new use will require 

reporting under section 5(a)(1)(A) of TSCA. Therefore, a firm intending to manufacture, import, and/or 

process any of these chemicals for these applications must submit a SNUN. Alternatively, a firm can 

decide not to manufacture, import, and/or process these chemicals or to manufacture, import, and/or 

process these chemicals in such a way that it is not considered a significant new use. The firm, therefore, 

has two options: 

 Option 1: Submit a SNUN. A SNUN indicates to EPA that the firm would like to manufacture, 

import, and/or process the chemical or the import or process an article for a significant new use, 

which, in this case, means use in a consumer product of the chemical substances listed in Table 

ES-1 or any use in a consumer product of the chemical substances listed in Table ES-2 , except 

for use in coatings, elastomers, adhesives, binders, and sealants that results in less than or equal to 

0.1 percent weight of TDI in a consumer product. The firm must submit the SNUN to EPA at 

least 90 days before it plans to commence the manufacture, import, and/or processing of the new 

use of the substance; the SNUN provides EPA with the opportunity to evaluate the intended use 

and, if necessary, to prohibit or limit that activity before it occurs. If EPA allows the manufacture, 

import, and/or processing of any of the seven chemicals for a significant new use, then the costs 

associated with this option are the costs of submitting the SNUN (including a user fee) plus, if 

there is any export of these chemicals, the export notification costs that result from TSCA Section 

12 (b) requirements that are automatically triggered for chemicals regulated under TSCA Section 

5 (see Section 2.2.8 for details). 

 Option 2: Comply with SNUR limits (not manufacture, import, and/or process a new use of the 

chemical). A firm can avoid engaging in a Significant New Use and submitting a SNUN by not 

manufacturing, importing, and/or processing, or importing or processing as part of an article, any 

of the seven listed chemicals in a manner such that they would be considered significant new 

uses. That is, if the firm does not use any uncured TDI and related compounds in a consumer 

product it would meet all applicable SNUR requirements. While this option avoids the costs of 

submitting a SNUN, it may entail the “hidden” cost of the foregone profit as a result of not 

engaging in the commercial activity originally planned, and may involve substituting one of the 

subject chemicals for another, more costly substance. If the firm elects to produce the chemical 

for research and development (R&D) purposes only (an exemption for R&D purposes is provided 

in 40 CFR §721.47), it may have costs associated with R&D recordkeeping. In addition, if the 

firm exports any existing stockpiles of the chemicals, it will incur the export notification costs. 

The firm may also pursue this option temporarily by complying with SNUR restrictions while 

also pursuing Option 1. Due to the uncertainty related to this option, and EPA’s expectation that 

affected entities will select Option 1; the costs of Option 2 are not fully quantified in this report. 

The remainder of this chapter estimates the quantified portion of costs associated with the proposed 

SNUR for these uses of the subject chemicals. Section 2.1 summarizes the wage rates used in this chapter. 

Section 2.2 provides the unit industry compliance costs, including the costs of rule familiarization, 

registration with the Central Data Exchange (CDX) electronic reporting tool, completing the SNUN form, 

submission fee, import certification, and export notification. Section 2.3 discusses the implications and 

potential compliance costs associated with removing the general SNUR article exemption for persons 

who import or process 2,4-toluene diisocyanate, 2,6-toluene diisocyanate, toluene diisocyanate 
*** EO12866/13563 Review Draft –Do Not Cite, Quote, or Release During the Review ***

10

unspecified isomers and related chemical substances as part of an article. Total costs under each option 

are presented in Section 2.4. 

2.1 Wage Rates 

The proposed rule involves activities that may require efforts by employees in three labor classifications: 

managerial, technical, and clerical. Costs for each activity are calculated by estimating the labor hours 

required in each labor category and multiplying those burdens by the wage rate for each labor category. 

This section presents the estimated wage rate in each labor category.

Loaded wage rates for managerial, technical, and clerical personnel are derived by combining data on 

wages and fringe benefits with estimates of overhead rates, following the methodology described in Wage 

Rates for Economic Analysis of the Toxics Release Inventory Program (EPA, 2002b). Wage data for each 

labor category in December 2012 are provided by the Employer Costs for Employee Compensation 

(ECEC) Supplemental Tables available on the BLS website (BLS, 2013a). The loaded wage rate is $72.84 

for managerial labor; $64.38 for technical labor; and $29.81 for clerical labor. Table 3 presents the basic 

data used to calculate the loaded wage rates for all three categories of labor. Appendix A: provides more 

information on the wage rates and inflators used in this analysis. 

Table 3: Loaded Industry Wage Rates, December 2012 

Labor 

Category Data Sources Date 

Wage 

(2012$) 

Fringe 

Benefit 

(2012$) 

Fringes 

as % 

wage 

Overhead 

% 

wage2

Fringe + 

overhead 

factor 

Loaded 

Wages1 

(2012$) 

(a) (b) (c) 

=(b)/(a) 

(d) (e)=(c)+ 

(d)+1 

(f)=(a) 

x (e) 

Managerial 

BLS ECEC, Private 

Manufacturing industries,

“Mgt, Business, and 

Financial”3

Dec12 $43.95 $21.45 48.81% 17% 1.66 $72.87 

Professional/ 

Technical 

BLS ECEC, Private 

Manufacturing industries, 

“Professional and 

related“3

Dec12 $38.53 $19.30 50.09% 17% 1.67 $64.38 

Clerical 

BLS ECEC, Private 

Manufacturing industries, 

“Office and 

Administrative Support” 3

Dec12 $17.64 $8.87 50.28% 17% 1.67 $29.81 

1 Wage data are rounded to the closest pennies in this table; however, in calculations using these numbers for this report, 

unrounded values were used. 

2 An overhead rate of 17% was used based on assumptions in Wage Rates for Economic Analyses of the Toxics Release 

Inventory Program (EPA, 2002b), and the Revised Economic Analysis for the Amended Inventory Update Rule: Final Report 

(EPA, 2002a). 

3 Employer Costs for Employee Compensation Supplementary Tables December 2012, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, March 

18, 2013 (BLS, 2013a).
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11

2.2 Unit Industry Compliance Costs 

2.2.1 Rule Familiarization 

The proposed rule requires submitters and their staff to become familiar with the SNUR and its various 

requirements. Rule familiarization is estimated to require 0.55 hours of technical labor and 0.27 hours of 

managerial labor, as described in the Economic Analysis of the Premanufacture Notification Electronic 

Reporting Final Rule (EPA, 2009a), which measures the costs of mandatory electronic reporting of 

SNUNs and other TSCA Section 5 notices. As shown in Table 4, the total labor cost associated with rule 

familiarization is $54.84. 

Table 4: Rule Familiarization Burden and Cost for SNUR Submitters 

Reporting Activity 

Clerical Labor 

(at 

$29.51/hour) 

Technical Labor (at 

$64.38/hour) 

Managerial Labor (at 

$72.87/hour) 

Total Labor 

Cost (2012 

dollars) 

Burden Cost Burden Cost Burden Cost Burden Cost 

Rule Familiarization 0.00 $0.00 0.55 $35.41 0.27 $19.43 0.82 $54.84 

Note: Costs may not equal labor wage rate times burden hours as shown, due to rounding. Unrounded estimates were used during 

the actual cost calculations. 

Source: See Table 3; EPA, 2009a. 

2.2.2 CDX Registration, CDX Electronic Signature, and Pay.gov Account Setup 

The proposed SNUR requires first-time submitters of any TSCA section 5 notice (including 

Premanufacture Notices (PMNs), Significant New Use Notices (SNUNs), Test Market Exemption (TME) 

applications, Low Volume Exemption (LVE) notices, Low Exposure/Low Release (LoREX) exemption 

notices, Biotechnology Notices for genetically modified microorganisms, Notices of Commencement of 

Manufacture or Import (NOCs), and support documents to Section 5 notices) to register their company 

and key users with the CDX reporting tool, deliver a CDX electronic signature to EPA, and establish and 

use a Pay.gov E-payment account.1

 These activities are only required of first-time submitters of any 

Section 5 notice. These activities are estimated to require the following burdens, based on the estimates 

presented in the Economic Analysis of the Premanufacture Notification Electronic Reporting Final Rule

(EPA, 2009a): 

 CDX registration: EPA estimates that companies will spend approximately 0.18 hours per 

employee to register with CDX, and that an average of four technical staff members and one 

manager will need to register for each company, totaling approximately 0.92 hours of burden per 

company. 

 CDX electronic signature: EPA estimates that companies will spend 0.25 hours preparing, 

submitting, and filing an electronic signature agreement (Authentication of Identity) form to EPA 

per employee. This burden will apply to four technical staff members and one manager per 

company, totaling 1.25 hours of burden per company. In addition, EPA estimates that a manager 

will spend an additional 0.50 hours accessing, preparing, and submitting verification forms 

(Verification of Authorization) for all authorized submitters to EPA. The total burden incurred by 

companies submitting and then verifying electronic signature agreements is 1.75 hours. Note that 

this burden does not include any additional time required to contact EPA’s CDX help desk to 

notify a change of submitter status, should one occur. 

 

1

 Although the proposed rule does not require submitters to establish and use a Pay.gov account, the burden 

estimates in this analysis are conservative insofar as to include the use of Pay.gov as a required activity. 
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 Filing the electronic signature agreement may be done either through mail or electronically. EPA 

believes the cost of electronic filing to be negligible, while the cost of mailing in the agreement 

for verification will involve extra costs. For this economic analysis, EPA has conservatively 

chosen to consider the cost of paper filing via the US Postal Service. This cost is estimated to be 

$2.60 per company (including five $0.46 stamps2

 and five $0.06 business envelopes3). 

 Payment via Pay.gov account: EPA estimates that one manager per company will spend 

approximately 0.13 hours setting up a Pay.gov ID account, logging into the system, finding the 

appropriate form, and filling it out. This burden does not include the time required to click 

‘submit’ on the form and wait for payment processing. 

As shown in Table 5, the labor cost associated with CDX registration, CDX electronic signature, and 

Pay.gov account setup by a first-time submitter is $189. As noted above, an additional $2.30 in mailing 

cost per company is attributable to these activities, for a total cost of approximately $192 per company. 

Table 5: CDX Registration, CDX Electronic Signature, and Pay.gov Account Setup Burden and 

Cost for First-Time Submitters 

Reporting Activity 

Clerical Labor 

(at $29.51/hour) 

Technical Labor 

(at $64.38/hour) 

Managerial Labor 

(at $72.87/hour) 

Total Labor Cost 

(2012 dollars) 

Burden Cost Burden Cost Burden Cost Burden Cost 

CDX Registration 0.00 $0.00 0.73 $47.21 0.18 $13.36 0.92 $60.57 

CDX Electronic 

Signature 0.00 $0.00 1 $64.38 0.75 $54.65 1.75 $119.03 

Mailing Cost $2.60 

E-Payment (Pay.gov ID) 0.00 $0.00 0.00 $0.00 0.13 $9.71 0.13 $9.71 

Total 0.00 $0.00 1.73 $111.59 1.07 $77.72 2.80 $191.91 

Note: 

Costs may not equal labor wage rate times burden hours as shown, due to rounding. Unrounded estimates were used during the 

actual cost calculations. 

Source: See Table 3; EPA, 2009a. 

2.2.3 Form Completion and Submission Fee 

Respondents who choose to submit a SNUN are required to gather and submit information regarding the 

data elements identified in the applicable SNUN reporting form. The methodology and calculations used 

in this analysis assume that the employee responsible for collecting, filling out, and submitting the 

requested information has a reasonable level of familiarity with the company and knowledge of 

operations at the site. It is assumed that for most entities these tasks are similar to other employee duties 

that require familiarity with EPA, State, and other Federal agency requests for chemical information and 

do not require additional familiarization or training beyond the basic rule familiarization described above. 

In addition, this analysis focuses on the marginal costs of submitting information for the proposed rule 

and not the total costs for the company to comply with a range of other Federal and State environmental, 

health, and safety regulations or accounting requirements that rely on this type of information. 

Estimates of the costs of completing a Significant New Use Notice (SNUN) form are based on the costs of 

completing a PMN submission, since the data requirements are the same and the same form is used for both. 

 

2

 Price for a stamp was taken from the U.S. Postal Service website on April 9, 2013. (See USPS, 2013a) 3

 Price for an envelope was determined based on the per unit price of a regular business envelope. See “Staples® 

#10, Self-Sealing Envelopes, 500/Box." Available at: http://www.staples.com/ (Accessed 1/25/2012). 
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The PMN submission costs came from EPA’s 1994 Regulatory Impact Analysis of Amendments to 

Regulations for TSCA Section 5 Premanufacture Notifications, which relied on industry estimates of the 

effort needed to collect and compile all data required for a PMN submission, prepare the form, submit the 

form and data to EPA, and maintain a file of the submission (EPA, 1994, Table III-2 and pages III-11, -

12, and -13). The 1994 estimates were based on a survey conducted by the Chemical Manufacturers 

Association, which became the American Chemistry Council. These burdens include “the time spent 

reading and becoming familiar with the form, gathering the required information and preparing the report, 

producing sanitized responses for items claimed as confidential business information, and maintaining a 

file of the submission” (EPA, 1994. p. III 11-13). The burden associated with SNUN submission and 

preparation has been adjusted to reflect burden reductions resulting from the 2009 final PMN Electronic 

Reporting (ePMN) Rule that requires the electronic submission of all TSCA section 5 notices. Electronic 

submission of SNUN forms is expected to remove all clerical burden and reduce the recordkeeping 

burden associated with preparing a SNUN (EPA, 2009a).4

 In addition, electronic submission is expected 

to generate and an additional 0.18 hours of technical burden, for the completion of the User Fee Payment 

Identification Number and email address data elements on the electronic SNUN form. 

SNUN form completion and electronic submission is estimated to require 73.68 hours of technical labor 

and 18.00 hours of managerial labor (EPA, 2009a). Table 6: Industry Cost Estimate to Complete the 

SNUN Form combines the estimated reporting burden and loaded wage rates for all three labor categories 

to estimate the per-SNUN cost of form completion. The labor cost incurred by a SNUN submission for 

both large and small business submitters is $6,089. 

Table 6: Industry Cost Estimate to Complete the SNUN Form 

Reporting 

Activity 

Clerical Labor (at 

$29.51/hour) 

Technical Labor (at 

$64.38/hour) 

Managerial Labor (at 

$72.87/hour) 

Total Labor 

Cost 

(2012 dollars) 

Burden Cost Burden Cost Burden Cost Burden Cost 

Form 

Completion 0.00 $0.00 74.20 $4,777.00 18.00 $1,311.66 92.2 $6,089 

Note: Costs may not equal labor wage rate times burden hours as shown, due to rounding. Unrounded estimates were used during 

the actual cost calculations. 

Source: Loaded wages include fringe benefits and overhead. See Table 3 of this report for derivation. Wage rates presented in 

this table are rounded values; however, unrounded values are used to calculate total labor costs. For this reason, total labor costs 

may not equal the product of rounded values. 

The estimate of no clerical burden is taken from the Economic Analysis of the Premanufacture Notice Electronic Reporting Final 

Rule (EPA, 2009a, page 7). 

Technical and managerial labor burden is from the PMN Amendments RIA (EPA, 1994, Table III-2). An additional eleven 

minutes (0.18 hours) of technical burden is estimated to complete the User Fee Payment Identification Number and Email 

Address data elements on the Electronic SNUN form (EPA, 2009a page 15). 

In addition, each submitting large business must pay a $2,500 per-SNUN submission fee, and each 

submitting small business must pay a $100 per-SNUN submission fee. Table 7 adds the labor cost and 

 

4 The Economic Analysis of the Premanufacture Notification Electronic Reporting Final Rule (EPA, 2009a) reported 

a 0.5 hour clerical and a 0.5 hour technical burden associated with recordkeeping in addition to the burden estimates 

from the 1994 RIA (EPA, 1994, p. III-14). These burden estimates (the 0.5 for clerical burden and 0.5 for technical 

burden) are based on the recordkeeping burden for polymer exceptions and not the recordkeeping burden associated 

with PMN submissions. 

Therefore, for this analysis, the 0.5 hour for clerical labor and the 0.5 hour for technical labor were removed. It is 

important to note that for this analysis, clerical burden changes are not applicable because the entire clerical burden 

is assumed to be eliminated under the electronic reporting requirements. In summary, we do not include the one 

hour recordkeeping burden (0.5 hour for clerical, 0.5 for technical) reported in the ePMN EA.. 
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14

submission fee to estimate the total cost of a SNUN submission. The total cost of a SNUN submission is 

$8,589 for large business submitters and $6,189 for small business submitters. 

Table 7: Industry Cost Estimate to Complete and Submit the SNUN Form 

Reporting Population Labor Cost Submission Fee 

Total Cost 

 (2012 Dollars) 

Large Business Submitters $6,089 $2,500 $8,589 

Small Business Submitters $6,089 $100 $6,189 

Source: Table 6; EPA, 1994 

2.2.4 Recordkeeping for Companies Choosing to Submit a SNUN 

Companies submitting a SNUN must, under 40 CFR §721.40, keep records of the information contained in 

the SNUN. Some EPA reports have assumed that SNUN recordkeeping hours would be five percent of 

SNUN submission hours, or about five to six hours.5

 For this report, the SNUN recordkeeping hours were 

included in the SNUN submission hours (see Section 2.2.3) and the SNUN recordkeeping costs under 40 

CFR §721.40 were not separately estimated.6

 

2.2.5 Recordkeeping for Companies that do not Submit a SNUN 

If a firm that manufactures, imports, or processes a substance subject to the proposed SNUR chooses not 

to submit a SNUN, they must keep records that document compliance with SNUR conditions for avoiding 

a Significant New Use. Such recordkeeping requirements essentially involve copying and filing relevant 

records, including those related to: category of use. Records must be maintained for five years from the 

date of their creation (40 CFR 721.40). For firms that choose to not submit a SNUN, costs for compliance 

with the recordkeeping requirements are estimated to be five percent of the reporting burden for reporting 

information for a specific section of the SNUN form and are performed by clerical staff (EPA, 2005b, 

pages 10 and 14). EPA used the per-activity burden for reporting category of use presented in the 

Information Collection Request (ICR) for TSCA Section 5(a)(2) Significant New Use Rules for Existing 

Chemicals (Renewal) (EPA, 2005b, page 12). Any clerical burden associated with these activities was 

removed to reflect the burden reduction associated with electronic submissions (EPA, 2009a). 

The total recordkeeping burden for a company that does not submit a SNUN is estimated to be 0.15 hours 

and $9.66, and is derived in Table 8. 

 

5

 For example, OPPT’s Information Collection Request (ICR) for TSCA Section 5(a)(2) Significant New Use Rules 

for Existing Chemicals (Renewal), October 11, 2005, estimates SNUN recordkeeping costs at 5.67 hours (ICR 

118.08, page 15). 

6

 SNUN submission costs estimated in Section 2.2.3 of this report were based on PMN submission costs from a 

1994 report, Regulatory Impact Analysis of Amendments to Regulations for TSC Section 5 Premanufacture 

Notifications (EPA, 1994). Page III-14 of the 1994 report refers to “the normal records kept with a PMN submission 

which are included in the estimates for submission costs.” Page III-12 identifies “maintaining a file of the 

submission” as part of the labor hours for the PMN reporting form. These statements imply that the 95 to 114 total 

hours for a PMN submission (page III-10 of EPA 1994) included recordkeeping hours. 
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15

Table 8: Annual Per-Chemical Costs of Recordkeeping Requirement for Companies that Choose 

not to Submit a SNUN 

Reporting Activity 

Total Burden 

Associated 

per Activity 

(Hours) 

Percent of 

Reporting Burden 

Attributed to 

Recordkeeping 

Recordkeeping Burden 

(hours) (2012$) 

Category of use1 3 5% 0.15 $9.66 

Source: 

1US EPA, 2005b Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics Information Collection Request (ICR) for TSCA Section 5(a)(2) 

Significant New Use Rules for Existing Chemicals (Renewal) (page 13) 

2.2.6 Customer Notification 

Manufacturers, processors, and importers of chemicals subject to SNURs must notify recipients of such 

chemicals of the SNUR or verify that knowledge of the SNUR has been otherwise acquired by recipients, 

or that the recipients are unable to engage in significant new uses. Since it is not expected that all such 

entities will have complete knowledge of all uses of any products subject to a SNUR, and because filing a 

SNUN could require significantly more burden, it is assumed that manufacturers, processors, and 

importers will most often choose to notify their customers of SNUR regulatory activities. As this 

notification may be accomplished by simply annotating an MSDS, EPA estimates the associated burden 

to be about one hour of a technical employee’s time or $64.38 per manufacturer, processor, or importer 

per chemical. The proposed SNUR will cover a total of seven chemicals. 

2.2.7 Import Certification 

In general, promulgation of a final SNUR triggers a TSCA Section 13 import certification requirement 

and the corresponding regulations at 19 CFR §12.118 to 12.127 and 19 CFR §127.28 for all imports of 

the relevant chemical substances. Thus, any U.S. manufacturer, importer, or processor receiving an 

imported shipment of chemicals subject to the proposed SNUR would have to certify that all chemical 

substances in the shipment either comply with all applicable rules and orders under TSCA or that all 

chemical substances in the shipment are not subject to TSCA.7

 The statement must be on or attached to a 

commercial invoice or entry document belonging to the imported shipment. 

In practice, import certification is fulfilled by checking a box on an invoice or entry document and 

generally imposes no additional burden or cost on the importer (EPA, 2009c). Any potential burden 

associated with a submitter’s familiarization with this requirement is assumed to be included in the more 

general SNUR familiarization burden discussed above. 

2.2.8 Export Notification 

Under Section 12(b) of TSCA, exporters must notify EPA if they export or intend to export a chemical 

subject to various TSCA sections (40 CFR §707.60 through 75). For TSCA 5(a)(2) (the section under 

which EPA promulgates significant new use rules) and certain other TSCA sections, this is a one-time 

 

7

 The exact statements are as follows: For imports of chemical substances subject to TSCA, “I certify that all 

chemical substances in this shipment comply with all applicable rules or orders under TSCA and that I am not 

offering a chemical substance for entry in violation of TSCA or any applicable rule or order under TSCA.” For 

imports of chemical substances not subject to TSCA (e.g., pesticides), “I certify that all chemicals in this shipment 

are not subject to TSCA.” (40 CFR 707.20) 
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16

notification requirement8 per destination country for each exporter of a chemical substance. After 

receiving a notification from a firm, EPA notifies the importing country and the United States State 

Department (40 CFR §707.70). To calculate the burden associated with making a single export 

notification, EPA first estimated the average annual number of export notifications made by an exporter. 

EPA then derived the annual and per notification burden associated with preparing and submitting an 

export notification. 

EPA estimated the average burden associated with making a single notification, but did not estimate 

either the total number of exporters of a SNUR chemical or the number of notifications per SNUR 

chemical. This is because the SNURs apply to a variety of different chemicals with a variety of unrelated 

uses, manufacturers, and processors, making it impractical within the resources available for this report to 

assess the potential number of exporters and importing countries per chemical. 

Most underlying data in this section come from the 2009 TSCA Section 12(b) ICR, ICR No.: 0795.13 

[Information Collection Request for] Notification of Chemical Exports - TSCA Section 12(b) Supporting 

Statement for Request for OMB Review under the Paperwork Reduction Act (EPA, 2009b), with 

updating for inflation. 

Estimated Number of Annual Export Notifications per Exporter 

EPA’s 2009 TSCA Section 12(b) ICR estimated that the average exporter making notifications will make 

12 notifications per year.

9 This includes notifications resulting from SNURs and notifications resulting 

from other TSCA activities. Therefore, it is likely that an exporter will make less than 12 notifications per 

year as a result of this proposed SNUR. A notification is typically no more than one page per 

chemical/country combination, and one notification mailing often includes multiple chemicals and/or 

destination countries.10 

The percent of notifications resulting from SNURs in general is unknown, and it is also unknown how 

many notifications may result from this rulemaking, as not all manufacturers may choose to export a 

chemical, or they may make several notifications for a single chemical. 

Exporter Costs 

The 2009 TSCA Section 12(b) ICR (EPA, 2009b, page 11, Table 3), estimated the annual export 

notification cost for an exporter under the one-time export notification requirement. These costs include 

the cost to the exporter of compiling a list of their products that are subject to TSCA Section 12(b) 

requirements, writing or revising an export notification letter to EPA, checking the outgoing shipments, 

and sending the notification letters with the associated shipping costs. 

The per-notification cost was calculated based on the average burden per firm. Exporters who make a 

larger number of notifications per year may benefit from economies of scale and have lower costs per 

notification; conversely firms making fewer notifications may have a higher cost per notification. 

 

8

 On November 14, 2006, EPA revised the export notification requirement for chemicals subject to TSCA §5(a)(2), 

5(b), 5(e)(1) and 5(e)(2) from an annual to a one-time requirement per destination country for each exporter 

(November 14, 2006, 71 FR 66234). 

9

EPA calculated the average number of export notifications per exporter in the 2009 TSCA Section 12(b) ICR (EPA, 

2009b) by dividing the estimated number of submitted notifications (3,500) by the estimated number of exporters 

(300). 

10 Based on review by an EPA economist of notifications received under TSCA Sections 4, 5 and 6 over 

approximately three weeks in early 2010. 
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Estimated Submission (Mailing) Costs. Regulated companies will incur mailing costs for export 

notifications delivered to EPA. Notifications are assumed shipped via the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) as 

first-class registered mail with a return receipt (USPS, 2013b). The estimated per-shipment and annual 

mailing costs incurred by individual submitters are detailed in Table 9. 

Table 9: Derivation of Total Mailing Cost for 12 Notices 

Postal Service Cost 

Registered mail, regular, with $0 declared value $11.20 

Return receipt, requested at time of mailing (receive by mail) $2.55 

Postage, regular First Class, up to 1 ounce $0.46 

Cost per export notice - Subtotal $14.21 

× 12 

Total Mailing Cost for 12 Notices $171 

Source: Mailing rates are from the US Postal Service web site as of April 2012 (http://www.usps.com/prices/). The mailing 

method comes from the Economic Analysis of the Proposed Change to TSCA Section 12(b) Export Notification Requirements, 

November 2005 (EPA, 2005a), as clarified in a later SNUR economic analysis (EPA, 2007c, Table 8). 

Note: Calculations may be rounded. 

Compile and Maintain the List of Products. Since TSCA §12(b) information collection activity has 

been in place for twenty years, most respondents will have already developed a list of their products 

subject to TSCA §12(b) export notification. Respondents need only check for new regulations 

promulgated and any new products exported by the company. Updating the list is estimated to take an 

average of one hour of technical time, which may also include some proportion of legal time (EPA, 

2009b). The total burden can vary from two hours per year up to two hours per month, depending on the 

number of products exported by the company and the number of their products subject to TSCA §12(b) 

(EPA, 2009b). 

The number of submitters per year who report under TSCA §12(b) has varied over time, rising from 

around 160 in 1991 to over 460 in 2000, and declining since. In the most recent TSCA §12(b) ICR, EPA 

estimated there would be approximately 300 submitters per year in near-future years (EPA, 2009b). Of 

these 300 submitters, EPA estimated that 200 companies were near the lower burden estimate of two 

hours per year, and 100 companies were near the upper estimate of 24 hours per year. Compiling the list 

for all respondents was therefore estimated to take 2,800 hours (2 hours x 200 firms plus 24 hours x 100 

firms), or an average of about 9.3 hours of technical time per firm per year for 12 notifications per year 

(EPA, 2009b). 

Write or Revise Export Notification. Companies that export chemicals subject to TSCA §12(b) 

reporting must prepare an export notification to send to EPA when export shipments are made. Time for 

initial preparation of the export notice may vary depending on whether the company has prior experience 

with this requirement. This step is estimated to take an average of one hour of technical time (which may 

also include some proportion of legal time) per firm per year for 12 notifications per year (EPA, 2009b). 

Check Orders and Send Notifications. Companies that export chemicals subject to TSCA §12(b) 

reporting must check outgoing shipments against the list of their products described above. A form letter 

notifying EPA and providing the required data must be printed and mailed within the required time 

period. This process is estimated to take an average one half hour of clerical time per export notification 

or six hours for 12 notifications (EPA, 2009b). 
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The burdens and associated costs for each notification activity are provided in Table 10. EPA estimates 

that the burden associated with making one notification is approximately 1.36 hours and $84.22. 

Table 10: TSCA 12(b) Export Notification Cost per Notification 

 Technical Clerical Total 

 $/Hr Hours 2012$ $/Hr Hours 2012$ Hours 2012$ 

Compile list $64.38 9.3 $599 -- -- -- 9.3 $599 

Write letter $64.38 1 $64 -- -- -- 1 $64 

Check order and send 

notice -- -- -- $29.51 6 $177 6 $177 

Mailing cost1 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- $171 

Total per average facility2` 10.30 $663.11 6.00 $177.06 16.30 $1,005 

Total per Notification $0.86 $55.26 0.50 $14.76 1.36 $84.22 

Notes: 

Costs may not equal labor wage rate times burden hours as shown due to rounding. Unrounded estimates were used during the 

actual cost calculations. 

1 Mailing costs reflect April 2012 USPS rates and can be found in Table 9. 2An average facility submitting notifications is assumed to submit 12 export notifications per year. 

Source: Appendix A of this report derives technical and clerical hourly labor costs. Other costs are from ICR No.: 0795.13 

[Information Collection Request for] Notification of Chemical Exports - TSCA Section 12(b) Supporting Statement for Request 

for OMB Review under the Paperwork Reduction Act (EPA, 2009b, p.10), and are updated to 2012 dollars. 

2.3 Article Importation and Processing 

The proposed SNUR contains a provision to eliminate the exemption for the importation or processing of 

consumer articles containing TDI and related compounds. This will require importers and processors of 

consumer articles containing TDI and related compounds to notify EPA at least 90 days before importing 

or processing consumer articles containing chemicals subject to the proposed rule. In addition, the rule 

may also affect firms that do not currently import or process articles containing the chemicals, but who 

may be interested in importing or processing these articles in the future or who may be interested in 

ensuring that the articles they import or process are in compliance with the requirements of the SNUR.

Although there are no specific requirements in the rule for these companies, they may choose to 

undertake some activities assure themselves that they are not undertaking a new use. Importers have 

varying levels of knowledge about the chemical content of the articles they import, yet under TSCA the 

definition of “manufacture” means to “import..., produce or manufacture”11 and importers are responsible 

parties under the proposed SNUR. In order to understand and monitor their liability, companies might 

undertake a range of activities to ensure that the articles they import do not violate existing regulations. 

2.3.1 Affected Entities 

SNUR reporting requirements for persons who may process articles containing chemicals substances 

subject to the SNUR are similarly described in § 40 CFR 721.5; however, the reporting requirements for 

processors (including processors of articles containing subject chemicals) are specifically limited. As 

described in § 40 CFR 721.5(c), a processor is not required to submit a SNUN if he can document that (1) 

he does not know the specific chemical identity of the chemical substance being processed; and (2) that 

he is processing the chemical substance without knowledge that the substance is subject to a SNUR. This 

analysis focuses on the standard business practices that a processor would already undertake that would 

serve to document compliance with the rule. 

 

11 TSCA section 3(7). 
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Table 11 contains example NAICS codes for firms that may import or process consumer articles 

containing TDI or its related compounds. Articles may include products such as paints, adhesives, and 

foam products. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but rather an example of the types of industries 

that may be impacted by the articles exemption. As shown in Table 11, a wide variety of industries may 

import consumer articles containing TDI or its related compounds. 

Table 11: Examples of Industries that may Import or Process Articles Containing TDI 

NAICS 

Code Section Description 

326 Plastics and Rubber 

Products 

Manufacturing 

Industries in the Plastics and Rubber Products Manufacturing subsector make goods by processing 

plastics materials and raw rubber. Many manufacturing activities use plastics or rubber, for example the 

manufacture of footware, or furniture. 

423 Merchant 

Wholesalers, 

Durable Goods 

Industries in the Merchant Wholesalers, Durable Goods subsector sell capital or durable goods to other 

businesses. Durable goods are new or used items generally with a normal life expectancy of three years 

or more. Durable goods merchant wholesale trade establishments are engaged in wholesaling products, 

such as motor vehicles, furniture, construction materials, machinery and equipment (including 

household-type appliances), metals and minerals (except petroleum), sporting goods, toys and hobby 

goods, recyclable materials, and parts. 

424 Merchant 

Wholesalers, 

Nondurable Goods 

Industries in the Merchant Wholesalers, Nondurable Goods subsector sell nondurable goods to other 

businesses. Nondurable goods are items generally with a normal life expectancy of less than three years. 

Nondurable goods merchant wholesale trade establishments are engaged in wholesaling products, such 

as paper and paper products, chemicals and chemical products, drugs, textiles and textile products, 

apparel, footwear, groceries, farm products, petroleum and petroleum products, alcoholic beverages, 

books, magazines, newspapers, flowers and nursery stock, and tobacco products. 

442 Furniture and Home 

Furnishings Stores 

Industries in the Furniture and Home Furnishings Stores subsector retail new furniture and home 

furnishings from fixed point-of-sale locations. Establishments in this subsector usually operate from 

showrooms and have substantial areas for the presentation of their products. 

450 General 

Merchandise Stores 

Industries in the General Merchandise Stores subsector retail new general merchandise from fixed 

point-of-sale locations. Establishments in this subsector are unique in that they have the equipment and 

staff capable of retailing a large variety of goods from a single location. This includes a variety of 

display equipment and staff trained to provide information on many lines of products. 

2.3.2 Potential Compliance Activities (Article Importers) 

Given the existing regulatory limitations on certain chemicals both internationally and within the U.S., 

certain regulated industries have begun to develop industry-wide processes and other resources to support 

companies that are interested in understanding and managing their supply chains. Because the rule would 

not prescribe the steps that an importer must take to identify a chemical subject to a SNUR in articles, 

there are a variety of specific actions that a company could take to identify specific substances in its 

articles. Importers are expected to take actions that are commensurate with the level of risk each company 

perceives, and the resources it has available. 

There is currently no single widely accepted standard procedure to identify regulated chemicals in a 

supply chain; however, there are a number of organizations that help provide information on the content 

of articles, organize declarations from suppliers, or certify suppliers based on materials or processes used. 

Importers (or processors) subject to SNURs may refer to these sources for assistance in their own strategy 

to identify a chemical subject to a SNUR in articles. 

ASTM International, formerly known as the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), has 

developed a Standard Guide for Assessment of Materials and Products for Declarable Substances

(“ASTM F2577”) which provides guidance for the decision process to assess materials and products for 
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20

declarable substances. Based on ASTM F2577, the following list includes activities that an importer 

could perform to identify any restricted chemicals in imported articles. This list is intended to capture the 

general types of activities that might be performed. 

1) Understand applicable requirements (Per Firm Cost). The importer would need to read and 

understand the SNUR, within the context of the company’s products. This burden is as derived in 

Section 2.2.1 of this report. 

2) Identify the type of imported articles that potentially contain the restricted substances (Per 

Firm Cost). This determination may be done based on an understanding of the uses of the 

restricted substance and the application of any a priori knowledge of the material and its 

manufacture to assess the probability that each regulated substance may be present. 

3) Identify all suppliers involved (Per Firm Cost). The importer may choose to identify all 

suppliers from whom the articles identified in the previous step are imported, and as necessary, 

make aware of the importer’s potential notice obligations respecting the regulated chemical 

substances.

4) Collect data from suppliers (Per Article Cost). Importers may choose to obtain verification 

from suppliers identified in step 3 that the regulated chemical substance is not found in the article. 

This may be accomplished through, for example, agreements with suppliers, declarations through 

databases or surveys, or by using a third-party certification system. 

5) Chemical testing (Per Article Cost). Importers may perform their own laboratory testing of 

certain articles (or components of articles) to determine if they contain the restricted substance. 

6) Recordkeeping (Per Firm Cost). The importer may choose to keep records confirming the 

activities completed.

Table 12 contains the cost ranges associated with the above activities. The activities and cost derivations 

are discussed in more detail in Understanding the Costs Associated with Eliminating Exemptions for 

Articles in SNURs (EPA, Not Yet Published). 
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Table 12: Range of 

Associated with an Importer’s Identification of Chemicals Subject

Activity Cost (2012$) Notes 

Per Rule Costs

Rule familiarization $55 Discussed in Section Error! Reference source not found. of this Identify the type of imported articles that potentially contain the restricted substances 

$130 to $1,550 Actual costs may vary based on number of articles imported and th

of the article itself (number of components) 

Identify all suppliers involved $950 Actual costs may vary depending on the number of articles import

of suppliers, and frequency of supplier changes

Recordkeeping $10

Actual costs may vary depending on recordkeeping system already This cost would particularly be associated with companies that haprevious experience complying with chemical restriction rules; coalready have methods in place to identify chemicals in articles likehave recordkeeping systems in place

Per Article-Related Costs Collect data from suppliers

$5 to $515 per article reviewed.

$0 if no data collected.

Actual costs only apply to those companies that choose to collect suppliers. They will vary depending on the specific data collection chosen. Total costs depend on considerations including the numbeimported, number of suppliers, and frequency of supplier changes

Chemical testing

$130 per article tested. $0 if no testing.

Actual costs only apply to those companies that choose to collect suppliers. They will vary depending on the specific chemical beinthe complexity of the article and sample preparation required; and fees of the laboratory chosen for the analysis. Total costs per compdepend on considerations including the number of articles tested, waffected by the number of suppliers and risk associated with each, frequency of supplier changes.
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Variation in costs associated with these activities would depend on a company’s level of activity to 

comply with other regulations on chemicals in articles, the complexity of the supply chains; and the size 

of the company. Total costs per importer will further depend on the number of affected articles and the 

frequency of supplier change. Restrictions on TDI currently do not exist under the European Union’s 

Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) regulations. However, 

the European Commission Regulation limits TDI to 1 mg/kg in plastic products intended to come into 

contact with food (European Commission, 2011). Furthermore, TDI is prohibited in cosmetic products in 

Canada, New Zealand, and the European Union (Australian Government, 2013). Tolune diisocyanates 

unspecified isomers (CAS 26471-62-5) is placed on the California Proposition 65 list of chemicals known 

to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm, and has a maximum allowable dose level of 

20μg/day (OEHHA, 2013). 

Firms that have previously selected suppliers that have agreed to uphold certain standards, or who have 

otherwise sufficiently demonstrated that they are not supplying TDI-based chemicals, would not likely 

incur any additional costs associated with these activities. Essentially, the product’s certification would 

allow importers or processors of articles to learn whether an article does or does not contain TDI or 

whether suppliers have agreed to uphold certain production standards. There are labeling systems for 

products in which independent entities ensure that the production of products does not utilize specific 

chemicals. For example, the European Union has developed a voluntary labeling system, called the EU 

Ecolabel. Producers, importers and retailers can voluntarily apply for the EU Ecolabel (EC, 2013). 

Labeled products signal to consumers that the product in question has a reduced environmental impact 

throughout the product’s life cycle, such as the manufacturing stage and/or during the final product 

disposal. The criteria are specifically designed to focus on the stage of the life cycle where a product has 

the most environmental impact (EC, 2013). 

Firms with less experience with other regulations that are planning to import articles that could potentially 

contain TDI-based chemicals may incur a larger burden should they choose to conduct some or all of the 

activities listed above to ensure compliance. These firms may choose to reach out to a wide variety of 

upstream firms including to gather information on the chemical content of articles, for example, through 

MSDSs or other documentation. Firms may also choose to conduct additional research on their suppliers 

to ensure that they are purchasing from reputable manufacturers and chemical suppliers who will provide 

necessary technical support, as well as regulatory standards (AFIRM, 2011). Furthermore, a company 

could choose to have articles tested. If a company chooses to conduct testing they may also need to 

conduct additional research to ensure the laboratory is accredited, reliable and follows Good Laboratory 

Practices (GLP) (AFIRM, 2011). For those companies choosing to undertake actions to assess the 

composition of the articles they import, EPA expects that in all likelihood, these importers would take 

actions that are commensurate with the level of risk (of a chemical to be a part of an article) each 

company perceives, and the resources it has available. 

2.3.3 Potential Compliance Activities (Processors of Articles) 

Under § 40 CFR 721.5(a)(2), manufacturers, importers, or processors of subject chemical substances who 

distribute the substance in commerce must notify the recipient, in writing, of the applicability of SNUR 

requirements, or document that the recipient has such knowledge or will not undertake any significant 

new use described in the rule. Therefore, the article processor, as the recipient of any subject chemical 

substance, should receive written notification from the supplier, and would keep this documentation as 

part of their standard business practice. 
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Should a processor need to demonstrate compliance with the SNUR, it is expected that processors would 

use notification from the supplier or other shipping or labeling documents (such as Material Safety Data 

Sheets (MSDS), etc.) received with the article in the ordinary course of business. 

To the extent that processors desire extra certainty that the articles they process are not subject to a 

SNUR, they may undertake the steps to identify regulated chemicals outlined above for importers. 

2.4 Summary of Per Submission Costs, by Option 

The number of firms affected by not making submissions to EPA is not known; therefore, costs are not 

aggregated across the affected entities. The following table summarizes the costs to comply with the 

proposed rule amendment, as described in more detail in section 2.2 above. 

Table 13: Compliance Options and Associated Costs Incurred by a Firm Due to the Proposed 

SNUR 

Option1 Costs Quantified Costs per Chemical (2012$)2

1. 

Electronic submission 

of a Significant New 

Use Notice (SNUN), 

indicating to EPA that 

the firm would like to 

manufacture, import, 

or process the 

chemical for a 

Significant New Use 

as defined in the 

SNUR. 

Costs of submitting a SNUN, 

including rule familiarization, 

CDX registration (for 

companies that are first-time 

submitters), form completion, 

user fee, export notification, 

and any test costs, Rarely, a 

firm may choose to conduct 

toxicity or fate testing to 

support the SNUN, but such 

testing is not required by law.3 

$54.84 rule familiarization cost; $8,589 submission cost 

(including SNUN recordkeeping and fee $2,500 for large 

businesses). EPA usually receives well under ten SNUNs 

per year. Export notifications costs are estimated at $84.22 

per notification; total cost per company will vary. First time 

submitters would incur $191.91 for CDX registration and 

associated activities. Companies manufacturing, importing, 

or processing a chemical currently used in commerce in the 

United States will incur a cost $64.38 for notifying 

consumers of SNUR regulatory activities. 

2. 

Manufacture, import, 

or process in a way 

that avoids a 

Significant New Use. 

Cost of the profit foregone as a 

result of not engaging in the 

commercial activity originally 

planned (opportunity costs), 

recordkeeping, and export 

notification costs. 

Opportunity costs are not quantified Other costs include 

rule familiarization ($54.84), recordkeeping ($9.66), export 

notification costs ($84.22 per notification), and customer 

notification ($64.38) may apply. Costs associated with 

article importation may include activities such as article 

identification ($130 to $1,550), supplier identification 

($950) recordkeeping ($10), collecting data from suppliers 

($5 to $515 per article), and testing ($130 per article tested). 

Notes: 

1 Firms may be subject to both options at once, since submission of a SNUN results in profits foregone as a result of not manufacturing, 

importing, or processing the chemical. 

2 Quantified costs are attributable to the SNUR only if a firm would not otherwise follow the specified practices. Costs are detailed in 

Section 2.2. 

3 EPA does not require the development of test data for submission of a SNUN, although a firm may submit test data already in its

possession and/or describe any other available data. Because EPA does not require the development of test data, EPA assumes that no 

firms will incur testing costs as a result of the proposed SNUR.

2.5 Likelihood of SNUN Submission 

This analysis assumes that very few entities are expected to submit a SNUN. EPA has, over the years, 

promulgated SNURs that cover a total of more than 1,000 chemicals. In response, the Agency receives 

only a handful of SNUNs per year. For example, the number of SNUNs received was four in Federal 
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fiscal year (FY) 2005, eight in FY2006, six in FY2007, eight in FY2008, seven in FY2009, two in 

FY2010, and ten in FY201112. 

2.6 Potential for Subsequent Regulatory Actions 

The Agency recognizes that if submission of a SNUN does result from a SNUR, the Agency may take 

additional regulatory actions under TSCA. These additional regulatory actions might be necessary to 

further evaluate an intended new use and associated activities, or to prohibit or limit that activity before it 

occurs to prevent unreasonable risk of injury to human health or the environment. It is not known what 

specific subsequent regulatory actions, if any, the Agency may determine are necessary after reviewing a 

SNUN. Any such actions are highly dependent on the circumstances surrounding the individual SNUN 

(e.g., available information and scientific understanding about the chemical and its risks at the time the 

SNUN is being reviewed). 

Should the Agency’s review of the SNUN result in further regulatory actions, the Agency will initiate and 

follow the appropriate procedures for taking those actions. Included in those procedures would be an 

assessment of the costs and benefits of those actions. 

 

12 In-person count of SNUNs conducted by Kimberly Wilson of Abt Associates Inc, on April 8, 2010 at EPA’s 

Confidential Information Business Center (CBIC) and updated values for FY2010 and FY2011 provided by Lynn 

Blake-Hedges of US EPA on September 1, 2011. 
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3 Agency Costs 

As described in the following sections, EPA’s costs to review and process SNUN submissions are 

assumed to be the same as EPA costs to review PMNs. 

3.1 Labor Rates for EPA Staff 

Agency labor costs are calculated based on annual Federal salaries for the Washington-Baltimore area 

published by the Office of Personnel Management effective January 2012 (OPM, 2012). EPA assumes 

that, on average, a federal GS-13, Step 5 full-time equivalent (FTE) will conduct its collection and 

administrative activities under the proposed rule. 13 The average salary for a GS-13 Step 5 employee was 

$100,904 in 2012 without fringe benefits and overhead costs. In order to derive the fully loaded salary, 

EPA multiplied the annual salary by an assumed loading factor of 1.6 to reflect federal fringe benefits and 

overhead, which results in a fully loaded annual salary of $161,446.40 (see Table 14: Derivation of 

Loaded Agency Wage Rates). Dividing the fully loaded annual salary by 2,080 hours (i.e., the number of 

hours in a work year) yields an hourly FTE wage rate of $77.62. 

The Agency loading factor of 1.6 is from an EPA guide entitled Instructions for Preparing Information 

Collection Requests (ICRs) (EPA, 1992, page 30, footnote 9). The 60 percent assumption was labeled 

“the benefits multiplication factor” in the EPA guide, but has been used in many EPA OPPT ICRs to 

reflect both fringe benefits and overhead for federal staff. For example, it was used in a document 

supporting EPA ICR No. 1139.06 (EPA, 2000), with the following explanation: 

The annual costs per FTE are derived by multiplying the annual pay rate by 1.6 (the benefits 

multiplication factor). The multiplication factor used is recommended in EPA’s Office of Policy, 

Planning, and Evaluation’s Instructions for Preparing Information Collection Requests (ICRs)

(June 1, 1992). An EPA internal phone call between Carol Rawie (OPPT/EETD/RIB) and Carl 

Koch (OPPE/RMD/IMB) on May 3, 1994, indicated that the 1.6 factor included not only benefits 

but also overhead. 

Fully loaded costs for Agency labor are shown in Table 14.

 

13 The GS-13 Step 5 is consistent with ICR No. 0574.14 (12/18/2007) (EPA, 2007a), which covers PMN SNURs. Use of this 

grade level follows the approach introduced in EPA, 2007b. That report represented a change from an earlier PMN SNUR 

economic analysis (EPA, 2003), which used an average of GS-12 Step 1 and GS-12 Step 10 salaries.
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Table 14: Derivation of Loaded Agency Wage Rates 

Labor 

Category 

Data Source for Wage 

Information Date Wage Fringe 

Benefit

Fringes 

as % 

wage 

Overhead 

as % 

wage

Fringe + 

overhead 

factor 

Loaded 

Wages 

(a) (b) (c)=(b)/(a) (d) (e)=(c)+(d)+1 (f)=(a)*(e)

EPA staff 

FTE 

Annual Federal staff cost: 

OPM WashingtonBaltimore-Northern 

Virginia, DC-MD-PA-VAWV, area, GS-13 Step 5 

pay rates, with 60% 

overheads a

.

Jan 

1, 

2012

$100,904.00

(annual) 

-- 

[Included 

in 60% 

overhead]

60% b

 1.60 

$161,446.40

(annual) 

$48.51 

(hourly) 

$77.62 

(hourly) 

Notes: a

 The Agency salary is the unloaded federal GS-13 Step 5 salary ($100,904 for 2012),from the OPM salary table for the 

Washington-Baltimore-Northern Virginia Locality Pay Area (OPM, 2012). Hourly rates are based on annual salary divided by 

2,080 hours. 

b The 60% fringes-and-overhead rate is from an EPA guide, Instructions for Preparing Information Collection Requests (ICRs) 

(EPA, 1992, page 30, footnote 9).

3.2 SNUN Processing Costs 

The list of review steps, estimates of extramural costs, and the percent of chemicals requiring a particular 

review step are derived from the costs for processing PMN submissions in Table VII-1 of a 1994 EPA 

report, Regulatory Impact Analysis of Amendments to Regulations for TSCA Section 5 Premanufacture 

Notifications (EPA, 1994). The Agency burden associated with processing a PMN has been adjusted to 

reflect burden reductions resulting from the 2009 final PMN Electronic Reporting (ePMN) Rule that 

requires the electronic submission of all TSCA section 5 notices. Electronic submission of SNUN forms 

is expected reduce Agency burden by 16.5 percent (EPA, 2009b, p.28). 

For each review step, the “EPA staff” cost is calculated by multiplying the number of FTEs (in the first 

column) by the fully loaded hourly salary. This shows EPA staff cost for chemicals requiring the selected 

review step. 

The Extramural Cost column shows costs for contractor support and other outside purchases for 

chemicals requiring the selected review step, and is inflated from 1993 prices using the Bureau of Labor 

Statistics (BLS) Employment Cost Index (ECI) data (BLS, 2013b). The not seasonally adjusted ECI for 

total compensation of private industry professional and related workers (Series ID CIU2010000120000I) 

is used because it is the only series with continuous data since 1985, and that includes professional and 

technical labor, which perform the majority of Agency extramural activities. 

Table 15 contains the derivation of inflation factors for Agency extramural costs. 
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Table 15: Derivation of Inflation Factors for Agency Extramural Costs 

Item Inflation Index Source1 Starting 

year

Index for 

starting 

year 

(a) 

Index 

for 

2012 

(b) 

Inflation 

factor 

(b)/(a) 2

Agency Extramural costs 

White collar labor; 

equipment; supplies

BLS ECI, Total comp, Private 

industry, Professional and related, 4th

Q [BLS , 2013b]3

1993 67.0 118.2 1.76 

Notes: 

1 In 2006, Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Employment Cost Index (ECI) series “were rebased to December 2005 = 100 from 

June 1989 = 100.” The change is reflected in the indices in this table and explained on the BLS website, Employment Cost Index

News Release Text: Employment Cost Index, March 2006 (BLS, 2006b). The Consumer Price Index (CPI) was not rebased. 2 Inflation factors are rounded to three decimal places in this table, but calculations in this report use the unrounded values. 3 Beginning with the report Economic Analysis of Expedited Significant New Use Rules for 25 Chemical Substances: EPA 

Docket OPPT-2009-0922 (EPA 2010), we began to use the not-seasonally adjusted CIU2010000120000I for private industry 

Professional, and Related workers, instead of SA CIS2010000W00000I for private industry white collar workers because BLS 

retired the “white-collar” series. 

Source: 

(BLS 2013b) Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employment Cost Index – Total Compensation: Professional and Related Private 

Industry, Not Seasonally Adjusted. (Series ID: CIU2010000120000I (B)), extracted April 2013. (BLS, 2013b).

The Percent of Cases column in Table 16 is a weighting factor applied to reflect the fact that not all 

chemicals require each review step. For example, in the PMN process, all chemicals require 

Administrative Prescreening, but not all chemicals require the intensive scrutiny of “Standard Review.” 

The three types of submissions resulting from a SNUR may have weighting factors that differ from each 

other and from the weighting factors for PMNs. Changes in weighting factors could cause actual review 

costs to be higher or lower than calculated here. For example, some SNUNs require little review because 

they are determined to be “invalid” – i.e. not required in the first place. However, often a SNUN may take 

more Agency time than a typical PMN because of factors such as the need to retrieve old PMN records 

from archives, and the likelihood that more data requiring EPA review is submitted with a SNUN than 

would be submitted on average with a PMN. Resources were not available to update the review hours to 

reflect the current review process or to tailor the cost estimates to SNUNs. Therefore, for this analysis, the 

review steps and weighting factors are assumed to be the same as those derived in 1994 for PMNs. 

The Weighted Cost column is calculated by multiplying the un-weighted Costs (EPA staff cost plus 

extramural costs) by the percentage of cases requiring this review step. Weighted costs are then multiplied 

by the burden reduction of 16.5 percent to account for burden savings generated by electronic submission. 

This calculation yields total Agency costs of $5,086, per SNUN, for submission review and processing, as 

shown in Table 16.
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Table 16: Agency Costs for SNUN and Other Submission Review and Processing 

Review Steps 

EPA staff (FTE) Cost Extramural Cost 2 Unweighted 

Cost 

Pct. of Cases 

Weighted Cost3

ePBuRe

FTE fraction 

Cost per FTE 1

FTE Total ($2012) 

1993 dollars 

2012 dollars 

(a) (b) (c)=(a)*(b) (d) (e) (f)=(c)+(e) (g) (h)=(f)*(g) (i) 

Pre-notice consultation 0.0024 $161,446 $387.47 $4.00 $7.06 $395 41% $161.76 Administrative prescreen/ notice receipt/user fee 0.0024 $161,446 $387.47 $92.00 $162.30 $550 100% $549.78 CRSS (Chemical Review and Search Strategy) 0.0025 $161,446 $403.62 $268.00 $472.80 $876 100% $876.42 SAT (Structure Activity Team) 0.0006 $161,446 $96.87 $14.00 $24.70 $122 100% $121.57 Engineering/Exposure 0.0015 $161,446 $242.17 $56.00 $98.79 $341 100% $340.96 Exposure/Fate 0.0008 $161,446 $129.16 $0.00 $0.00 $129 100% $129.16 Focus 0.0009 $161,446 $145.30 $23.00 $40.58 $186 100% $185.88 Standard Review Functions 0.0219 $161,446 $3,535.68 $511.00 $901.50 $4,437 29% $1,286.78 Division Directors Meeting 0.0129 $161,446 $2,082.66 $113.00 $199.35 $2,282 15% $342.30 Order Development/Negotiation Review 

0.0171 $161,446 $2,760.73 $22.00 $38.81 $2,800 3% $83.99 

Post Order Data Review 0.0886 $161,446 $14,304. $0.00 $0.00 $14,304 3% $429.12 Order Modification 0.2167 $161,446 $34,985.43 $0.00 $0.00 $34,985 3% $1,049.56 New Chemical SNUR Development 0.0277 $161,446 $4,472.07 $85.00 $149.96 $4,622 7% $323.54 Notices of Commencement 0.0012 $161,446 $193.74 $40.00 $70.57 $264 31% $81.93 FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) Requests 0.0333 $161,446 $5,376.17 $287.00 $506.32 $5,882 1% $58.62 CBI (Confidential Business Information) Substantiation 0.0004 $161,446 $64.58 $3.00 $5.29 $70 100% $69.87 TOTAL $6,091 Notes: 1 GS-13 Step 5 salaries loaded with benefits and overhead. See Table 14 for derivation.

2 Extramural costs consist of contracting support and other purchases directly attributable to the PMN review process inflated from 1993 prices using Table 
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3 Weighted costs were calculated using unrounded unit cost estimates, so results may differ from calculations using the rounded values show4 Electronic submission is expected to generate a cost savings of 16.5% to the Agency (EPA 2009a, p. 28).

Sources: FTEs per review step, 1993 extramural costs, and percents of cases are from EPA, 1994 Table VII-1, GS-13 salaries are from OPM
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3.3 Export Notification Cost 

Under TSCA Section 12(b), exporters must notify EPA if they intend to export chemicals subject to 

SNURs, as described in Section 2.2.8. The Agency burden and cost due to TSCA §12(b) export 

notification result from three tasks. In the first task, EPA receives export notifications from companies 

that intend to export one of the chemicals subject to TSCA §12(b) (EPA, 2009b). In the second task, EPA 

staff prepares separate notification letters that are subsequently reviewed and delivered to importing 

countries, their embassies, or representatives, and to the importing country’s US embassies (EPA, 2009b). 

(See Table 9: Derivation of Total Mailing Cost for 12 Notices for the cost of mailing one notification). 

The third task is comprised of EPA staff responses to public inquiries and other TSCA 12(b) activities. 

The work of responding to non-routine requests for information and clarification from industry and 

importing countries, and of handling other tasks associated with the TSCA §12(b) program, was 

estimated to require roughly 400 hours per year (EPA, 2009b). Since the current rulemaking covers only a 

very small percent of the chemicals subject to TSCA 12(b) reporting, a very small percent of such activity 

will be attributable to the current rulemaking. 

Because it is unknown how many, if any, notifications EPA will receive or send as a result of the current 

rulemaking, the costs to the Agency are presented per activity. The burden for the first two Agency 

activities is provided in Table 17. To estimate the Agency cost, hourly burdens are multiplied by the 

loaded wage rate of a GS-13, Step 5, which is derived in Table 15. 

Table 17: TSCA 12(b) Export Notification Cost: Agency Burden per Activity (2012$) 

Agency Activity 

Hours per 

Activity 

FTE per 

Activity1

Loaded Mailing 

Cost 

Total Agency Cost 

per Activity GS-13, Step 5 

FTE Wage Rate 

(a) (b) = 

(a)/2,080 (c) (d) (e) = ((b)*(c))+(d) 

Process an incoming 

notification from an 

exporting company 

0.1 0.000048 $161,446 $0.00 $7.76 

Prepare and mail a 

notification to an 

importing country 

0.5 0.00024 $161,446 $13.75 $52.56 

Notes: 

1 The burden associated with an Agency activity is the burden for the Agency to process one incoming notification, or to prepare 

and mail an outgoing notification 

Source: Appendix A of this report derives Agency labor costs. Mailing costs are from Table 9: Derivation of Total Mailing Cost 

for 12 Notices of this report. Other burdens are from ICR No.: 0795.13 [Information Collection Request for] Notification of 

Chemical Exports - TSCA Section 12(b) Supporting Statement for Request for OMB Review under the Paperwork Reduction Act 

(EPA 2009b), updated for inflation.

 
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4 Benefits 

A SNUN submission provides EPA with the opportunity to evaluate the intended use and, if necessary, to 

prohibit or limit that activity before it occurs. It allows the Agency to take immediate action to mitigate an 

activity that the Agency deems harmful to the environment or human health. 

Diisocyanates are well known dermal and inhalation sensitizers in the workplace and have been 

documented to cause asthma, lung damage, and in severe cases, fatal reactions (U.S. EPA, 2011). The 

International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified toluene diisocyanate as “possibly 

carcinogenic to humans” (Carcinogenicity Group 2B) (IARC 1986; IARC 1999). TDI has also been 

classified by the European Commission (EC) as Category 3 for carcinogenicity (“causes concerns for 

humans owing to possible carcinogenic effects”) (European Commission 1997, 2004; ESIS v.4.50 2006); 

and by the United States National Toxicology Program (NTP) as “reasonably anticipated to be a human 

carcinogen” (NTP 2005). 

There has been an increase in consumer availability of, or exposure to, polyurethane products intended to 

further react and undergo “curing” in the marketplace (EPA, 2011). Use of TDI beyond the confines of a 

controlled production facility could result in exposures to consumers through application or use of the 

product and the general public (EPA, 2011). Unlike workers who are protected by workplace regulations 

and, in most cases, have access to hazard information and receive training for working with TDI, most 

consumers are unaware of the potential hazards of products containing TDI or other diisocyanates. 

Consequently, insufficient and inadequate hazard communication may lead to incorrect use and increased 

consumer and bystander exposures, particularly for sensitive groups, such as children. 

The proposed SNUR allows EPA to address the potential health effects that may result from exposures to 

the consumer while applying and/or using consumer products containing uncured TDI and related 

compounds (e.g., spray-applied sealants and coatings), by allowing the Agency to evaluate the use of, or 

exposure to, these chemicals, and to take preventive action to limit or prohibit any Significant New Use. 

The proposed rule also addresses the potential for incidental exposures to the general population while 

such products containing uncured TDI and related compounds are applied and/or used in or around 

buildings, including homes or schools. EPA also expects that the proposed rule may restrict future uses or 

exposure to the chemicals, as a company may choose to modify planned uses, and general population or 

consumer exposures to the chemical in such a way that does not trigger a SNUR, as opposed to 

submitting a SNUN. Therefore, the proposed SNUR may limit future exposure to the chemicals. 
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5 Additional Analyses 

5.1 Regulatory Flexibility Act 

The Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA) (5 U.S.C. 601 et. seq.), as amended by the Small Business 

Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act, requires regulators to consider the impact of regulations on small 

entities, in particular small businesses. The requirement to submit a SNUN applies to any person 

(including small or large entities) who intends to engage in any activity described in the rule as a 

significant new use. Where a use is new, by definition no small or large entities presently engage in such 

activities. Although some small entities may decide to manufacture or process a substance for the new use 

after the SNUR is promulgated, EPA receives very few SNUNs, and few of those are submitted by small 

entities. In response to the promulgation of SNURs covering over 1,000 chemical substances, the Agency 

receives only a handful of SNUNs per year. For example, the number of SNUNs was four in Federal 

fiscal year 2005, eight in FY2006, six in FY2007, eight in FY2008, seven in FY2009, two in 2010, and 

ten in 2011 (EPA, 2012), for an average of 6 per year from all SNURs. EPA has no reason to believe that 

this SNUR would alter the pattern of SNUN submissions that EPA has historically seen. In addition, the 

estimated reporting cost for submission of a SNUN is minimal regardless of the size of the firm, 

averaging about $8,500 including SNUN recordkeeping and reporting costs. The Agency currently offers 

some relief to certain small businesses with sales (including those of subsidiary/parent companies) of less 

than $40 million per year by reducing the SNUN submission fee from $2,500 to $100. This lower fee 

reduces the cost of submitting a SNUN to about $6,100 for smaller firms. During the six-year period from 

2005-2010, only three submitters self-identified as small in their SNUN submission (EPA, 2012). 14 EPA 

believes that there will be minimal impact to processors and importers of the chemical substance subject 

to the final SNUR as part of an article. The SNUR does not require processors and importers of articles 

that contain the chemicals subject to the final SNUR to conduct specific activities to ascertain if they are 

importing or processing an article that uses a chemical subject to the rule. Therefore processors and 

importers are expected to take actions that are commensurate with the level of risk each company 

perceives, and the resources it has available. EPA has no reason to believe that a firm would voluntarily 

incur substantial costs to comply with the SNUR, but rather EPA believes each firm will choose the most 

efficient route to identify whether it is importing or processing the subject chemical substances in articles. 

This leaves open the question of how many small businesses are affected but do not submit SNUNs. For 

example, businesses may change their behavior in order to use a chemical in a manner that avoids 

triggering Significant New Use notification requirements, and make no submission to EPA. Data and 

resources were not available to estimate the number of such small businesses affected by the current rule. 

Based on past considerations and on the limited data available, EPA expects that any compliance with a 

SNUR will not have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities. 

Small businesses may be affected by this proposed SNUR without EPA being aware; for example, if the 

firms have made no submissions or comments to EPA. However, even if a small business were interested 

in supplying a SNUR chemical, the SNUR’s impact on profits is generally expected to be minor. For 

example, the firm may have a small expense of keeping records (approximately $9.26) and/or of changing 

workplace practices to comply with any new restrictions. If modifying practices would be overly costly, 

 

14 The three “small” submitters were identified by review of actual SNUN submissions from the years 2005-2010. 
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the small business may instead forego production, thus sacrificing profits. The lost profits, if any, were 

not quantified for this report. 

5.2 Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA) 

The proposed rule does not impose any enforceable duty, contain any unfunded mandate, or otherwise 

have any effect on small governments because none of the current producers of the subject chemicals are 

governments. Additionally, it is not expected that any governments will initiate production of these 

chemicals. 

5.3 Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) 

According to the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA), 44 U.S.C. 3501 et seq., an Agency may not conduct or 

sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to a collection of information that requires OMB 

approval under the PRA, unless it has been approved by OMB and displays a currently valid OMB 

control number. The OMB control numbers for EPA’s regulations in title 40 of the CFR, after appearing 

in the Federal Register, are listed in 40 CFR, part 9, and included on the related collection instrument, or 

form, if applicable. The information collection requirements related to this action have already been 

approved by OMB pursuant to the PRA under OMB control number 2070-0038 (EPA ICR No. 1188). 

This action does not impose any burden requiring additional OMB approval. If an entity were to submit a 

SNUN to the Agency, the annual burden is estimated to average 97.66 hours per response: 0.82 hours for 

rule familiarization (Section 2.2.1), 2.80 hours for CDX registration, CDX electronic signature, and 

pay.gov account setup (Section 2.2.2), 91.68 hours for form completion, submission and recordkeeping 

(Sections 2.2.3), 1 hour for consumer notifications (Section 2.2.6) and 1.36 hours for export notification 

(Section 2.2.8). 

5.4 Executive Order 13132, Federalism 

Executive Order 13132, entitled Federalism (64 FR 43255, August 10, 1999), requires EPA to develop an 

accountable process to ensure “meaningful and timely input by State and local officials in the 

development of regulatory policies that have federalism implications.” Policies that have federalism 

implications are defined in the Executive Order to include regulations that have “substantial direct effects 

on the States, on the relationship between the national government and the States, or on the distribution of 

power and responsibilities among the various levels of government” (64 FR 43255, August 10, 1999). 

The proposed rule establishes reporting and recordkeeping requirements that apply to manufacturers 

(including importers) and processors of certain chemicals. EPA has no information to indicate that any 

state or local government manufactures or processes the chemical substances covered by this action. 

5.5 Executive Order 12898, Environmental Justice 

Executive Order 12898, “Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and 

Low Income Populations” (59 FR 7629, February 16, 1994), establishes federal executive policy on 

environmental justice. Its main provision directs federal agencies, to the greatest extent practicable and 

permitted by law, to make environmental justice part of their mission by identifying and addressing, as 
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appropriate, disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of their programs, 

policies, and activities on minority populations and low-income populations in the United States. 

The information collected under this proposed rule, if finalized, will assist EPA and others in determining 

the potential hazards and risks associated with various chemicals manufactured and used at high 

production volumes. Although not directly impacting environmental justice-related concerns, this 

information will enable the Agency to better protect human health and the environment, including in lowincome and minority communities. 

5.6 Executive Order 13045, Protection of Children 

Executive Order 13045, Protection of Children from Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks (62 

FR 19885, April 23, 1997), requires EPA to identify and assess environmental health and safety risks that 

may disproportionately affect children. This type of analysis is required for rules that will have an 

impact of $100 million or more only. The impact of this SNUR will be less than $100 million and 

therefore no analysis of such impacts on children is required. 

5.7 Executive Order 13175, Tribal Governments 

Executive Order 13175 is Consultation and Coordination with Indian Tribal Governments (59 FR 

22951, November 6, 2000). This rule does not have Tribal implications because EPA has no 

information to indicate that any tribal government manufactures or processes the chemical substances 

covered by this action. 

5.8 Executive Order 13211, Energy Supply, Distribution, or Use 

This rule is not subject to Executive Order 13211, entitled Actions Concerning Regulations That 

Significantly Affect Energy Supply, Distribution, or Use (66 FR 28355, May 22, 2001), because this 

action is not expected to affect energy supply, distribution, or use. 

5.9 Executive Order 13563, Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review 

Executive Order 13563, Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review (76 FR 3821, January 21, 2011), 

requires EPA to base regulations on the best available science, allow for public participation and the open 

exchange of ideas, promote predictability and reduce uncertainty, identify and use the best, most 

innovative, and least burdensome tools for achieving regulatory ends, consider both the costs and benefits 

qualitatively and quantitatively and ensure regulations are accessible, consistent, written in plain 

language, and easy to understand. 

The proposed rule establishes reporting and recordkeeping requirements that apply to manufacturers 

(including importers) and processors of certain chemicals. Consistent with EO 13563, this document 

qualitatively and quantitatively describes both the costs and benefits of the proposed rule as well as the 

underlying data used in the analyses. EPA chose the best available data to analyze the costs and benefits 

described in this document and the best analytic approaches given the available data and other constraints. 
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36

6 References 

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Available at: http://www.afirm-group.com/AFIRMSupplierToolkitFinalJune6.pdf. 

Australian Government (2013). Inventory multi-tiered assessment and prioritization (IMAP): Human 

Health Tier II Assessment for Toluene Diisocyanates. Department of Health and Ageing, National 

Industrial Chemicals Notification and Assessment Scheme. Last updated June 6, 2013. Accessed July 

22, 2013. Available at http://www.nicnas.gov.au/chemical-information/imap-assessments/imapgroup-assessment-report?assessment_id=124. 

Bello, D., Herrick, C. A., Smith, T. J., Woskie, S. R., Streicher, R. P., Cullen, M. R., Liu, Y., and Redlich, 

C. A. 2007. Skin Exposure to Isocyanates: Reasons for Concern. Environ Health Perspect 115. 

BLS, 2006a. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation: Changes to 

NAICS and SOC, Table 2. ECEC Occupational Comparability between SOC and OCS. Downloaded 

February 2006 from http://www.bls.gov/ncs/ect/sp/ecsm0003.htm. 

BLS, 2006b. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Cost Index News Release Text: Employment 

Cost Index, March 2006 (April 28, 2006), at http://www.bls.gov. 

BLS, 2006c. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Change has Come to the ECI (June 14, 2006) at 

http://www.bls.gov/ncs/ect/sp/ecsm0001.htm. 

BLS, 2013a. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Employer Costs for Employee Compensation 

Supplementary Tables December 2012.” Accessed March 18, 2012. Available at: 

http://www.bls.gov/ncs/ect/sp/ecsuptc25.pdf (Note: The BLS report title and content are updated 

periodically to include more recent data, on the same website.) 

BLS, 2013b. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employment Cost Index – Total Compensation: Professional and 

Related Private Industry, Not Seasonally Adjusted. (Series ID: CIU2010000120000I (B)), 

extracted March 18, 2013. http:/data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/srgate. 

BLS, 2013c. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Consumer Price Index- All Urban Consumers, U.S. City 

Average (Series ID: CUUR0000SA0), extracted March 18, 2013. Available through 

http:/data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/srgate

Branch, 2006. Raphael E. Branch and Lowell Mason. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Seasonal 

adjustment in the ECI and the conversion to NAICS and SOC.” Monthly Labor Review. Vol. 129, 

No. 4, April 2006. Available at www.bls.gov. 

Caroll, 2006. Richard E. Caroll. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Changes affecting the Employment 

Cost Index: an overview.” Monthly Labor Review. Vol. 129, No. 4, April 2006. Available at 

www.bls.gov . 

EPA, 1992. U.S. EPA, Office of Policy, Planning, and Evaluation. Instructions for Preparing Information 

Collection Requests (ICRs). Washington, DC, June 1, 1992. 

EPA, 1994. U. S. EPA, Office of Toxic Substances, Regulatory Impacts Branch. Regulatory Impact 

Analysis of Amendments to Regulations for TSCA Section 5 Premanufacture Notifications. 

Washington, DC, September 9, 1994. (OTS/RIB later became OPPT/EPAB.) 

EPA, 2000. U.S. EPA, Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, ICR No. 1139.06. OMB Control No.: 

2070-0033 [Information Collection Request for] TSCA Existing Chemical Test Rules, Consent 
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37

Orders, Test Rule Exemptions, and Voluntary Test Data Submissions: Supporting Statement for 

Request for OMB Review under the Paperwork Reduction Act. Attachment 5, Wage Rates Estimation, 

August 29, 2000. 

EPA, 2002a. U.S. EPA, Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, Economic and Policy Analysis Branch. 

Revised Economic Analysis for the Amended Inventory Update Rule: Final Report. Washington, DC. 

August 2002. 

EPA, 2002b. U.S. EPA, Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, Economic and Policy Analysis 

Branch, Wage Rates for Economic Analysis of the Toxics Release Inventory Program. Washington, 

DC: June 10, 2002. 

EPA, 2003. U.S. EPA, Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, Economic and Policy Analysis Branch. 

Economic Analysis of Expedited Significant New Use Rules for 65 Chemical Substances. Washington, 

DC, 2003. Available from the Federal Docket Management System as EPA-HQ-OPPTS-2002-0078 

at http://www.regulations.gov. 

EPA, 2005a. Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, Economic and Policy Analysis Branch. Economic 

Analysis of the Proposed Change to TSCA Section 12(b) Export Notification Requirements, November 

2005, available from the Federal Docket Management System as EPA-HQ-OPPT-2005-005 8-0017 at 

http://www.regulations.gov. 

EPA, 2005b. U.S. EPA, Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics ICR No. 118.08. [Information 

Collection Request for] TSCA Section 5(a)(2) Significant New Use Rules for Existing Chemicals 

(Renewal). Supporting Statement for a Request for OMB Review under the Paperwork Reduction Act, 

October 11, 2005. 

EPA, 2007a. U.S. EPA, Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, EPA ICR No. 0574.14. OMB Control 

No.: 2070-0014 [Information Collection Request for] Pre-Manufacture Review Reporting and 

Exemption Requirements for New Chemical Substances and Significant New Use Reporting 

Requirements for Chemical Substances: Supporting Statement for a Request for OMB Review under the 

Paperwork Reduction Act, December 6, 2007. 

EPA, 2007b. U.S. EPA, Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, Economic and Policy Analysis Branch. 

Economic Analysis of Expedited Significant New Use Rules for 65 Chemical Substances (EPA Docket 

OPPT-2003-0063), December 4, 2006 (Revised March 12, 2007). 

EPA, 2007c. U.S. EPA, Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, Economic and Policy Analysis Branch. 

Economic Analysis of Expedited Significant New Use Rules for 38 Chemical Substances (EPA Docket 

OPPT-2006-0898), August 17, 2007. 

EPA, 2009a. U.S. EPA, Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, Economic and Policy Analysis 

Branch. Economic Analysis of the Premanufacture Notification Electronic Reporting Final Rule. 

(EPA-HQ-OPPT-2008-0296). July 13, 2009. 

EPA, 2009b. U.S. EPA, Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics. EPA ICR No.: 0795.13 OMB Control 

Number 2070-0030 [Information Collection Request for] Notification of Chemical Exports - TSCA 

Section 12(b) Supporting Statement for Request for OMB Review under the Paperwork Reduction 

Act. March 6, 2009 at http://www.regulations.gov. 

EPA, 2009c, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics. 2009. 

Section 13 Import Certification. Available at: http://www.epa.gov/opptintr/importexport/pubs/sec13.html. Accessed March 30, 2010. 

EPA, 2010. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics. Economic 

Analysis of Expedited Significant New Use Rules for 25 Chemical Substances, (EPA Docket OPPT2009-0922). 
*** EO12866/13563 Review Draft –Do Not Cite, Quote, or Release During the Review ***

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EPA, 2011. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Toluene Diisocyanate (TDI) And Related 

Compounds Action Plan [RIN 2070-ZA14]. April 2011 

EPA, 2012. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency “Count of SNUN Submissions as tracked in EPA’s 

Confidential Business Information Tracking System (CBITS)”. February, 2012. 

EPA. 2013. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 2012 Chemical Data Reporting Database. Available 

at: http://java.epa.gov/oppt_chemical_search/. 

EPA. Not Yet Published. U.S. EPA, Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics. Understanding the Costs 

Associated with Eliminating Exemptions for Articles in SNURs. 

European Chemical Substances Information System (ESIS) [database on the Internet], 2006. CAS No. 91-

08-7; 2-methyl-m-phenylene diisocyanate. CAS No. 584-84-9; 4- methyl-m-phenylene diisocyanate. 

CAS No. 26471-62-5; M-tolylidene diisocyanate. Version 4.50. European Chemical Bureau (ECB). 

Available from: http://ecb.jrc.it/esis. 

European Commission, 1997. Summary Record - Toluene di-isocyanates. Commission Working Group 

on the Classification and Labelling of Dangerous Substances. Meeting at ECB Ispra, 15-21 October 

1997. Report No.:ECBI/51/97 - Rev. 3. 

European Commission, 2004. 2-methyl-m-phenylene diisocyanate. 4-methyl-m-phenylene diisocyanate. 

M-tolylidene diisocyanate. Commission Directive 2004/73/EC of April 29, 2004. Annex 1A. Official 

Journal of the European Union. 16.6.2004. L 216/49. European Commission. 29th ATP. 

European Commission. 2011. Plastic materials and articles intended to come into contact with food. 

Commission Regulation (EU) No 10/2011 of 14 January 2011. Official Journal of the European Union. 

15.1.2011. 

European Commission. 2013. “More about the EU Ecolabel.” Available at 

http://ec.europa.eu/environment/ecolabel/the-ecolabel-scheme.html. Last updated March 25, 2013. 

IARC.1986. International Agency for Research on Cancer. Monographs on the evaluation of the 

carcinogenic risk of chemicals to humans: some chemicals used in plastics and elastomers. IARC 

Monograph 39. Lyon, France: World Health Organization, International Agency for Research on 

Cancer, pp. 287-323.

IARC.1999. International Agency for Research on Cancer. Toluene Diisocyanates May 3, 2010. 

<http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/monographs/vol71/mono71-37.pdf>.

Krone, C. A. (2004). Diisocyanates and Nonoccupational Disease: A Review. Archives of Environmental 

Health 59, 306-316. 

Krone, C., and Klinger, T. (2005). Isocyanates, polyurethane and childhood asthma. Pediatric Allergy and 

Immunology 16, 378-379. 

NTP, 2005. National Toxicology Program. Report on Carcinogens, Eleventh Edition; U.S. Department of 

Health and Human Services, Public Health Service. Substance Profile, Toluene Diisocyanates. 

http://ntp.niesh.nih.gov/ntp/roc/eleventh/profiles/s177tdi.pdf. 

OEHHA, 2013. State of California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. Current 

Proposition 65 List. July 26, 2013. Available at http://oehha.ca.gov/prop65/prop65_list/Newlist.html. 

OPM, 2012. Office of Personnel Management, Salary Table 2012-DCB, Washington BaltimoreNorthern 

Virginia, DC-MD-PA-VA-WV. Accessed from http://www.opm.gov/oca/12tables/pdf/DCB.pdf. 

SBA. 2008. United States Small Business Administration. Table of Small Business Size Standards 

Matched to North American Industry Classification System Codes. Available at: 

http://www.sba.gov/idc/groups/public/documents/sba_homepage/serv_sstd_tablepdf.pdf. 
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Sleemi, 2006. Fehimida Sleemi. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Employment Cost Index Publication 

Plans”. Monthly Labor Review. Vol. 129, No. 4, April 2006. available at 

www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2006/04/art2full.pdf. 

U.S. Postal Service (USPS) 2013a. “Compare Services and Prices” <https://www.usps.com/ship/servicechart.htm>. Accessed April 9, 2013. 

U.S. Postal Service (USPS) 2013b. “Add Insurance and Extra Services ” 

<https://www.usps.com/ship/insurance-and-extra-services.htm>. Accessed April 9, 2013. 

Weinstein, 2004. Harriet G. Weinstein and Mark A. Loewenstein, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

Comparing Current and Former Industry and Occupation ECEC Series. Originally posted August 25, 

2004 at http://www.bls.gov/opub/cwc/cm20040823ar01p1.htm. 
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Appendix A: Inflators and Wage Rates 

This appendix describes the derivation of the fully loaded labor rates and inflation factors used in 

calculating costs of labor, materials, and other inputs. Costs for this report are for year-end 2012. 

A.1 Derivation of Loaded Wage Rates 

Unit labor costs are calculated by adding fringe benefits and overhead to the wage or salary to derive a 

fully loaded labor cost. The basic method is described in Wage Rates for Economic Analysis of the Toxics 

Release Inventory Program (EPA, 2002b). The resulting loaded labor rates are given in Table A-1. Costs 

are calculated for several labor categories: Managerial, Professional/Technical, Clerical, and EPA staff. 

In March 2004, BLS began using the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes 

instead of the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) System, and the Standard Occupational 

Classification (SOC) system instead of the Occupational Classification System (OCS). The following 

table shows the crosswalk between old and new occupational titles. 

EPAB Reports Labor Category BLS Old Title (OCS) BLS New Title (SOC) 

Managerial Executive, administrative, and 

managerial 

Management, business, and 

financial 

Professional/Technical Professional specialty and technical Professional and related 

Clerical Administrative support, including 

clerical Office and administrative support 

Source: Employer Costs for Employee Compensation: Changes to NAICS and SOC, Table 2. ECEC Occupational 

Comparability between SOC and OCS (BLS, 2006a and Weinstein, 2004). 

A.1.1 Derivation of Labor Rates for Managerial, Professional/Technical, Clerical, and 

Production Labor 

Wages and fringe benefits for managerial, professional/technical, clerical and production labor were taken 

from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (ECEC) data,15

for December, for manufacturing industries.16

The cost of fringe benefits such as paid leave and insurance, specific to each labor category, are taken 

from the same ECEC series. Fringe benefits as a percent of wages are calculated separately for each labor 

category. For example, for December 2012, the average wage rate for professional/technical17 labor was 

$38.53; the average fringe benefit was $19.30. Fringe benefits as a percent of wages were 

$119.30/$38.53, or approximately 50.09 percent. 

 

15 This follows the approach introduced in Economic Analysis of Expedited Significant New Use Rules for 65 Chemical 

Substances: EPA Docket OPPT-2003-0063 (EPAB, 2007a). 16 Employer Costs for Employee Compensation Supplementary Tables December 2012. (BLS, 2013a). This follows the 

approach introduced in EPAB, 2007a. Earlier PMN SNUR economic analyses, such as EPA, 2003, used ECEC data for “All 

Goods Producing” sectors (manufacturing, mining, and construction). However, the manufacturing sector data seem more 

relevant since the SNURs mainly affect the chemicals industry. 17 This follows terminology introduced in EPAB, 2007a. Earlier SNUR economic analyses used the term “technical” labor. Here 

the category is called “professional/technical” labor, to make clear how it relates to BLS categories. In 2004, BLS changed 

from the Occupational Classification System, OCS, to the Standard Occupational Classification system, SOC. In the process, 

the “Professional specialty and technical” category became the “Professional and related” category. However, the coverage of 

the old and new occupational groups is approximately the same. See the BLS article, Comparing Current and Former Industry 

and Occupation ECEC Series (Weinstein, 2004).
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An additional loading factor of 17 percent is applied to wages to account for overhead. This approach is 

used for consistency with Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics economic analyses for two major 

rulemakings: Wage Rates for Economic Analyses of the Toxics Release Inventory Program (EPA, 2002b), 

and the Revised Economic Analysis for the Amended Inventory Update Rule: Final Report (EPA, 2002a). 

This overhead loading factor is added to the benefits loading factor, and the total is then applied to the 

base wage to derive the fully loaded wage. For example, the December 2012 fully loaded wage for 

professional/technical labor is $38.53 × (1+0.5009 + 0.17) = $64.38. 

Fully loaded costs for managerial, clerical, and production labor are calculated in a similar manner, as 

shown in Table A-1. 

A.1.3 Derivation of Labor Rates for EPA Staff 

Agency labor costs are calculated based on annual Federal salaries for the Washington-Baltimore area 

published by the Office of Personnel Management effective January 2012 (OPM, 2012). The average 

salary for one FTE staff member is estimated as the salary for a GS-13 Step 5 employee.18 

Multiplying the annual pay by an assumed loading factor of 1.6 to reflect Federal fringe benefits and 

overhead, the loaded annual salary of EPA staff was calculated to be $161,446. 

The Agency loading factor is from an EPA guide, Instructions for Preparing Information Collection 

Requests (ICRs) (EPA, 1992, page 30, footnote 9). The 60 percent assumption was labeled “the benefits 

multiplication factor” in the EPA Guide, but has been used in many EPA Office of Pollution Prevention 

and Toxics ICRs to reflect both fringe benefits and overhead for Federal staff. For example, it was used in 

an August 2000 document supporting ICR No. 1139.06 (EPA, 2000), with the following explanation: 

“The annual costs per FTE are derived by multiplying the annual pay rate by 1.6 (the benefits 

multiplication factor). The multiplication factor used is recommended in EPA’s Office of Policy, 

Planning, and Evaluation’s Instructions for Preparing Information Collection Requests (ICRs) 

(June 1, 1992). An EPA internal phone call between Carol Rawie (OPPT/EETD/RIB) and Carl 

Koch (OPPE/RMD/IMB) on May 3, 1994, indicated that the 1.6 factor included not only benefits 

but also overhead.” (ICR No.1139.06) 

 

18 The GS-13 Step 5 is consistent with ICR No. 0574.14 (12/18/2007), which covers PMN SNURs. Use of this grade level 

follows the approach introduced in EPAB, 2007a. That report represented a change from the earlier PMN SNUR economic 

analysis (EPA, 2003), which used an average of GS-12 Step 1 and GS-12 Step 10 salaries.
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Table A-1: Derivation of Loaded Wage Rates 

EPAB Labor 

Category Data Sources Date Wage Fringe Benefit Fringes as % Wage Over- head % Wage2 Fringe + Overhead Factor 

(a) (b) (c) =(b)/(a) (d) (e)=(c)+(d)+

Managerial 

BLS ECEC, Private Manufacturing 

industries, “Mgt, Business, and Financial”3

Dec-12 $43.95 $21.45 48.81% 17% 1.66 

Professional/ 

Technical 

BLS ECEC, Private Manufacturing 

industries, “Professional and related“3

Dec-12 $38.53 $19.30 50.09% 17% 1.67 

Clerical 

BLS ECEC, Private Manufacturing 

industries, “Office and Administrative Support”3

Dec-12 $17.64 $8.87 50.28% 17% 1.67 

EPA staff 

FTE 

Annual Federal staff cost: OPM Washington-Baltimore-Northern Virginia, DC-MD-PA-VA-WV, area, GS-13 Step 5 pay rates, with 60% overhead.4 

Jan-12 $100,904 

(annual) -- 

[Included in 

60% 

overhead] 

60% 1.6 

Notes: 1Wage data are rounded to the closest penny in this table; however, in calculations using these numbers for this report, unrounded values were used. 2An overhead rate of 17% was used based on assumptions in Wage Rates for Economic Analyses of the Toxics Release Inventory Program (EPA, 2002b), a

for the Amended Inventory Update Rule: Final Report (EPA, 2002a). Employer Costs for Employee Compensation Supplementary Tables December 2012, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, March 18, 2013 (BLS, 2013).

43The Federal salary is the unloaded Federal GS-13 Step 5 salary ($100,904) for 2012, from the Office of Personnel Management salary table for Washingt

(OPM, 2012). The 60% fringes-and-overhead rate is from an EPA guide, Instructions for Preparing Information Collection Requests (ICRs) (EPA, 1992, p
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A.2 Derivation of Inflation Factors 

Complete information on the derivation of the inflation factors used is given in Table A-2. In 2006, the 

Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) made several changes to the Employment Cost Index. The changes are 

described on a BLS web page, “Change has come to the ECI,” (BLS, 2006c) and in several April 2006 

Monthly Labor Review articles posted on the BLS web site: “Changes affecting the Employment Cost 

Index: an overview” (Caroll, 2006); “Employment Cost Index Publication Plans” (Sleemi, 2006); and 

“Seasonal adjustment in the ECI and the conversion to NAICS and SOC” (Branch, 2006). 

Under a mandate from OMB, BLS changed its classification of industries and occupations from the 

Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) and Occupational Classification System (OCS) to the North 

American Industry Classification System (NAICS) and Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) 

system. In 2006, BLS adjusted all ECI series to reflect this change. 

In addition to changing the industry and occupational classification systems, in 2006, BLS rebased the 

ECI from June 1989 = 100 to December 2005 = 100 for all current and historical non-seasonally adjusted 

series, including the NAICS and SIC based series. (Seasonally adjusted indices, including those in Table 

A-2 of this report, may not exactly equal 100 for December 2005 as a result of the seasonal adjustment. 

Seasonal adjustments are explained in Branch, 2006.) 

According to BLS, the official ECI for the years 1975-2005 is the SIC-OCS based series, and for 

subsequent years, the official ECI is the NAICS-SOC based series (Sleemi, 2006, p.8).19 

“Starting year” indices in Table A-2 continue to be SIC-OCS based. Current year indices are NAICSSOC based. We use indices from both the NAICS-SOC and the SIC-OCS based ECI series because 

neither series spans the entire period over which testing and other costs need to be inflated. 

 

19 BLS has been publishing the NIACS-SOC based ECI series since March 2001 and it became official in March 2006. The SICOCS based series and NAICS-SOC series have different series ID numbers, even when they describe essentially the same 

population. For example the series ID for seasonally adjusted total compensation for all private industry workers is 

ECS10002I for the SIC-OCS series and CIS2010000000000I for the NAICS-SOC series. 
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Table A-2: Derivation of Inflation Factors 

Item Inflation Index Source1 Starting 

Year 

Index for 

Starting Year 

(a) 

Index for 

2012 

(b) 

Inflation 

Factor 

(b)/(a)2

Export notification 

BLS ECI, ,Total comp, Private 

industry, Professional and 

related, 4th Q [BLS, 2013b ]3

1992 64.9 118.2 1.821 

Agency Extramural costs 

White collar labor; 

equipment; supplies

BLS ECI, Total comp, Private 

industry, Professional and 

related, 4th Q [BLS, 2013b] 3

1993 67 118.2 1.76 

Labels, placards etc. BLS CPI, All urban consumers, 

not SA. CUUR0000SA0, Annual 

[BLS 2013c] 1997 160.5 229.594 1.430 

File cabinet 

 

Photocopies BLS CPI, All urban consumers, 

not SA. CUUR0000SA0, Annual 

[BLS 2013c ] 

Record keeping materials 1988 118.3 229.594 1.941 

 

Key: BLS = Bureau of Labor Statistics. CPI = Consumer Price Index. ECI = Employment Cost Index. SA = Seasonally Adjusted. Total 

Comp = Total Compensation (wages/salaries and benefits). 4th Q = Fourth Quarter. 

Notes: 

1 In 2006, Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Employment Cost Index (ECI) series “were rebased to December 2005 = 100 from June 

1989 = 100.” The change is reflected in the indices in this table and explained on the BLS website, Employment Cost Index News 

Release Text: Employment Cost Index, March 2006 (BLS, 2006b). The Consumer Price Index (CPI) was not rebased. 

“Starting year” ECI indices are SIC-OCS based: Seasonally Adjusted (SA) ECS10002I for private industry All Workers, and not SA 

ECU11122I for private industry Professional and Related Workers. 

After 2006, ECI indices are NAICS-SOC based: Seasonally Adjusted (SA) CIS2010000000000I for private industry All Workers, and

not SA CIU2010000120000I (B) for private industry Professional, and Related workers. 

2 Inflation factors are rounded to three decimal places in this table, but calculations in this report use the unrounded values. BLS CPI 

values were published with one decimal place through 2006 and with three decimal places after that. 

3 Beginning with the report Economic Analysis of Expedited Significant New Use Rules for 25 Chemical Substances: EPA Docket 

OPPT-2009-0922 (EPA, 2010) we began to use the not-seasonally adjusted CIU2010000120000I for private industry Professional, and 

Related workers, instead of SA CIS2010000W00000I for private industry white collar workers because BLS retired the “white-collar” 

series.