U.S. EPA Proposes 90-Day Notice for Graphene Oxide Substances

By Elena Vasquez

EPA’s Nov. 2, 2026 proposal would require manufacturers, importers and processors of P-25-29 and P-25-30 to give the U.S. agency at least 90 days’ notice before starting a newly designated use, if finalized.

The agency published the proposed significant new use rule (SNUR) at 91 Fed. Reg. 68894 and set a comment deadline of Dec. 2, 2026. One SNUR in the package covers both P-25-29 and P-25-30. For companies supplying composite additives or nanomaterials, the 90-day notice is roughly a three-month lead time if EPA finalizes the rule.

The key distinction is timing and regulatory status. The proposal would add a notice requirement for a newly designated use; it would not replace the controls in an existing Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Order that EPA issued April 21, 2026. Those controls remain the baseline while EPA considers the rule.

What would a final SNUR change?

If EPA issues the SNUR in final, a person intending to manufacture, process or import P-25-29 or P-25-30 for an activity designated as a significant new use must notify EPA at least 90 days before commencing that activity. TSCA defines manufacture to include import, bringing importers into the same pre-notice requirement as domestic manufacturers and processors.

EPA would designate the absence of the protective measures in the April Order as the “significant new use.” That changes the regulatory character of an operation that drops a required safeguard: rather than treating the safeguard only as an existing condition, the proposal would make its absence the trigger for a new EPA notice.

A planned activity that keeps every Order condition would not meet that absence-based trigger.

For practitioners, this creates a sequencing test before a production change: identify whether the planned use is already covered by the Order, then determine whether preserving the Order’s controls keeps the activity outside the proposed designation. EPA also says a PMN submitter could seek modification of the Order using relevant information, providing a separate route for a submitter that wants terms changed.

Which controls already apply?

EPA said the substances’ premanufacture notices (PMNs) “state that the uses will be as functional additives in composites and as precursors for high-value nanomaterials.” The agency compared P-25-29 and P-25-30 with analogous chemicals and identified concerns about lung effects, specifically lung overload. Insufficient information also prevented EPA from estimating the substances’ environmental hazard.

EPA issued the Order under TSCA Sections 5(a)(3)(B)(ii)(I) and 5(e)(1)(A)(ii)(I), based on its finding that “in the absence of sufficient information to permit a reasoned evaluation, the substances may present an unreasonable risk of injury to human health and the environment.”

The Order already requires:

• Manufacture, processing and use of P-25-29 only in a manner that does not result in inhalation exposure.
• Use of P-25-30 only for the confidential use listed in the Order.
• Manufacture of P-25-30 only below the confidential annual production volume listed in the Order.
• A National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health-certified respirator with an assigned protection factor of at least 50 wherever P-25-30 presents a potential for inhalation exposure.
• No release of either PMN substance, or any waste stream containing the substances, to water.
• A hazard communication program, with human-health and environmental precautionary statements on each label and in the safety data sheet (SDS).

The controls do not apply identically to the two substances. P-25-29 carries the no-inhalation-exposure condition across manufacture, processing and use. P-25-30 is tied to a confidential permitted use and annual ceiling, plus the respirator requirement.

The proposal summary does not disclose the use or volume ceiling. A company evaluating a production change therefore has to work from those confidential terms in the Order, not from the proposed SNUR summary.

What does EPA still need to learn?

EPA identified pulmonary-effects and aquatic-toxicity testing as information that may help characterize the human-health and environmental effects of P-25-29 and P-25-30. The agency said such results could support a request by the PMN submitter to modify the Order or inform a manufacturer’s or processor’s decision to submit a significant new use notice (SNUN).

The current Order does not require those tests. EPA nevertheless made clear that missing data do not suspend the controls, saying that the restrictions remain in effect until the agency modifies or revokes the Order based on relevant information. Testing could therefore inform a future modification, but it is not a substitute for compliance now.

That leaves EPA with a rulemaking built around incomplete information. The agency has not estimated the environmental hazard, and the Order rests on the possibility of unreasonable risk when there is too little information for a reasoned evaluation. The proposed SNUR uses the protective measures already in force as its practical boundary.

The next milestone is the Dec. 2, 2026 comment deadline, followed by EPA’s decision on whether to finalize the SNUR. If finalized, the 90-day notice becomes a prerequisite for any newly designated use of P-25-29 or P-25-30; until then, the April Order’s manufacture, exposure, volume and waste restrictions remain in force.