Health and environmental data on thousands of highly produced chemicals will be publicly available as early as next year, according to a status report from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The agency has enlisted industry and environmental organizations to help collect the data as part of the High Production Volume (HPV) Challenge. The report projects the new database will provide health and environmental data for 2,200 of the recognized 2,800 HPV chemicals by 2005. EPA defined HPV chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) as chemicals manufactured or imported in quantities of one million pounds per year or higher, and the agency identified the 2,800 chemicals that met the definition. Industry has committed to providing information for 1,371 chemicals, and the international counterpart to the HPV Program, the International Council of Chemical Associations HPV Initiative, will provide data for 851. Since the 2,800 chemicals were identified, 241 are no longer in production. Sponsors of HPV chemicals provide screening-level hazard data to the program, identify any data gaps, and submit plans to fill the gaps. While companies and industry groups have sponsored a large number of chemicals, just over 300 chemicals still lack sponsors. If industry groups do not voluntarily sponsor the "orphan" chemicals, EPA will issue rules under TSCA requiring manufacturers to provide the necessary information. Nearly 60 percent of the data that the HPV Information System (HPVIS) will provide online has not previously been publicly available. The HPVIS will allow the public to find important data on HPV chemicals. The massive quantities of these chemicals automatically make this initiative an important new right to know tool. For the first time, the public will be able to easily learn the impact these chemicals can have on human health and the environment. The program offers concerned stakeholders transparency into the process and opportunities for public input. When sponsors submit test plans and data summaries, the information is posted on the Internet for a 120-day comment period. This allows interested parties to raise any concerns or issues for consideration during the revisions of these plans and summaries. The report points out that these comment periods have been utilized, especially by groups like Environmental Defense and Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. EPA publicly posts all comments and materials on the agency's website. Environmental Defense, the American Petroleum Institute, and the American Chemistry Council partnered with EPA to develop the HPV program. Environmental Defense, an environmental non-profit organization, maintains a webpage on the HPV program, as well as a tracking page for the HPV chemicals. The HPV Challenge Program is part of a larger Chemical Right-to-Know Initiative at EPA that focuses on obtaining and disseminating information on chemicals. The initiative also intends to extensively test chemicals that disproportionately affect children, and collect TRI information on Persistent Bioaccumulative Toxics (PBT) chemicals. EPA lowered the threshold for reporting on PBT chemicals under TRI in October 1999 so that more information about PBT releases is available to the public. The agency's efforts on chemical right to know resulted largely from a 1997 Environmental Defense report entitled Toxic Ignorance: The Continuing Absence of Basic Health Testing for Top-Selling Chemicals in the United States that exposed the fact that basic toxicity information was not available for the commercial chemicals used most abundantly.