Notice of Intended Changes (NICs)

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Each year, proposed actions of the TLV and BEI Committees are issued in the form of a Notice of Intended Changes. These substances or agents, with their corresponding values/indices and notations, comprise those for which 1) a limit/BEI is proposed for the first time, 2) a change in the Adopted value/index is proposed, 3) retention as an NIC is proposed, or 4) withdrawal of the Documentation and adopted TLV/BEI is proposed. In each case, the proposals should be considered trial values during the period they are on the NIC. These proposals were ratified by the ACGIH Board of Directors and will remain on the NIC for a minimum of one comment period following this ratification. If the Committee neither finds nor receives any substantive data that change its scientific opinion regarding an NIC TLV/BEI, the Committee may then approve its recommendation to the ACGIH Board of Directors for adoption. If the Committee finds or receives substantive data that change its scientific opinion regarding an NIC TLV/BEI, the Committee may change its recommendation to the ACGIH Board of Directors for the matter to be either retained on or withdrawn from the NIC.

Documentation is available for each of these substances/agents and their proposed values/indices.

This notice provides an opportunity for comment on these proposals. Comments or suggestions should be accompanied by substantiating evidence in the form of peer-reviewed literature and forwarded in electronic format, to the ACGIH Science Group at science@acgih.org. Please refer to the ACGIH TLV/BEI Development Process for a detailed discussion covering this procedure and methods for input to ACGIH.

Important Notice: This is to remind our readers that the NIC and NIE Comment Period is a firm 3-month period twice a year, running from January 1 to March 31 and July 1 to September 30 (review following discussion).

NIC and NIE Comment Period: The comment period for an NIC/NIE draft Documentation and its respective TLV(s), notation(s), or BEI(s), will be limited to a firm 3-month period twice a year, running from January 1 to March 31 and July 1 to September 30. ACGIH has structured the comment period to ensure all comments are received by ACGIH in time for full consideration by the appropriate committee before its spring and fall meetings. Because of the time required to properly review, evaluate, and consider comments during the fall meetings, any comments received after the deadlines will not be considered in that year’s committee deliberations regarding the outcome for possible adoption of an NIC/NIE. As general practice, ACGIH reviews all submissions regarding chemical substances and physical agents on the Under Study list, as well as NICs/NIEs, or currently adopted BEI(s) or TLV(s). All comments received before March 31 will be fully considered in the fall meeting and those received before September 30 will be fully considered in the spring meeting. Draft Documentation will be available for review during the comment period.

When submitting comments, ACGIH requires that the submission be limited to 10 pages in length, including an executive summary. The submission may include appendices of citable material not included as part of the 10-page limit. It would be very beneficial to structure comments as follows:

1. Executive Summary – Provide an executive summary with a limit of 250 words.
2. List of Recommendations/Actions – Identify, in a vertical list, specific recommendations/actions that are being requested.
3. Rationale – Provide specific rationale to justify each recommendation/action requested.
4. Citable Material – Provide citable material to substantiate the rationale.

The above procedure will help ACGIH to more efficiently and productively review comments.