Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards

The Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) are a set of US government security regulations for high-risk chemical facilities such as chemical plants and universities. The US Department of Homeland Security promulgated the Final Rule on April 9, 2007. The regulations came into effect on June 8, 2007, apart from material covered in Appendix A, which took effect upon its publication in the Federal Register on November 20, 2007.

The new rules apply to any "Chemical Facility," which the regulation defines as follows: "Chemical Facility or facility shall mean any establishment that possesses or plans to possess, at any relevant point in time, a quantity of a chemical substance determined by the Secretary to be potentially dangerous or that meets other risk-related criteria identified by the Department. As used herein, the term chemical facility or facility shall also refer to the owner or operator of the chemical facility. Where multiple owners and/or operators function within a common infrastructure or within a single fenced area, the Assistant Secretary may determine that such owners and/or operators constitute a single chemical facility or multiple chemical facilities depending on the circumstances."

The response from the US chemical community to the initial legislation was rather critical, but the revisions introduced in November appear to have addressed many of the concerns of both industry and academia. For example, certain routine chemicals of low toxicity, such as acetone or urea, have been removed from the list, since record-keeping for such common compounds was considered an excessive burden. However, some environmental groups believe the exemption quantities of certain substances, especially chlorine (set at 2500 lb), have been set too high.