no, there is not a way to trigger the email when the confrim page submits, because the confirm page submits to the paypal server.
maybe a better option would be to concatenate the Description column to the name that is passed to paypal. for exmple, the code on the confim page that passes the name will look something like this:
<input type="hidden" name="item_name_<?php echo $WA_Store_Cart_Index+1; ?>" id="item_name_<?php echo $WA_Store_Cart_Index+1; ?>" value="<?php echo $WA_Store_Cart->DisplayInfo("Name") ?>" />
you could add the description column to it as long as name + description is less than 127 characters:
<input type="hidden" name="item_name_<?php echo $WA_Store_Cart_Index+1; ?>" id="item_name_<?php echo $WA_Store_Cart_Index+1; ?>" value="<?php echo $WA_Store_Cart->DisplayInfo("Name") ?> <?php echo $WA_Store_Cart->DisplayInfo("Description") ?>" />
PayPal standard in eCart 6 works the same as in eCart 5, it's not a limitation to eCart, it's the way the PayPal standard gateway works.