Blogs

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Inspector General (OIG) released on June 30, 2022, a report entitled “Additional Internal Controls Would Improve the EPA’s System for Electronic Disclosure of Environmental Violations.” OIG conducted the evaluation to determine whether EPA’s process for screening self-reported violations through its electronic disclosure, or eDisclosure, system is effective and ensures that significant concerns, such as criminal conduct and...

On July 7, 2020, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that EPA researchers are evaluating a number of commercially available products for potential long-lasting effectiveness against SARS-CoV-2, the novel human coronavirus that causes COVID-19.  This research is being conducted at EPA’s Office of Research and Development's Center for Environmental Solutions and Emergency Response in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, using surfaces that mimic the high...

This week's All Things Chemical™ Podcast will be of interest to readers of the Pesticide Law & Policy Blog®. A brief description of the episode written by Lynn L. Bergeson is below. This week I sat down with James Aidala, B&C’s Senior Government Affairs Consultant, to catch up on what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP) is up to and to get a sense of what we might expect to develop over the remainder of the year.  As a...

On August 19 and 20, 2020, the American National Standards Institute Nanotechnology Standards Panel (ANSI-NSP) will hold a virtual workshop on advanced materials.  ANSI states that advanced materials are of growing interest as there is increasing recognition that size alone does not define the unique properties of a material.  More and more, governments and organizations that originally focused on nanomaterials are now also focusing on advanced materials and emerging...

On June 24, 2020, Bergeson & Campbell, P.C. (B&C®), The Environmental Law Institute (ELI), and the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health presented “TSCA Reform -- Four Years Later.”  A full recording of the seminar, including a keynote address by Alexandra Dapolito Dunn, Assistant Administrator, Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and comments by the Hon. John Shimkus U.S....

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has published two nanotechnology standards: ISO 21363:2020, “Nanotechnologies — Measurements of particle size and shape distributions by transmission electron microscopy”: The standard specifies how to capture, measure, and analyze transmission electron microscopy images to obtain particle size and shape distributions in the nanoscale.  According to ISO, the standard is broadly applicable to nano-objects, as well as to particles...

On June 24, 2020, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a New Approach Methods (NAM) Work Plan that will “serve[] as a roadmap for meeting its animal testing reduction goals set forth in Administrator Andrew Wheeler’s 2019 Directive.”  According to EPA’s June 24, 2020, press release, the Work Plan describes how EPA plans to develop, test, and apply chemical safety testing approaches that reduce or replace the use of animals.  EPA states that...

On July 6, 2020, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it approved amended labels for two products, Lysol Disinfectant Spray (EPA Reg. No. 777-99) and Lysol Disinfectant Max Cover Mist (EPA Reg. No. 777-127), based on laboratory testing that shows the products are effective against SARS-CoV-2.  These are the first products for which EPA has reviewed laboratory testing data and approved label claims against SARS-CoV-2.  In January 2020, at the beginning of the...

The Nanodatabase has posted a June 1, 2020, press release announcing that it has added product number 4,000 in its database.  According to the press release, silver is still the nanomaterial most often reported, with titanium and titanium dioxide the second and third most common.  The press release notes that for almost 3,000 products, the type of nanomaterial is unknown, however.  The database includes categories for health and fitness (2,310 products, a little more...

In July 2020, the German Environment Agency (UBA) published a report entitled Advanced materials:  Overview of the field and screening criteria for relevance assessment.  The report describes activities within the project “Advanced materials — Thematic conferences:  Assessment of needs to act on chemical safety” to provide discussion input on approaches to describe, cluster, and prioritize advanced materials.  The aim of the report is to identify relevant advanced...