On November 6, 2015, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it has a new webpage that compiles information about secondary containers and service containers for pesticides. Secondary and service containers are containers that are used by the pesticide industry as part of the process of applying pesticides, not for further sale or distribution. EPA states that the website combines and replaces information previously found on the Labeling Questions and...
November 6, 2015
OECD Tour de Table Documents Cover Developments in 2014 and 2015
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has posted two Tour de Table documents. The documents, dated October 26, 2015, cover activities from January to July 2014 and before September 2015: Current Developments in Delegations on the Safety of Manufactured Nanomaterials — Tour de Table: The document compiles information, provided by delegations, including the European Commission (EC), together with non-member economies, on current developments on the...
On November 3-5, 2015, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Technical Working Group (TWG) on Pesticides, established in 1997 to streamline certain pesticide shipments between Canada (CN), Mexico (MX), and the United States (U.S.), held a meeting hosted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Durham, North Carolina. NAFTA TWG states that its primary objective “is to develop relevant and cost-effective pesticide regulation and trade among the three countries and meet...
In a November 2, 2015, Federal Register notice, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued the final rule revising the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) Worker Protection Standard (WPS). EPA previously announced these revisions on September 28, 2015, and stated that it would issue the final rule in the Federal Register within 60 days. The following are important dates: January 4, 2016: The date when the final...
November 2, 2015
JRC Publishes Part Three of Its Review of EC’s Recommendation for a Definition of the Term Nanomaterial
The Joint Research Center (JRC) published on October 19, 2015, a report entitled Towards a review of the EC Recommendation for a definition of the term “nanomaterial”: Part 3: Scientific-technical evaluation of options to clarify the definition and to facilitate its implementation. The report provides JRC’s scientific-technical evaluation of options to clarify the European Commission’s (EC) 2011 Recommendation on a definition of nanomaterial. In 2013, JRC started to develop a...
On October 30, 2015, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it is requesting comments on a proposal to revoke all tolerances for the insecticide chlorpyrifos. EPA issued this proposal in response to an August 10, 2015, writ of mandamus by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The court granted this unusual relief in response to a 2007 administrative petition to cancel chlorpyrifos registrations or to revoke chlorpyrifos tolerances by the...
October 30, 2015
Nanotechnology Startup Challenge for Cancer Will Bring Nanotechnology Inventions to Market
On October 29, 2015, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) published a blog item concerning the Nanotechnology Startup Challenge for Cancer (NSC2), “an open-innovation competition designed by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the non-profit Center for Advancing Innovation (CAI) to bring promising cancer nanotechnology inventions to market.” According to OSTP, the competition “creatively combines some of the most powerful tools in the...
October 29, 2015
Environmental Groups File Opening Briefs Challenging EPA’s Decision to Register Enlist Duo
On October 23, 2015, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and other environmental groups including the Center for Food Safety (CFS, et al.) (together, Petitioners) filed separate opening briefs in Case Nos. 14-73353 and 14-73359 (consolidated) arguing that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) decision to register Dow AgroScience’s Enlist Duo herbicide (a combination of glyphosate and 2,4,-D) for use on Enlist corn...
October 28, 2015
EPA’s OCSPP Agrees to More Communication, Transparency, and Efficiency When Processing Pesticide Petitions
On October 27, 2015, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a report on an evaluation conducted by OIG entitled “EPA Needs Policies and Procedures to Manage Public Pesticide Petitions in a Transparent and Efficient Manner” (OIG Report). OIG evaluated how EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP) tracks the receipt, disposition and resolution of public petitions, focusing on OCSPP’s Office of Pesticide...
October 26, 2015
NanoValid Publishes “Nano to go!”
In September 2015, “Nano to go!” was published. “Nano to go!” is “a practically oriented guidance on safe handling of nanomaterials and other innovative materials at the workplace.” The German Federal Institute for Occupational Health (BAuA) developed it within the NanoValid project. “Nano to go!” includes the following materials: A brochure, Safe handling of nanomaterials and other advanced materials at workplaces, that supports risk assessment and risk...