Blogs

On August 3, 2023, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), the General Services Administration (GSA), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) proposed to amend the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) to restructure and update the regulations to focus on current environmental and sustainability matters and to implement a requirement for agencies to procure sustainable products and services to the maximum extent practicable. 88 Fed. Reg. 51672. Comments are...

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) will host a “first-ever Summit on the future of farm subsidies featuring key experts, including leaders from the Heritage Foundation and other conservative voices” on September 5, 2023. According to EWG, the Summit will also feature experts from other organizations, including farm groups, and will feature a panel of congressional staff who work for leading subsidy reform advocates in Congress. EWG notes that the Future of Farm Subsidies Summit...

Maxence Pira, Unsplash By Lynn L. Bergeson & Carla N. Hutton on August 30, 2023 POSTED IN FEDERAL, RESEARCH, UNITED STATES The CHIPS Research and Development Office’s Standards Summit will be held as an in-person and virtual event on September 26 and 27, 2023, from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. (EDT). Co-hosted by a number of organizations, including the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office (NNCO), the event will bring together CHIPS...

On August 3, 2023, the Joint Subcommittee on Environment, Innovation, and Public Health Sustainable Chemistry Strategy Team (Sustainable Chemistry ST) of the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) published a report entitled Sustainable Chemistry Report: Framing the Federal Landscape. As reported in our January 19, 2021, memorandum, the fiscal year (FY) 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) included the text of the bipartisan Sustainable Chemistry Research and...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced on August 16, 2023, the availability of the latest Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Chemical Substance Inventory. EPA notes that this update to the public TSCA Inventory is part of its biannual posting of non-confidential Inventory data. According to EPA, the Inventory contains 86,718 chemicals, of which 42,242 are active in U.S commerce. Other updates to the TSCA Inventory include updates to commercial activity data, unique...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will hold a two-day training on its high throughput toxicokinetic (HTTK) R package as part of its New Approach Methods (NAM) Training Program: Day 1: Presentation and demo: Wednesday, November 8, 2023, 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. (EST); and Day 2: Expert-led hands-on learning activity: Thursday, November 9, 2023, 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. (EST). According to EPA, toxicokinetics (TK) provides a bridge between toxicity and exposure assessment by...

On August 15, 2023, the European Union (EU) Observatory for Nanomaterials (EUON) published a Nanopinion entitled “Nanocrystals Coating by Friction. A New Approach for Advanced Materials” by Dr. Bentejui Medina-Clavijo, Senior Fellow at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), and Professor Andrey Chuvilin, head of the Electron Microscopy Laboratory at nanoGUNE. According to the authors, it has been found that friction “can dramatically change the surface properties of a...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will hold a two-day training on its high throughput toxicokinetic (HTTK) R package as part of its New Approach Methods (NAM) Training Program: Day 1: Presentation and demo: Wednesday, November 8, 2023, 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. (EST); and Day 2: Expert-led hands-on learning activity: Thursday, November 9, 2023, 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. (EST). According to EPA, toxicokinetics (TK) provides a bridge between toxicity and exposure assessment by...

On August 22, 2023, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published ChemExpo, a free, publicly available search and visualization tool for exploring chemical use data relevant to exposure assessment that has been curated from public documents. According to EPA, the interactive web application focuses on data collected by EPA about how chemicals are used in commerce and how they occur in consumer and industrial products. EPA notes that under the Toxic Substances Control Act...

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) published an updated report on August 4, 2023, on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Sustainable, Ecological, Consistent, Uniform, Responsible, Efficient (SECURE) rule. The revisions note that USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s (APHIS) five-year Strategic Plan for fiscal years (FY) 2023-2027 states that “one of its objectives is to ensure the safe development of agricultural biotechnology products using a...