Articles

Throughout 2013, the issue of the contribution of pesticide use to the decline in honeybee colony health, known as colony collapse disorder (CCD), has been increasingly controversial. Of particular concern is the role that a particular class of pesticides, known as neonicotinoids, may play in CCD. While EPA generally maintains its view that pesticides, including the neonicotinoids, are one of many factors in contributing to CCD, in July 2013, it took steps to control more stringently the foliar...

On September 20, 2013, the National Toxicology Program (NTP) published a Federal Register notice requesting information on 20 substances, mixtures, and exposure circumstances, including nickel nanoparticles, nominated for possible review for future editions of the Report on Carcinogens (RoC).

On August 23, 2013, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) released changes to the near final Safer Consumer Products Regulations (SCPR). These game-changing regulations took effect October 1, 2013. This column broadly outlines the rule and summarizes the changes.

Despite 40 years of policy tinkering and lawsuits, there is still major disagreement over the scope of the Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction today. A series of conflicting lower court decisions led the Supreme Court to twice address the definition of “waters of the U.S.” (WOTUS) with respect to wetlands policy. In 2011 the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers decided to incorporate all of the Justices’ opinions in sweeping, new draft guidance that would greatly increase the number and...

On June 14, 2013, the EPA proposed revisions to the Renewable Fuel Standard. The amendments seek to clear up some fuel classifications to ease the burden on the industry. The proposal would allow use of biogas from landfills to meet the obligations imposed on refiners and importers to utilize renewable feedstocks in transportation fuels; also, it clarifies the renewable biofuels that can be categorized as cellulosic biofuels. This article discusses the revisions.

On August 27, 2013, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced its proposed decision to register "Nanosilva," a nanosilver-containing antimicrobial pesticide product.

As one of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy’s first official acts, on July 23, 2013, the Administrator signed a final rule easing the requirements under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) for solvent-contaminated rags and wipes. The rule has been long in the making and much anticipated.

This article presents the results of a January 2013 workshop convened at the California NanoSystems Institute of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and hosted by the University of California Center for the Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology, as well as the UCLA Center for Nanobiology and Predictive Toxicology. Using carbon nanotubes as a case study, national and international leaders from government, industry, and academia discussed the utility of alternative test...

On August 7, 2013, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) promulgated significant new use rules (SNUR) through a direct final rule for 53 chemical substances that were the subject of premanufacture notices (PMN), including two PMN substances whose reported chemical names include the term "carbon nanotube" (CNT).

While regulators are generally supportive of new chemistries that can replace older, petroleum-based ones, biobased chemicals are subject to the same Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) that governs every other chemical substance in the United States. Surprisingly, biobased chemicals that are considered to be “new chemicals” may actually receive more scrutiny under this law than established chemicals do. The following article provides practical information about the TSCA provisions that are...