All Things Chemical® Podcast

This week I sat down with Congressman John M. Shimkus, a Member of the United States House of Representatives for the 15th District of Illinois.  As listeners of the podcast know well, Congressman Shimkus is a senior Member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.  In this capacity, Congressman Shimkus has become a rock star in the industrial chemical community, given his tireless efforts to modernize the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) , which of course resulted...

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 former Assistant Administrator of what is now the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, Jim’s thoughts and analyses are always spot on. We...

This week I sat down with EPA Assistant Administrator Alexandra Dunn.  As many of our listeners know, Alex Dunn heads the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention and is responsible for implementing the nation’s industrial and agricultural chemical laws, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), respectively. Alex has an extensive background in the environmental field and is a leading voice on TSCA and...

As we are now into June, Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) aficionados will be quick to note that “new TSCA” is now almost four years old.  Passage in June 2016 of the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act occasioned EPA’s implementation of a law that has transformed industrial chemical regulation in the United States.  This week, to mark Lautenberg’s fourth birthday, I sat down with Dr. Richard E. Engler, B&C’s Director of...

Download transcript. This week, as employees around the country are returning to their offices and work stations, I was excited to visit with Larry Sloan, CEO of the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA), located here in the Washington, D.C., area. AIHA may not be a well-known organization to many of our listeners, but that could be about to change.  Founded in 1939, AIHA is a non-profit organization serving professionals dedicated to the identification, evaluation, control,...

The question posed by this podcast may sound easy, but it is anything but. This podcast explores the fascinating yet commercially vexing jurisdictional divide between and among biostimulants, biopesticides, and fertilizers as each of these agricultural chemical products is vital to the agricultural community.  According to a recent U.S. Department of Agriculture report, the plant biostimulant industry alone is expected to be at least a $2.2 billion global market, swelling to $5 billion in...

This week, I was thrilled to sit down with Richard Keigwin, Director of the Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP) at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) here in Washington, D.C.  As OPP Director, Rick leads the EPA office that reviews and approves pesticide products used to combat the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.  Historically, OPP has consistently been one of the busiest offices in EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention...

This week, I sat down with Eric Byer, President and CEO of the National Association of Chemical Distributors (NACD). Eric, like many of us these days, is working hard and under extraordinary circumstances ensuring that his member companies are able to continue to distribute much needed chemical products, including sanitizers and other cleaning products, in response to the pandemic.  Our conversation focused on these uniquely “in the moment” issues and a broad range of federal,...

This week, I sat down with Lisa Campbell, my business partner of many years and one of the nation’s foremost legal experts on the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). Given Lisa’s expertise, we engaged in a very timely discussion about the approval by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of products under FIFRA to combat COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.  EPA has been deluged with applications to approve new products and/or new...

This week, I sat down with my colleague Karin Baron, a senior regulatory consultant here at B&C. In this conversation, Karin talks about recent European Union enforcement initiatives that have to do with the CLP legislation: Classification, Labeling, and Packaging legislation. Karin begins by telling us about the current state of harmonization along the lines of the GHS model, and how this might be more an aspiration than a reality. Then we talk about the...