All Things Chemical® Podcast

Bergeson & Campbell, P.C.’s (B&C®) All Things Chemical® podcast is celebrating three years of great conversations by offering listeners a chance to win audio-technica headphones, a wireless charging pad from Anker, books authored by us, and regulatory training courses. Help us celebrate this milestone by sending your dream guest or topic choices to podcast@lawbc.com, with the subject line “All Things Chemical,” and we may use them for future episodes! Submit your...

Download Transcript This week I sat down with my new colleague, Dennis R. Deziel, B&C’s and our consulting affiliate’s, The Acta Group, Senior Government Affairs Advisor, to discuss Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) reform. Dennis served as Director of Federal Government Affairs for the Dow Chemical Company when the TSCA amendments were considered and eventually enacted by Congress in 2016. After leaving Dow, Dennis served as EPA Region 1 Administrator (New England). I thought it...

Download Transcript This week I sat down with Dr. Richard E. Engler, B&C’s and The Acta Group’s (our consulting affiliate) Director of Chemistry, to discuss the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) continuing struggle to regulate certain persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic (PBT) chemicals, especially those found in finished products, what EPA refers to as “articles.” The Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) has always applied to the products, or articles, that...

Download transcript This week, I sat down with Daniel Rosenberg, Director, Federal Toxics Policy, Healthy People & Thriving Communities Program, at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Daniel’s distinguished legal career has placed him at the forefront of the evolving law and policy of domestic chemical regulation. Daniel and I discuss new Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) implementation of the 2016 amendments to TSCA...

Download transcript This week I sat down with Karin F. Baron, Senior Regulatory Consultant at B&C and our consulting affiliate, The Acta Group. Karin works extensively with the European Union’s (EU) Registration, Evaluation, Authorization, and Restriction of Chemicals, better known as REACH, which is the EU counterpart to the U.S. Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). We discuss REACH Article 41 “compliance checks,” an innocuous-sounding component of REACH that has the potential to...

Download transcript This week I sat down with Carla N. Hutton, Regulatory Analyst at B&C. Carla is also co-editor of the Nano Blog that B&C has prepared for years. Carla is uniquely well suited to discuss a report the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) recently issued on developing occupational exposure limits or “bands” for engineered nanomaterials. There are thousands of chemicals in use in the workplace, but far fewer government-issued,...

Download Transcript This week I sat down with Karin F. Baron, Senior Regulatory Consultant at B&C and our consulting affiliate, The Acta Group. We tackle the daunting topic of combustible dust, a common workplace hazard that is more pervasive perhaps than people think. Combustible dust poses an explosion hazard in a wide variety of industries, including food, plastic, wood, and textiles, among many others. Karin helps us understand what combustible dust includes and then walks us...

Download transcript This week I sat down with Dr. Richard E. Engler, B&C’s and The Acta Group’s (our consulting affiliate) Director of Chemistry, to discuss a very new component on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) PFAS Action Plan. The plan represents EPA’s “all of agency” approach to address the risks posed by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) that can accumulate in humans and remain in the body for long periods. PFAS have been widely used in many...

Download transcript This week, I sat down with Bruce Jarnot, Ph.D., DABT®, Senior Manager, Product Compliance, at Assent Compliance. Bruce is a board-certified industrial toxicologist with much experience assisting businesses with chemical product compliance. I have known Bruce for years, but over the past several months, Bruce and I have spoken often about the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) implementation of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and certain new rules that...

Download Transcript This week, I sat down with Meglena Mihova, Managing Partner, EPPA, the Brussels-based premier consultancy on matters involving key business sectors, including chemicals and chemical regulation. Meglena is expert on all matters involving the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) and the complex relationships between and among ECHA, European Union (EU) member states, the European Commission, and other stakeholders. Meglena chairs the Environment Committee of the American...

Download transcript. This week, I sat down with Heather J. Blankinship, Senior Manager with B&C® Consortia Management (BCCM), a Bergeson & Campbell (B&C®) affiliate, and Richard E. Engler, Ph.D., B&C’s Director of Chemistry, to discuss chemical testing under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Since Congress amended TSCA in 2016, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been slowly ratcheting up required chemical testing under TSCA Section 4. Congress gave...

Download transcript. This week, I sat down with Brenna Finn, Assistant Attorney General, Colorado Department of Law.  I am proud to report that Brenna was a law intern here at the firm years ago, as Brenna began her legal career, and pleased to report that her experience with the firm focused her career, in part, on chemical regulation.  Brenna’s substantive skills in Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) and Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) regulation have...

Download transcript. This week, I sat down with Scott J. Burya, Ph.D., a regulatory chemist with B&C and our affiliated consulting firm, The Acta Group.  Scott works extensively in the food contact area and other areas involving Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA) regulatory matters.  We discuss how U.S. regulatory professionals working in the all-important food contact space can leverage a European Union (EU) measure applicable to plastic food contact materials and...

Download Transcript. This week, I sat down with Daniella Taveau, a Regulatory and Global Trade Strategist and the founder of Bold Text Strategies.  As a former International Trade Negotiator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Daniella represented the United States in all U.S. Free Trade Agreements and before the World Trade Organization, the United Nations (U.N.) Food and Agriculture Organization, and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation.  Daniella also served as an...

Download transcript. This week I sat down with Karin Baron, Senior Regulatory Consultant to B&C and our affiliated consultancy, The Acta Group, to discuss the European Union’s (EU) Commission Regulation issued last June relating to the completion of safety data sheets (SDS).  As listeners know, SDSs are critically important commercial documents that describe the hazards identified with a particular chemical product or mixture as it makes  its way in commerce.  While...

This week, I sat down with Dr. Jane Vergnes, Director of Toxicology and Vice President, Scientific Affairs, here at B&C and its consulting affiliate, The Acta Group (Acta®), and Dr. Richard Engler, Director of Chemistry, at B&C and Acta.  We discussed the provocative question “is everything carcinogenic?”  In asking this question, Jane and Rich discuss the marketing and labeling implications of a cancer classification for a chemical substance found as an...

This week I sat down with Karin Baron, Senior Regulatory Consultant to B&C and our affiliated consultancy, The Acta Group, to discuss the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals (GHS).  Listeners know GHS is the non-mandatory framework intended to aid in identifying, classifying, and communicating information on the hazards of chemicals or substances for occupational, consumer, and environmental exposures.  Despite the “harmonization” part in...

This week, I sat down with Jim Aidala, Senior Government Affairs Consultant, and Dr. Richard Engler, Director of Chemistry, at B&C and its consulting affiliate, The Acta Group.  As both of these gentlemen previously worked at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, Jim as former Assistant Administrator of that office and Rich as a senior chemist and head of the Green Chemistry Division, each has a keen sense of how EPA...

A change in Administration invites a sense of both excitement and anxiety.  Nowhere is this ambivalence more present that in the minds of regulated entities subject to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).  After four years of the Trump Administration’s implementation of the many TSCA amendments occasioned by Lautenberg, regulated entities and other stakeholders have come to understand the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) interpretation of revised TSCA.  Not...

Download transcript This week I had my final visit with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Assistant Administrator Alexandra Dunn.  As many of our listeners know, Alex Dunn lead the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention and was 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...