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ASTM recently announced that it published a standard, E3275, that seeks to familiarize laboratory scientists with background information and technical content necessary to image and identify engineered nanomaterials in cellular and noncellular samples. According to ASTM, the standard is specific to the use of the darkfield microscopy/hyperspectral imaging analysis technique. ASTM states that in this technique, the resulting sample analysis allows for direct visualization and...

On August 25, 2021, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it issued a penalty against Seychelle Environmental Technologies, Inc. (Seychelle), based in Aliso Viejo, California, for violations of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). The violations, which EPA states that Seychelle has since corrected, involved the sale of unregistered antimicrobial products and the manufacture of products in an unregistered establishment. According to EPA, in 2017...

On August 17, 2021, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it is now accepting official Foreign Purchaser Acknowledgement Statements (FPAS) and FPAS annual summaries through the Central Data Exchange Pesticide Submission Portal (CDX PSP). EPA states this improved process allows for pesticide exporters to submit an FPAS electronically rather than physically mailing them, providing a key flexibility during the COVID-19 public health emergency. According...

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...

On August 18, 2021, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued several significant new use rules (SNUR) under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) for chemical substances that were the subject of premanufacture notices (PMN), including the chemical substance identified generically as multiwalled carbon nanotubes (PMN P-18-182). 86 Fed. Reg. 46133. The SNUR requires persons who intend to manufacture (defined by statute to include import) or process multiwalled carbon nanotubes...

On August 17, 2021, Representatives Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Diana DeGette (D-CO), Chair of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, and Paul Tonko (D-NY), Chair of the Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change, sent a letter to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael Regan to request information regarding “concerning reported irregularities” in EPA’s chemical review program. The Committee’s August...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) met with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) on August 5, 2021, to clarify concepts from the July 27, 2021, tiered data reporting (TDR) webinar. EPA’s meeting summary states that EDF representatives requested clarification on the following issues discussed during the webinar: Whether EPA intends to scale back the Chemical Data Reporting (CDR) requirements with respect to the amount of information collected per chemical or to the number...

On August 13, 2021, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it appointed two new members, Cheryl A. Murphy, Ph.D., Professor, Director of Center for PFAS Research, Michigan State University, and Veronica J. Berrocal, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Statistics, University of California, to serve on the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act Scientific Advisory Panel (FIFRA SAP). The Chair and one other existing member also were...

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) published a Scientific Opinion entitled “Safety assessment of the substance silver nanoparticles for use in food contact materials.” The EFSA Panel on Food Contact Materials, Enzymes and Processing Aids (CEP) assessed the safety of the additive silver nanoparticles intended to be used in plastics. All the silver particles were in the size range of 1-100 nanometers (nm), with about 15 nm mean diameter and 99% by number of particles below 20 nm. The...