The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) are now assembling an ad hoc committee to identify emerging scientific and technological advances from across a broad range of disciplines that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Research and Development (ORD) should consider in its research planning to support EPA’s mission for protecting human health and the environment. In addition, according to NASEM, the committee will...
This week’s All Things Chemical™ Podcast will be of interest to readers of the TSCAblog™. A brief description of the episode written by Lynn L. Bergeson is below. 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...
On July 23, 2020, the European Union (EU) Observatory for Nanomaterials (EUON) published a Nanopinion entitled “Material manufacturing from nano-scaled particles: moving forward using plants” by Dr. Blaise Tardy, Research Fellow, Bio-Based Colloids and Materials Research Group — Aalto University in Finland. Dr. Tardy notes that bio-based nanomaterials such as nanocellulose “have shown great promise in forming high performance materials, with the potential to replace...
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is accepting public comments on the experts under consideration for membership on the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals (SACC). Biographies of the candidates are available in Docket ID EPA-HQ-OPPT-2020-0135. Comments are due August 21, 2020. EPA states that it will use public comments to assist it in selecting multiple members of SACC over the next year. EPA expects to appoint approximately 15...
The July 2020 issue of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Environmental Factor includes an item on a new database that facilitates nanomaterial research. According to the article, NIEHS grantees constructed PubVINAS, “a large database of structure, chemical property, and activity information on 705 nanomaterials, covering 11 material types.” The article states that the extensive data on each material “allows scientists...
On June 30, 2020, the Trump Administration released the Spring 2020 Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). According to the Unified Agenda, the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP) is working on several rulemakings under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Rulemakings at the proposed stage are listed below: Rulemakings at the final stage include:...
Chemical manufacturers and processors have just over four months to submit Chemical Data Reporting (CDR) data by the November 30, 2020, close of the reporting period. To assist companies in that process, Bergeson & Campbell, P.C. (B&C®) affiliate The Acta Group (Acta®) developed CDR Cross-Check™, an ingenious and cost-efficient tool to identify whether a company’s chemicals are subject to CDR reporting and if so, at what reporting threshold. CDR Cross-Check will identify:...
On May 9, 2020, the European Commission (EC) began a public consultation on a roadmap for “Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability.” The roadmap states that the regulatory framework on chemicals needs to be strengthened to increase further the level of protection of human health and the environment — in particular from exposure to endocrine disruptors; combinations of chemicals; hazardous chemicals in products, including in imports; and very persistent chemicals. The regulatory...
On July 16, 2020, a coalition of non-governmental organizations (NGO) filed a petition in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) final risk evaluation for methylene chloride. The NGOs seek review of EPA’s determination “that the chemical methylene chloride does not present an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment under certain conditions of use” and its decision not to consider “certain uses...