On March 4, 2019, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report titled Chemical Assessments: Status of EPA’s Efforts to Produce Assessments and Implement the Toxic Substances Control Act. The report describes the extent to which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) Program has addressed identified challenges and made progress toward producing chemical assessments; and assesses whether EPA has demonstrated...
On February 14, 2019, the Senate approved S. 483 to reauthorize the Pesticide Registration Improvement Extension Act (PRIA 4). The Senate bill did not have the specific categories and timelines of earlier reauthorization language, referring instead to more general legislative language that the Senate approved during the Farm Bill authorization in 2018. Legislation in this new session of Congress was necessary since PRIA was not reauthorized as part of the appropriations language...
March 5, 2019
PHMSA Study Will Assess Aligning U.S. and International Regulations for Aerosol Containers
The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) routinely reviews and amends the Hazardous Materials Regulations (HMR) to harmonize the HMR with international regulations and standards. In February 2019, PHMSA’s Office of Hazardous Materials Safety (OHMS) contracted with the Cambridge Systematics (CS) Team to conduct a risk assessment for the transportation of aerosol containers to align U.S. and international regulations. ...
Lynn L. Bergeson, Managing Partner, and Jane S. Vergnes, Ph.D., DABT®, Director of Toxicology, presented “Overview of the Proposed Rule: Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science” during the “Data for Chemical Evaluations: Secret or Otherwise” session at The Society of Toxicology’s 58th Annual Meeting held this week in Baltimore, Maryland. For a copy of the presentation, please contact Lynn Bergeson. WEBINAR NEXT WEEK: On March 20, 2019, from 1:00 pm....
March 1, 2019
Inside EPA Quotes B&C’s Forecast 2019 in the Article “EPA submits TSCA CBI proposal for White House review”
On March 1, 2019, Inside EPA quoted Bergeson & Campbell, P.C.’s (B&C®) Forecast for U.S. Federal and International Chemical Regulatory Policy 2019 regarding ongoing lawsuits that could foreshadow future challenges to the CBI proposal. The law firm Bergeson & Campbell says in its “Forecast 2019” publication that environmentalists’ ongoing lawsuit on EPA’s “Inventory notification rule … may presage a challenge to the CBI review rule.” The...
By Lynn L. Bergeson On February 22, 2019, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a notice of a proposed partial consent decree in Sierra Club v. Pruitt. This notice is in response to a complaint filed by the Sierra Club in October 2017 to the District of Columbia Court. The complaint alleged that former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt “failed to perform a non-discretionary duty to assess and report to Congress on the environmental and...
March 1, 2019
Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2019, Signed Into Law
By Lynn L. Bergeson On February 15, 2019, U.S. President Donald Trump signed into law a bill originally introduced in early 2017 by Representative Nita Lowey (D-NY) titled the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2019 (2019 Appropriations Act). Of interest to stakeholders in the biobased sector is Section 428, which covers policies relating to biomass energy. In this section, responsibilities assigned to the U.S. Secretary of Energy, Secretary of Agriculture, and EPA Administrator are...
March 1, 2019
DOE BETO Announces Collaboration Opportunity
By Lynn L. Bergeson On February 26, 2019, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy’s (EERE) Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) announced the sponsorship of a new project to harness algae strains for bioenergy. Called Development of Integrated Screening, Cultivar Optimization and Verification Research (DISCOVR), the project is a multi-laboratory consortium including the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the Los Alamos National...
By Lynn L. Bergeson On February 14, 2019, scientists in China published an article revealing a new methodology developed to safely transform methanol into ethanol. Given methanol’s toxicity, this recently uncovered method allows for a more secure, user-friendly, sustainable technology that can be more broadly applied. The scientific article reports a photo-driven one-step conversion of methanol to ethanol at ambient temperature. A relatively simple process, the...
From June 11-13, 2019, the American Chemical Society (ACS) will be hosting their annual Green Chemistry and Engineering (GC&E) Conference and the International Conference on Green and Sustainable Chemistry in Reston, VA. BRAG will be proudly presenting an abstract titled: “The Role of Regulations in Circular Economy — Challenge of New Chemical Bias.” Under the “Entrepreneurs Driving the Circular Economy — Opportunities and Challenges”...