President Obama won a decisive victory on November 6, 2012, and the forecast for the next four years is clearer now than it was pre-election. This Washington Watch column offers some preliminary observations on what lies ahead for domestic environmental management issues at the legislative and regulatory levels.

On February 21, 2013, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a landmark decision in Dow Agrosciences v. National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). It set aside a Biological Opinion (BiOp) prepared by the NMFS that found use of pesticides chlorpyrifos, diazinon, and malathion could jeopardize certain species of salmon and their habitat. The decision will have significant implications for the government and pesticide registrants alike. Here’s why.

The European Union in recent years has promulgated new regulations to set forth the procedures by which pesticides (called biocides and plant protectants in the EU) are registered and how companies can address issues related to the citation and compensation of data submitted that support those pesticide registrations. Canada also recently issued regulations setting forth new requirements on how data used to support a pesticide registration are protected. This article provides a broad overview of these regulations, the new procedures by which biocides and plant protectants will be registered in the EU, and the new ways that data citation and compensation will be addressed in the EU and Canada.

NRDC challenges EPA’s FIFRA registration of nanosilver.

In August 2010, EPA announced that it was considering allowing the Swiss company HeiQ Materials Ag to enter the U.S. market with a new nanosilver pesticide and textile preservative, HeiQ AGS-20. On Dec. 1, 2011, the EPA issued a conditional registration for a pesticide product.

On January 26, 2012, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for approving a pesticide product containing nanosilver under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). This article summarizes the lawsuit, explains what’s at stake, and discusses the lawsuit’s implications.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced on December 1, 2011, that it granted a conditional registration for a pesticide product containing nanosilver as a new active ingredient. This is a momentous regulatory decision and very good news for supporters of nanopesticides.

The European Union's REACH regulation is a complex chemical management regulation intended to replace approximately 40 previously existing legal instruments with a single EU regulatory scheme for all chemical substances (both new and existing substances). It also creates a data compensation scheme for entities that must rely upon studies another entity generated to complete their registration for a particular chemical substance. This article provides background on REACH registration, data compensation and sharing procedures, and compares REACH's data compensation principles with how similar issues are addressed in the context of FIFRA data compensation arbitrations.

Last issue’s installment of the “Washington Watch” column discussed some key issues surrounding nanosilver and noted an ongoing review by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP). Now that the SAP has issued its much-anticipated report and recommendations, it is worth revisiting the topic of nanosilver pesticides.