Regulatory Agenda Includes Nanoscale Materials Stewardship Program

On April 30, 2007, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published in the Federal Register its latest Semiannual Regulatory Agenda, which serves to update the public on regulations and major policies currently under development by EPA.  One of the entries in the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA ) portion of the agenda is entitled “Nanoscale Materials Under TSCA” and addresses the forthcoming Nanoscale Materials Stewardship Program (NMSP), the design of which EPA publicly announced in October 2006.  The agenda entry estimates that drafts of various documents — “a document that describes the specific elements of the voluntary [NMSP],” “an updated document that describes the approach to nanoscale materials under TSCA and a paper that describes determining the inventory status of nanoscale materials” — will be made available sometime this month.  While we recognize that the Regulatory Agenda is often quite inaccurate in terms of forecasting, we did not want this brief update to go overlooked.  The NMSP documents are currently undergoing inter-agency review.