All Knowledge & Insights By Date

On November 20, 2012, Lux Research Inc. released a report entitled Bridging the Divide between Demands and Bio-Based Materials, in which the properties and commercial attractiveness of 38 applications and 21 conventional and bio-based polymers were assessed on 13 criteria, with three demand areas promising opportunity, according to Lux. Lux states that materials that fail to connect with end-user demands never reach the commercialization stage. Lux recommends that developers target large,...

The American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on November 21, 2012, for review of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) 2013 biomass-based diesel renewable fuel requirements. Under EPA’s September 27, 2012, final rule, EPA increased the volume of biomass-based diesel from 1.0 billion to 1.28 billion gallons for calendar year 2013. According to AFPM, a number of factors...

The presentations from the August 14-16, 2012, “Safe Nano Design: Molecule » Manufacturing » Market” workshop are now available. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Prevention through Design Program and Nanotechnology Research Center held the workshop, during which participants provided input into the safe commercialization of nano products resulting in the development of guidelines for the safe synthesis of nanoparticles and associated products, using a...

Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) announced on November 12, 2012, the creation of a website intended to serve as a resource for understanding new chemical testing approaches. These approaches are typically less costly and time-consuming than animal-based tests. EDF notes that while the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has invested resources to create research programs to advance new types of chemical testing and assessment approaches, questions for users...

On November 7, 2012, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Nanotechnology Research Center (NTRC) posted a document entitled Filling the Knowledge Gaps for Safe Nanotechnology in the Workplace: A Progress Report from the NIOSH Nanotechnology Research Center, 2004–2011. NIOSH established NTRC in 2004 to address occupational safety and health concerns associated with nanotechnology. The progress report summarizes program accomplishments from the inception of NTRC...

On October 24, 2012, the National Academies released a report entitled Sustainable Development of Algal Biofuels, which was produced at the request of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). According to the report, biofuels made from algae could provide a domestic source of renewable fuel, but with current technologies, increasing production of algal biofuels to meet five percent of U.S. transportation fuel needs could “create unsustainable demands for energy, water, and nutrient...

On October 5, 2012, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) promulgated a final significant new use rule (SNUR) for potassium titanium oxide, which was previously the subject of a consent order under Section 5(e) of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). EPA states that, based on test data on the premanufacture notice (PMN) substance and structure activity relationship analysis of test data on analogous respirable, poorly soluble particulates (subcategory titanium dioxide), EPA...

The Canada-U.S. Regulatory Cooperation Council (RCC) will hold a webinar on November 28, 2012, on its RCC Nanotechnology Work Plan. Canada and the U.S. created the RCC to align better their regulatory approaches in a number of areas, including nanotechnology. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the purpose of the RCC’s nanotechnology initiative is to increase, where possible, regulatory transparency and coordination between the U.S. and...

Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture, spoke at the 2012 GreenGov Symposium on September 25, 2012. According to Vilsack, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is working to support the manufacturing industry by increasing the number of biobased products approved for federal purchase. Currently, there are approximately 9,300 BioPreferred products, and USDA intends to make 18,000 BioPreferred products available. Under Executive Order 13,514, federal agencies are required to ensure...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published a September 20, 2012, Federal Register notice seeking comment on a proposed National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) exposure assessment and epidemiological study of U.S. workers exposed to carbon nanotubes (CNT) and carbon nanofibers (CNF). The notice states that the proposed research is a cross-sectional study of the current U.S. workforce involved with CNT and CNF in manufacturing and distribution, to be...

In a September 13, 2012, Federal Register notice, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) announced that the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office (NNCO) will hold a webinar on September 20, 2012, to provide an open forum to answer questions and hear suggestions related to the National Nanotechnology Initiative’s (NNI) public website, which was redesigned in April 2011. According to the notice, NNCO is seeking public comment and recommendations on...

On September 5, 2012, the National Research Council (NRC) released a pre-publication version of a report entitled Science for Environmental Protection:  The Road Ahead. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) asked NRC to assess EPA’s overall capabilities “to develop, obtain, and use the best available scientific and technologic information and tools to meet persistent, emerging, and future mission challenges and opportunities.” The report discusses nanotechnology as an example...

On August 1, 2012, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) posted a final report entitled Nanomaterial Case Study: Nanoscale Silver in Disinfectant Spray, which EPA states “is intended to be used as part of a process to identify what is known and, more importantly, what is not yet known that could be of value in assessing the broad implications of certain nanomaterials.” According to EPA, “[t]he complex properties of various nanomaterials make evaluating them in the...

On July 25, 2012, the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works approved Senator Frank Lautenberg’s (D-NJ) amended Safe Chemicals Act of 2011 (S. 847) in a 10-8 partisan vote. While the bill does not explicitly mention nano, potentially relevant provisions remain in the amended text. These include the bill granting the Administrator the ability to determine that a variant of a chemical substance that exhibits one or more special substance characteristics either “is a use that...

On July 9, 2012, President Barack Obama signed the Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act (P.L. 112-144). The Act authorizes the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to collect user fees from industry to fund reviews of innovator drugs, medical devices, generic drugs, and biosimilar biologics. It also includes a section concerning nanotechnology, directing the Secretary of Health and Human Services to “intensify and expand activities related to enhancing scientific...

According to a July 10, 2012, memorandum added to the registration review docket for nanosilver, the Federal Register notice announcing the opening of the docket erroneously listed the comment period end date as August 19, 2012. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) memorandum states that the comment period has been extended to September 10, 2012, “to allow for a full 60-day comment period [that] is standard for registration review docket openings.”...

The July 3, 2012, edition of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) eNews includes a nanotechnology update, which states that the critical question to address is whether nanomaterials pose health or safety risks to workers employed in their manufacture and industrial use. The update includes the following “notable recent findings and areas of research”:...

On July 6, 2012, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the establishment of a registration review docket for nanosilver. EPA states that registration review is its “periodic review of pesticide registrations to ensure that each pesticide continues to satisfy the statutory standard for registration, that is, the pesticide can perform its intended function without unreasonable adverse effects on human health or the environment.” Registration review dockets...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced on July 2, 2012, the availability of an external review draft document entitled Nanomaterial Case Study: A Comparison of Multiwalled Carbon Nanotube and Decabromodiphenyl Ether Flame-Retardant Coatings Applied to Upholstery Textiles (EPA/600/R-12/043A). EPA states that the draft document “does not draw conclusions regarding potential environmental risks or hazards of multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT); rather, it aims to identify...

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Prevention through Design Program and Nanotechnology Research Center will hold an August 14-16, 2012, workshop entitled “Safe Nano Design: Molecule » Manufacturing » Market.” NIOSH states that participants will provide input into the safe commercialization of nano products resulting in the development of guidelines for the safe synthesis of nanoparticles and associated products, using a Prevention-through-Design approach....

On April 16, 2012, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) filed its brief in its lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) concerning EPA’s conditional registration for HeiQ AGS-20, an end-use product containing nanosilver. NRDC filed suit on January 26, 2012, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (California) against EPA, seeking to limit public exposure to the nanosilver’s use in clothing, baby blankets, and other textiles and prevent EPA...

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has posted a document entitled General Safe Practices for Working with Engineered Nanomaterials in Research Laboratories, which contains recommendations on engineering controls and safe practices for handling engineered nanomaterials in laboratories and some pilot scale operations. According to NIOSH, it designed the guidance “to be used in tandem with well-established practices and the laboratory’s chemical hygiene...

The Federal Advisory Council on Occupational Safety and Health (FACOSH) met on May 3, 2012, during which it discussed the use of occupational exposure levels (OEL) by the federal government. Because the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) permissible exposure limits (PEL) have remained unchanged since their adoption on May 29, 1971, and do not account for advances in technology or the latest data, FACOSH asked its Emerging Issues Subcommittee to analyze federal...

The U.S. delegation to the July 4-6, 2012, meeting of the United Nations (UN) Subcommittee of Experts on the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals (GHS) is considering presenting an information paper on how to classify nanomaterials under the GHS. According to Kathy Landkrohn, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Directorate of Standards and Guidance, the paper would be presented under a work group examining the types of physical and chemical...

On May 14, 2012, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Commerce announced efforts to launch an environmental technology initiative intended to help create American jobs in the growing environmental industry. EPA released a document entitled Technology Innovation for Environmental and Economic Progress: An EPA Roadmap, which states that EPA “will undertake policy, regulatory, financial, and voluntary actions, grounded in science, that will promote...

On May 14, 2012, the agencies participating in the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) announced the fourth Nanotechnology Signature Initiative, “Nanotechnology Knowledge Infrastructure:  Enabling National Leadership in Sustainable Design” (NKI). According to a press release issued by the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office (NNCO), this signature initiative will stimulate the development of models, simulation tools, and databases to enable the prediction of specific...

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) published an April 13, 2012, document entitled Nanotechnology: A Policy Primer that provides an overview of federal research and development (R&D) in nanotechnology, U.S. competitiveness, environmental, health, and safety (EHS) concerns, nanomanufacturing, and public understanding of and attitudes toward nanotechnology. CRS states that, since the launch of the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) in 2000 through fiscal year...

Representatives Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ) and Brian Bilbray (R-CA) introduced on April 26, 2012, the Qualifying Renewable Chemical Production Tax Credit Act of 2012 (H.R. 4953), which would amend the Internal Revenue Code to provide a credit for the production of renewable chemicals. The credit would be equal to $0.15 per pound of eligible content of renewable chemical produced during the taxable year. Eligible content would mean the biobased content percentage of the total mass of organic...

On April 27, 2012, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) released the Report to the President and Congress on the Fourth Assessment of the National Nanotechnology Initiative, which is a Congressionally mandated biennial review of the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI). PCAST found that the NNI, which has provided $16 billion to date in investments by 26 federal agencies, “has had a ‘catalytic and substantial impact’ on the growth of the...

On April 26, 2012, the Obama Administration released its National Bioeconomy Blueprint, which is intended to provide a comprehensive approach to harnessing innovations in biological research to address national challenges in health, food, energy, and the environment. In coordination with the release of the National Bioeconomy Blueprint, the Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and the Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced...

On April 18, 2012, the United States Department of Defense (DoD), General Services Administration (GSA), and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) promulgated a final rule amending the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) to implement changes due to the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act that require contractors to report the biobased products purchased under service and construction contracts.  According to the Federal Register notice, the reporting will enable agencies to...

On April 20, 2012, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced the availability of two draft guidance documents addressing the use of nanotechnology, “Guidance for Industry: Assessing the Effects of Significant Manufacturing Process Changes, including Emerging Technologies, on the Safety and Regulatory Status of Food Ingredients and Food Contact Substances, Including Food Ingredients that are Color Additives,” and “Guidance for Industry: Safety of Nanomaterials in...

In an April 4, 2012, final rule, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) amended the Guidelines for Designating Biobased Products for Federal Procurement to add 13 sections to designate product categories within which biobased products will be afforded federal procurement preference. USDA also established minimum biobased contents for each of these product categories. The 13 categories are: air fresheners and deodorizers; asphalt and tar removers; asphalt restorers; blast media; candles and...

Bergeson & Campbell, P.C. (B&C) and The Acta Group, L.L.C. (Acta) will hold a complimentary webinar on April 18, 2012, from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. (EDT) on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) final rule revising the OSHA Hazard Communication Standard (HCS) issued on March 26, 2012. The final rule aligns the HCS with the United Nations’ Globally Harmonized System for Chemical Classification and Labeling (GHS). OSHA estimates the rule is expected to...

On April 4, 2012, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) promulgated, through a direct final rule, significant new use rules (SNUR) for 17 chemical substances that were the subject of premanufacture notices (PMN). This includes a SNUR for “infused carbon nanostructures (generic).” According to EPA, the PMN states that the generic (non-confidential) use of the substance is as an additive to provide conductive properties to reinforcements used in composites. EPA states that, based...

On May 9-11, 2012, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and Germany’s Federal Ministry of Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) will hold a workshop entitled “Safe Management of Nanowaste.” According to the draft agenda, the objectives of the workshop are to get a better understanding of the potential risks posed by nanowaste and waste containing nanomaterials; to exchange information about existing initiatives/approaches addressing...

On March 20, 2012, the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office (NNCO) announced the appointment of Dr. Robert Pohanka as the Director of the NNCO. The NNCO provides technical and administrative support to the Nanoscale Science, Engineering, and Technology (NSET) Subcommittee, serves as a central point of contact for federal nanotechnology research and development activities, and provides public outreach on behalf of the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI). Dr. Pohanka previously...

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Prevention through Design Program and Nanotechnology Research Center will hold an August 14-16, 2012, workshop entitled “Safe Nano Design: Molecule » Manufacturing » Market.” NIOSH states that participants will provide input into the safe commercialization of nano products resulting in the development of guidelines for the safe synthesis of nanoparticles and associated products, using a Prevention-through-Design approach....

President Obama signed a February 21, 2012, memorandum entitled “Driving Innovation and Creating Jobs in Rural America through Biobased and Sustainable Product Procurement.” The BioPreferred Program, which was established by the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 (2002 Farm Bill) and amended by the Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008 (2008 Farm Bill), is intended to increase federal procurement of biobased products, which will promote rural economic development, create new...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced in a February 13, 2012, Federal Register notice the availability of its Fall 2011 Regulatory Agenda. EPA’s Regulatory Agenda includes several notices concerning nanoscale materials:...

On February 17, 2012, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson will tour the Center for Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology (CEIN) at the University of California, Los Angeles. CEIN has been awarded a $24 million grant from EPA and the National Science Foundation, and is working to train the next generation of nano-scale scientists and engineers. According to EPA, CEIN is one of the nation’s only centers researching predictive toxicology of...

On February 9, 2012, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) posted a summary report on its January 2011 workshop on nanoscale silver. The workshop was the second in a series conducted by the National Center for Environmental Assessment (NCEA) to further the development of a research strategy for completing comprehensive environmental assessments of nanomaterials.  The basis of the workshop was the report Nanomaterial Case Study:  Nanoscale Silver...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced that, in response to public comments, it will provide the public more time to comment on the December 28, 2011, proposed significant new use rules (SNUR) for 17 chemical substances that were the subject of premanufacture notices (PMN). Of particular interest, seven of the PMN substances’ reported chemical names include the term “carbon nanotube” (CNT) or “CNT.” EPA states “the comment period is being...

On March 27-28, 2012, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAA) will host the “International Symposium on Assessing the Economic Impact of Nanotechnology.” The Working Party on Nanotechnology (WPN) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in collaboration with the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), organized the Symposium. Lynn L. Bergeson is on the Steering Committee and will speak at the Symposium. The objective of the...

On January 26, 2012, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) concerning its conditional registration of a pesticide product containing nanosilver as a new active ingredient for use as a preservative for textiles.  NRDC states that it seeks to limit public exposure to the nanosilver’s use in clothing, baby blankets, and other textiles. On December 1, 2011, EPA...

On January 25, 2012, the National Research Council (NRC) posted the pre-publication version of its report entitled A Research Strategy for Environmental, Health, and Safety Aspects of Engineered Nanomaterials. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) asked NRC to perform an independent study to develop and monitor the implementation of an integrated research strategy to address the environmental, health, and safety (EHS) aspects of engineered nanomaterials (ENM). NRC...

Lynn L. Bergeson will participate in a February 7, 2012, Bloomberg BNA webinar entitled “The Greening of Consumer Products:  Legal, Regulatory, and Strategic Considerations.” Bloomberg BNA states that the webinar is intended to help users:...

On December 30, 2011, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Inspector General (OIG) released a report entitled EPA Needs to Manage Nanomaterial Risks More Effectively. According to OIG, the purpose of its review was to determine how effectively EPA is managing the human health and environmental risks of nanomaterials. OIG states that it found “that EPA does not currently have sufficient information or processes to effectively manage the human health and...

A coalition of nonprofit consumer safety and environmental groups sued the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on December 21, 2011.  The coalition is led by the International Center for Technology Assessment (ICTA), and includes Friends of the Earth, Food and Water Watch, the Center for Environmental Health, the ETC Group, and the Institute for Agricultural and Trade Policy. ICTA states that its lawsuit “demands” FDA...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published on December 28, 2011, proposed significant new use rules (SNUR) for 17 chemical substances that were the subject of premanufacture notices (PMN). Of particular interest, seven of the PMN substances’ reported chemical names include the term “carbon nanotube” (CNT) or “CNT.”  EPA states that because of a lack of established nomenclature for CNTs, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Inventory names for CNTs are...