G OVERNM ENT & POL ICY CONCENTRATES
EPA SEEKS VIEWS ON CO2 RULE
GROUPS ENCOURAGE NANOMATERIAL STEWARDSHIP
EPA released a 564-page proposal and supporting documents last week seeking public comments on the use of the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The proposal was required by a U.S. Supreme Court decision made in April. The decision overturned the Bush Administration’s view that EPA lacked authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. Although ostensibly seeking comments, EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson made clear his opposition to using the act to control CO2 emissions. He called the act “an outdated law” and “ill-suited for the task of regulating global greenhouse gases.” He warned that its use for climate-change regulation “could result in an unprecedented expansion of EPA authority that could have a profound effect on virtually every sector of the economy and touch every household in the land.” Johnson also made clear that he was only seeking views and that no actual plan will emerge in the waning days of the Bush Administration. Buried among the background material in the proposal, however, were several EPA internal analyses that are likely to be influential in future attempts to regulate CO2. One, for instance, projects that ozone-related deaths will increase by approximately 4.5% from the 1990s to 2050 because of higher temperatures driven by climate change.
Industry trade groups that represent nanotechnology companies are urging their members to join EPA’s voluntary Nanoscale Materials Stewardship Program (NMSP). In a joint statement issued on July 14, the American Chemistry Council’s Nanotechnology Panel, the NanoBusiness Alliance, and the Synthetic Organic Chemical Manufacturers Association’s Nanotechnology Small & Medium Enterprise Coalition highlighted the importance of the program in helping EPA make informed regulatory decisions about nanomaterials. “Information collection under the NMSP is a necessary step for EPA to better understand the potential health and environmental effects of nanoscale materials and to determine if any regulatory changes are needed,” the groups wrote. Since EPA launched NMSP in January 2008, only four companies have provided basic information about their nanotech products. The agency expects only about a dozen more to do so by the program’s July 28 deadline. Initially, EPA expected to receive information from more than 200 firms. If participation in the program remains weak, the trade groups warn, EPA is likely to make it mandatory.
of biomass feedstock are huge. One study by DOE and the Agriculture Department found that enough nonfood biomass is available to produce biofuels in amounts that would offset the nation’s annual oil imports. The program is part of a growing emphasis by biofuels producers, government, and private researchers to move beyond dependence on food crops as a source of ethanol and other biofuels.
DOW, ENERGY LAB PEN ETHANOL DEAL
NREL
Waste biomass will be explored as a feedstock for chemical intermediates and biofuels through an agreement announced last week between Dow Chemical and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Corn stover, wood waste, and other nonfood biomass will be used as feedstock for a pilot project conducted by Dow and the Department of Energy lab. The project will test a thermochemical process along with a catalyst technology developed by Dow to convert cellulosic waste to liquid biofuels and chemical production feedstocks. The agreement continues ongoing Dow-NREL biofuels research using cellulosic feedstocks. NREL hopes to have this technology ready for commercialization within three to five years. When announcing the agreement, Dow noted that sources
GENDER EQUALITY IN GERMAN SCIENCE Research-oriented gender-equality standards developed by the German Research Foundation (DFG) have been accepted by the foundation’s General Assembly. DFG is Germany’s largest research-funding organization. The standards are expected to encourage universities and nonuniversity research institutions to promote equal rights for women and men in all areas of work. They call for institutional management to support women, promote work-life balance in research and science, and increase the proportion of professors and scientific managers who are women but leave it up to each institution to determine their own targets and courses of action. Implementation is to be completed by 2013 and will become a criterion considered for grants to universities and research institutions. “We need significantly more women in science
WWW.C E N- ONLI NE .ORG
34
J ULY 2 1 , 20 0 8
and for science. The research-oriented gender-equality standards are a milestone on the way to achieving this,” DFG President Matthias Kleiner says.
ENDOCRINE DISRUPTER PROGRAM QUESTIONED CropLife America, the largest pesticide trade group in the U.S., filed a petition with EPA on July 14 voicing concerns about the agency’s endocrine disrupter screening program. The program will require the testing of 73 active or inert ingredients used in making pesticides. The petition questions why existing data on pesticides, including reproductive and developmental toxicity data, do not fulfill the program’s requirements. “The program could place unnecessary financial, time, and resource burdens on our industry, EPA, and society,” said Jay Vroom, president and CEO of CropLife. EPA is required to implement the program by law and is under pressure from Congress to do so by the end of August. CropLife recommends that the agency review all data that have already been submitted by pesticide registrants on a caseby-case basis or explain why those data are inadequate. The group is also asking EPA to perform economic analyses that would highlight the cost of the screening program to industry. EPA is carefully reviewing the petition.
