NEWS OF THE WEEK GOVERNMENT
SEEKING TO CHANGE THE RULES Modification of chemical regulations among suggestions for federal reform
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HANGES TO THE ANNUAL
Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) and other chemicalrelated federal rules are among the second annual set of recom mendations suggested by the public and released by the Bush Administration late last month. Some public interest groups characterize the report as a hit list for federal regulations. But John D. Graham, administrator of the Office of Information & Regula tory Affairs in the White House Office ofManagement & Budget, says the Administration is "neu tral" on the recommendations. The public suggested changes to 267 rules, and ΟΜΒ referred 126 ofthese to agencies for evaluation. Agencies must report to the White House by Feb. 28 on sug gestions they plan to implement and explain why they are disre garding the others, Graham says. Chemical producers made sev eral suggestions for regulatory changes. The Synthetic Organic Chem ical Manufacturers Association takes issue withTRI information on waste that gets sent off-site for disposal, recycling, or other treatment. The "off-site transfer" data give the false impression that these chemicals are released into the environment, SOCMA says. It recommends either eliminat ing the collection of this infor mation or at least separating it from environmental release data. The American Chemistry Council and the American Petro leum Institute focus on a newTRI reporting requirement for per sistent andbioaccumulative toxic compounds, a category of chemi cals that includes dioxins. Gener HTTP://WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
ally facilities that manufacture or process more than 25,000 lb per year or use 10,000 lb annually of a TRI-listed chemical must file toxics inventory reports. But for persistent and bioaccumulative toxics, the reporting threshold is much lower: either 100 lb per year; 10 lb per year; or, in the case of dioxins, 0.1 g. ACC and API want a report ing threshold of 100 lb per year for all persistent and bioaccumu lative toxics except dioxins. For dioxins, they recommend a threshold of 0.002 lb, about 1 g. Among other suggestions are labeling of genetically modified foods; regulating the use of antibi MATERIALS
otics in cattle, chickens, and pigs; and reviewing regulations govern ing research on human subjects. In addition to rules, recom mendations also critique agency guidance documents often used to clarify regulations. These guidelines do not go through the formal rule-making procedure and cannot be challenged in court. Some in industry charge that agencies issue guidance doc uments to circumvent the formal rule-making process. Graham says the government needs to ap ply "more discipline" in the use of these guidelines. ACC recommends that EPA issue a Superfund guidance doc ument as a formal rule. That guideline affects EPAs collection of so-called indirect costs from companies responsible for cleanup of Superfund sites. Di rect costs cover activities related to the actual removal and dispos al of contamination; indirect costs include EPA administrative expenses such as office building rentaL-CHERYL H0GUE
Graham
SCIENCE
Biomimetic Shells By 'Morphosynthesis'
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ntricately shaped inorganic particles that mimic those produced by marine protozoa can be made in the lab by "morphosynthe sis," a self-organized dynam ic growth process developed by chemistry researcher Dirk Volkmer and colleagues at the University of Bielefeld, in Germany \Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., VI, 58 (2003)]. The simple system con sists of a surfactant-stabi lized oil droplet that is inject ed into a quaternary ammonium salt solution, forming an emulsion that can be monitored by video mi croscopy. In a sample reac tion, a drop of chlorocyclohexane containing arachidic acid is injected into aqueous cetyltrimethytammonium bromide. The initial smooth surface of the oil drop becomes corrugated within a few
minutes as the emulsion forms. Spiny struc tures then radiate from the surface and even tually disintegrate as the emulsion spreads. When a small amount of a titania or titania-silica pre cursor is included in the ini tial oil drop (shown top), a glasslike mineral layer forms as the precursor hydrolyzes at the water-oil in terfaces during emulsification. This freezes the spiny shell (bottom) as a hollow particle that resembles the silicified skeletons of radiolaria. The spines have a di ameter of about 1 μητι and can reach up to about 100 μητι in length. The researchers have prepared bulk samples of the particles, and they believe that tuning the system with additives could lead to a host of shells with complex shapes.—STEVE RITTER
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