EPA WATCH ORD fellowships and extramural grants The Office of Research and Develop ment (ORD) formally announced in December a new fellowship program for environmentally related studies and an expansion of its research grants program for investigators out side the Agency. Both programs are strongly supported by ORD head Robert Huggett. The fellowship program will issue approximately 100 fellowships in FY95, providing two years of support for master's students and three years of support for doctoral candidates, according to ORD. Fellowships will provide up to $34,000 per year for sti pend, tuition, and expenses. The pro gram is intended for students already enrolled in full-time graduate pro grams at accredited U.S. colleges or universities. Applications are available from Virginia Broadway, Office of Ex ploratory Research (8703), Room 3102, NEM, 401 M St., S.W., Washington, DC 20460 (e-mail: broadway.virginia@ epamail.epa.gov; fax, 202-260-0211). Application deadline is Feb. 13. With the addition of $22 million in funding, the extramural research grants program will support approxi mately twice as many outside grants in FY95 as it did in FY94, according to ORD. Details of the program were not finalized at press time, but the office expects to begin soliciting grant appli cations in January from universities and not-for-profit, research-intensive institutions, according to ORD's Regina Langton. Grants will target inves tigations in ecosystems, environmen tal technologies, global change, and socioeconomic issues. Specific details about the grants program can be ob tained by calling ORD at (202) 2607473.
Errors found in speciation model EPA is notifying users of the geochemical speciation model MINTEQA2 version 3.11 that a number of errors have been found in one sec-
tion of the model's thermodynamic database. The problems are re stricted to calculations involving complexes between metals and or ganic ligands. In general, the errors arise because some metal-organic reactions are not properly expressed in terms of the components used in the MINTEQA2 program or because the equilibrium constants (log K) are not properly referenced to zero ionic strength (μ = 0) and 25 °C. The Center for Exposure Assess ment Modeling (CEAM, Athens, GA), which distributes MINTEQA2, plans to release a corrected version 3.12 soon. Until then, it recommends checking log AT values for metal-organic reac tions against other compilations of stability constants such as the Na tional Institute of Standards and Tech nology's Reference Database 46 for metal complexes. A technical descrip tion of the problems and ways to fix the errors can be found on the CEAM bulletin board [(706) 546-3402; 9600 baud, 8,N,1]. Availability of the up dated MINTEQA2 will be announced on the CEAM bulletin board, or users may call (706) 546-3549.
since the Community Right-to-Know Act became law in 1986. The changes were made through two fi nal rules published Nov. 30 (Fed. Regist. 1994, 59, 61432, 61488). Under the new reporting require ments, companies may use the short form if they report the release of less than 500 lb of a TRI chemical or the manufacture, processing, or use of less than 1 million lb of a TRI chemi cal. In the past, all companies were required to use the longer form if they used at least 10,000 lb of a TRI chemi cal, regardless of the amount released. More than 11,000 companies will have to file additional reports be cause of the lower threshold, and another 3500 facilities will file addi tional reports because of the added chemicals. However, many of the reports will be less complicated. Use of long forms is estimated to be cut from 83,000 to 63,000 per year be cause of the changes. In all, some 24,000 companies are affected by TRI reporting requirements, EPA of ficials say. New reporting requirements be came effective in lanuary and will be reflected in the TRI report due out in July 1996.
TRI chemicals increased The number of chemicals covered under reporting requirements of the Toxic Release Inventory was nearly doubled under an EPA rule an nounced in November. The increase of 286 chemicals, mostly pesticides, brings to 654 the list of pollutants whose release to the environment must be reported to the public and local communities each year. Along with increasing the number of chemicals covered by the regula tion, the Agency also lowered the thresholds that trigger the reporting requirement, requiring more facili ties to report on their chemical use. On the flip side, EPA announced a new reporting system that allows companies that generate low levels of TRI pollutants to use a shorter form when reporting. The regulations mark the first wholesale increase in chemicals
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Drinking water analytical methods The Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water finalized a rule in December (Fed. Regist. 1994, 59, 62456) that introduces, eliminates, or updates more than 100 analytical methods for measuring contami nants in drinking water. According to Jitendra Saxena of the Division of Drinking Water Standards, this rule avoids duplication of methods by eliminating older procedures, re duces or removes hazardous re agents and solvents from proce dures, and introduces new technologies. The rule allows labora tories to use fewer different methods to cover a greater number of con taminants, thereby reducing analysis costs. William Budde, director of the Chemistry Research Division at EPA's
0013-936X/95/0929-66A$09.00/0 © 1995 American Chemical Society
