Audit, Compliance and Risk Blog

On August 2, the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) issued guidance to assist federal agencies in their consideration of the effects of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and climate change when evaluating proposed federal actions. I refer to this documents as “the Guidance” below.

The Clean Air Act (CAA) includes extensive regulatory requirements on “mobile sources,” which cover efficiency and emissions standards for a broad range of vehicles with internal combustion engines (automobiles, buses, aircraft), “nonroad engines and vehicles” (including lawnmowers, bulldozers and marine vessels), as well as motor fuel standards intended to promote cleaner burning fuels. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) uses CAA authority to set emission limits from engines, for CAA-regulated air pollutants, including carbon dioxide (CO2) regulated for its greenhouse gas (GHG) aspects.

On July 25, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a formal finding under the Clean Air Act (CAA), that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from aircraft “endanger public health or welfare.” This aircraft-specific finding builds on EPA’s 2009 finding that GHGs endanger public health, covering the same six GHGs: carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride. EPA calculates that aircraft produce 12 percent of all U.S. transportation GHG emissions and more than 3 percent of total U.S. GHG emissions, and that U.S. aircraft GHG emissions represent 29 percent of all global aircraft GHG emissions and 0.5 percent of total global GHG emissions.

EPA has just issued final rules to limit exposure to formaldehyde emissions from plywood and other laminated and composite wood products. The Formaldehyde Emission Standards for Composite Wood Products Act of 2010 (“the Act”, which is codified as Title VI of the Toxic Substances Control Act (“TSCA”)) required EPA to develop these rules. The Act responded to evidence of dangerous emissions from substandard construction products, publicized particularly by health hazards in temporary trailers provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to victims of Hurricane Katrina and other natural disasters. The Act established standards based on California rules, and directed EPA to issue nationwide rules by January 1, 2013 to enforce these standards. EPA missed its deadline, but has just announced rules that will become effective after publication in the Federal Register (probably in August 2016).

This post continues my discussion of the “Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act,” which was adopted in June to revise the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). In prior posts I summarized changes made to accelerate testing of chemical substances that are already in use in the U.S., and to enhance premanufacture evaluation of new chemicals and significant new uses of existing chemicals. The set of major changes created by the 2016 Amendments addresses TSCA’s preemptive impact – the degree to which EPA actions or inactions under TSCA can restrict states' authority to enact their own regulatory and informational programs. This note addresses preemption.

We often see pictures in the media of places where the environment is being abused. During the Rio Olympics, we’ve seen many visual images of garbage-laden rivers and dirty beaches and it’s easy to think that if that were in our country, it would be under control, but a recent Harvard study took a closer look at water quality at home and found that it comes up short in many U.S. states.

This post continues my discussion of the “Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act,” which was adopted in June to revise the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). In the last post I summarized changes made to accelerate testing of chemical substances that are already in use in the U.S., and for which evidence developed since their introduction suggests they may pose an “unreasonable risk” to health or the environment. This “grandfathering” of never-evaluated and potentially hazardous chemicals has been seen as a major weakness. The 2016 Amendments also strengthen the process of evaluation for new chemicals offered for distribution in the U.S. This note addresses changes to these new chemical reviews.

On June 22, President Obama signed the “Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act,” which revises the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) extensively. TSCA was enacted 40 years ago to empower the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to acquire and evaluate data regarding the effects of chemical substances and mixtures on human health and the environment, and to prevent unduly hazardous chemicals from entering commercial use. Although TSCA was a huge step forward at the time, its limitations became ever clearer in subsequent years, and compounded to leave important gaps in protective regulation of chemicals. (I summarized basic provisions here). The late Senator Lautenberg spent many years trying to thread the political needle between chemical companies and health and environmental advocates. He died without achieving this goal, but is honored by the new legislation – which I refer to from now on as “the 2016 Amendments.” (I summarized an earlier version of this new legislation here)

Late in the 1970s, measurements in the stratosphere revealed that levels of ozone were falling – the headline summary of this trend was the annual appearance of a thinned-out “ozone hole” over the Arctic and Antarctic regions. Health and environmental and human health scientists worried because stratospheric ozone is an important absorber of potentially damaging ultraviolet radiation (bad for penguins under the ozone hole, and eventually bad for humans on the rest of the planet). Further studies concluded that the culprits were halocarbon chemicals used as refrigerants, solvents, propellants, and foam-blowing agents. Dubbed “ozone depleting substances (ODSs)”, these chemicals (including chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), halogenated chlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), freons and halons) are relatively non-reactive when released on the surface, so they persist in the atmosphere long enough to drift up to the stratosphere where incoming solar radiation eventually powers their reaction with ozone.

On May 17, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a proposed order registering the pesticide sulfoxaflor, using authority under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). This proposal is the latest action in a long-running and controversial review of that potential pesticide, and continues to consider how toxic this active ingredient is to bees, and therefore how and if it can be used. Coming after a recent court decision vacating EPA’s previous attempt to register sulfoxaflor, the answer is not clear (I provided a basic discussion of FIFRA registration here).