Preview Newsletter
PM ACC 3/16/2016
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(ACC Mentioned) Online Green Building Tool Helps Industry Choose Safer, Sustainable Materials
Mar 16, 2016 | Environmental Leader
By Jessica Lyons Hardcastle
A new online building tool provides architects, material specifiers, interior designers and other building and construction professionals with information about green building codes and standards, materials selection... -
(ACC Mentioned) Lighten Up: MSU Working to Make Cars Lighter, Stronger
Mar 16, 2016 | MSU Today
If automakers want to reach the federal mandate of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, they are going to have to come up with ways of making cars lighter. -
Guest Column – ICTA Interim Director General
Mar 16, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Birger Kuck
The International Chemical Trade Association (ICTA), incorporated in February, will represent traders and distributors on key issues, identify important global topics and facilitate the sharing of information on positions and developments. -
(ACC Mentioned) Barring Plastic Bag Bans, Another ALEC Law Takes Aim at Local Democracy
Mar 16, 2016 | PR Watch
By Jessica Mason and Calvin Sloan
The pay-to-play model of government advanced by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) scored another victory this week. -
Solvents Industry Loses Push for EPA to Revise Finding on TCE's Risk
Mar 16, 2016 | InsideEPA
By Dave Reynolds
EPA has again rejected the solvents industry's Information Quality Act (IQA) request to reconsider its conclusion that the solvent trichloroethylene (TCE) poses a risk of cardiac birth defects... -
US EPA to Convene Advisory Committee in 1-BP Assessment
Mar 16, 2016 | Chemical Watch
The US EPA will convene its Chemical Safety Advisory Committee (CSAC) to review the draft risk assessment for 1-bromopropane (1-BP), used in spray adhesive, dry cleaning and degreasing applications. -
The Commission’s Decisions on Authorisation
Mar 16, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Tim Becker
The Commission makes the final decisions on the inclusion of substances in the authorisation list (REACH Annex XIV) and on subsequent industry applications for authorisation of Annex XIV-listed substances. -
Niche Chemicals: A 2018 Concern?
Mar 16, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Leigh Stringer
Echa currently estimates that up to 70,000 registrations will be prepared, for up to 25,000 substances, in 2018 – three times more than in the previous deadlines in 2010 and 2013. -
Redeeming a ‘Maligned Science’
Mar 16, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Charlotte Niemiec
Chemistry has made substantive changes to the way we live since the industrial revolution, said Dr Swaminathan Sivaram of India’s National Chemical Laboratories, speaking at last December’s International Green Chemistry... -
Fragrance Ingredient Disclosure and the Personal Care Products Safety Act
Mar 16, 2016 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Alexandra Scranton
When it comes to fragrance, what we don’t know is actually hurting us. Secrecy around ingredients is a long held tradition in the fragrance industry, but one that is outdated... -
Strong Support for Offshore Energy
Mar 16, 2016 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Erik Milito
The Obama administration’s decision to backtrack on plans to explore for energy in the Atlantic is a major blow to the nation’s energy security. -
Atlantic Announcement 'A Near Non-Event' for Industry
Mar 16, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Nathanial Gronewold
Atlantic offshore drilling was taken off the table long before the Obama administration made it official. -
IHS: “If Producers Have the Money, They Drill”
Mar 16, 2016 | Fuel Fix
By Collin Eaton
The break-even costs of drilling new wells in U.S. shale plays are becoming less important as an indicator of the nation’s future oil production growth. What’s more important? U.S. drillers’ access to capital, IHS says. -
Lawmakers Move to Block Climate Rule Planning
Mar 16, 2016 | E&E Climatewire
By Emily Holden and Elizabeth Harball
Missouri lawmakers are pushing legislation to prohibit the state from planning for the Obama administration's climate change regulation until a Supreme Court stay on implementing the rule is lifted. -
Supreme Court Ruling on Clean Power Plan Doesn't Halt EPA Action or Change Timeline
Mar 16, 2016 | The Hill - Contributors
By Richard Revesz
Last month, the Supreme Court unexpectedly issued a "stay" of the Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of the Obama administration's efforts to mitigate climate change. -
House Subcommittee Approves Pipeline Safety Bill
Mar 16, 2016 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Andrew Restuccia
A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee easily approved legislation today that would reauthorize the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration — but lawmakers delayed votes... -
Overcoming Ethylene Oxide Transport Challenges
Mar 16, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Tom Baker
Ethylene oxide is one of the chemical industry’s most versatile and valuable raw materials for large-scale chemical production. However, it is also one of the most dangerous to transport. -
Obama’s Supreme Court Nominee Leans Green
Mar 16, 2016 | PoliticoPro
By Alex Guillen
If he makes it to the Supreme Court, Judge Merrick Garland is likely to be a reliable green vote, potentially swinging the court in support of major climate change rules destined to go before the justices as early as next year. -
House GOP Plan Would Reverse Obama's Green Policies
Mar 16, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By George Cahlink
The House Budget Committee will mark up a fiscal 2017 budget resolution tomorrow that amounts to a complete rebuke of the Obama administration's green policies. -
The Economy is Growing, But Carbon Emissions Aren’t. That’s a Big Deal.
Mar 16, 2016 | Washington Post
By Chris Mooney
Roughly a year ago, the International Energy Agency announced a wonky yet nonetheless significant development.
Industry and Association News
Chemical Management News
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Transportation News
Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) Online Green Building Tool Helps Industry Choose Safer, Sustainable Materials
Mar 16, 2016 | Environmental Leader
By Jessica Lyons Hardcastle
A new online building tool provides architects, material specifiers, interior designers and other building and construction professionals with information about green building codes and standards, materials selection, and the role of chemistry in developing sustainable building materials.
The American Chemistry Council’s www.BuildingWithChemistry.org provides the building industry with the tools needed to make “informed decisions” about materials and products that improve safety, energy savings, durability and other sustainability and performance benefits, says Richard Skorpenske, director of advocacy and sustainability at Covestro, and chair of ACC’s building and construction subcommittee.
The website includes an interactive graphic of a mixed-use residential building that highlights how chemical ingredients are used in materials, from polycarbonate panels in skylights, to plastics in piping, to nylon and polyester fibers in carpeting. Individual pages feature specific chemicals used in a range of building and construction applications, with information on where the chemicals are used and the functionality they provide.
The increased popularity of green building design has given rise to a variety of approaches to guide architects, designers, materials specifiers and builders in how to build “green.” A green building section provides an overview of commonly used standards, codes, certification systems and assessment tools, as well as examples of green building approaches by building type.
In addition, a subpage on materials selection highlights different approaches that specifiers, architects and designers can consider when choosing specific materials and products to use in building design and construction, taking into account factors such as a product’s sustainability, durability and carbon footprint, among others. The section includes information on specific tools to help inform materials selection decisions, such as life cycle approaches, environmental product declarations, risk assessment and multi-attribute considerations.
The website also features a news page, which compiles news on topics including energy efficiency, innovations and product safety.
http://www.environmentalleader.com/2016/03/16/online-green-building-tool-helps-industry-choose-safer-sustainable-materials/
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(ACC Mentioned) Lighten Up: MSU Working to Make Cars Lighter, Stronger
Mar 16, 2016 | MSU Today
If automakers want to reach the federal mandate of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, they are going to have to come up with ways of making cars lighter.
One possibility is the increased use of fiber-enforced composite materials, which are lighter yet stronger and stiffer than most traditional materials. Composite materials are composed of fibers such as carbon, glass and Kevlar that are held together using a polymer such as an epoxy.
While manufacturing vehicles completely out of composites remains an expensive alternative, it is possible to replace many existing car parts with parts made of composites.
The problem: Joining composite and noncomposite materials together.
The solution: Mahmood Haq and his team at Michigan State University’s Composite Vehicle Research Center are developing new ways in which composites and traditional materials, such as steel or aluminum, can be joined without compromising the desirable structural properties of the composites.
When joining a composite and a metal, Haq said manufacturers want to avoid drilling holes in the composite.
“If you drill a hole with mechanical means, damage is introduced at the edges of the hole, and the layers that make up the composite separate,” he said. “You lose up to 60 percent of the capacity of the composite to carry load.”
Using an adhesive to bond the two together also has limitations. “That, unfortunately, is a one-time cure. Once the adhesive cures, the joint can’t easily be undone.”
So Haq and his team are working on advanced adhesives with special properties that allow them to be taken apart, repaired or healed. These special properties are obtained by adding electrically conductive nanoparticles to the adhesives.
“Millions of these nanoparticles are embedded in the adhesive,” he said. “By using what we call targeted heating we can bond them and reverse the bond and take them apart,” he said.
When activated with the right kind of electromagnetic radiation, the nanoparticles begin to vibrate and heat the adhesive. “Just the adhesive heats up without having to heat up the entire structure,” Haq said.
He said one key to making this joining technique practical is to be sure it can be integrated into today’s auto assembly line practices.
“We want joints that are easily and quickly produced,” he said. “We don’t want to have to totally re-tool the assembly lines. We don’t want to have to invent a new technology which disrupts current manufacturing practices.”
Much of the funding for Haq’s work is provided by the U.S. Department of Energy and the American Chemistry Council.
For more information on the Composite Vehicle Research Center, visithttp://www.egr.msu.edu/cvrc/.
MSU is a national leader in composite-material research. In fact, MSU leads the light-and-heavy-duty vehicle technology component of the Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation, or IACMI, a 122-member consortium funded by a more than $70 million commitment over five years from the U.S. Department of Energy.
http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2016/lighten-up-msu-working-to-make-cars-lighter-stronger/
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Guest Column – ICTA Interim Director General
Mar 16, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Birger Kuck
The International Chemical Trade Association (ICTA), incorporated in February, will represent traders and distributors on key issues, identify important global topics and facilitate the sharing of information on positions and developments.
It will act as an interface between the industry, including its small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), international organisations and stakeholders, but it will also seek to facilitate the development of national or regional associations where they do not yet exist.
This will be done through the promotion of voluntary industry initiatives, Responsible Care and Responsible Distribution. In large parts of the world, such as most Asian and African countries, these programmes remain unknown.
In close cooperation with its counterpart in the manufacturing world, the International Council of Chemical Associations (ICCA), the ICTA will promote international standards on chemical handling as well as on business ethics and environmental measures. It will also encourage its members to participate in the UN Global Compact initiative, and other standards, and promote international free trade and fair competition within the framework of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Projects developed by the ICTA, and the outcomes sought, will be discussed among its membership. Discussions will cover the Globally Harmonised System (GHS) for classification and labelling, regulations on the transport of dangerous goods, driven by UN sub-committees, the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (Saicm) and security, driven by various UN bodies.
This work will be supported by its member associations such as the European Association of Chemical Distributors (Fecc), the US‘s National Association of Chemical Distributors (NACD), the German and British associations VCH and CBA respectively, and a number of major companies.
A Fecc member represented the ICTA at the International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM4) last year, in Geneva. Fecc, which is providing the secretariat, will coordinate information and make use of the expertise of its members, while the ICTA will build up its own internal structures and organisation.
The international body’s predecessor, the International Council of Chemical Trade Associations (ICCTA), had been founded as an unincorporated entity in 1991, with a membership from 21 associations representing the chemical trade and distribution industry.
Among others, Fecc, the NACD, Brazil’s chemical distribution association, Associquim, China’s Chamber of Commerce of Metals, Minerals and Chemicals Importers and Exporters (CCCMC), the Canadian Association of Chemical Distributors (CACD), Mexico’s national chemical industry association, ANIQ, and a large number of European associations participated.
Twice a year, delegations from these associations met to exchange best practices on Responsible Care and Responsible Distribution, chemical safety and security, the transport and handling of chemicals and other related topics.
Key performance data on the chemical trade and safety were collected, summarised and discussed. More recently, the associations planned to expand the membership of the ICCTA as well as review and update its objectives and goals with a broader, international focus.
As a consequence, it was proposed and agreed that private companies would also be invited to become direct members. The name of the association was changed to reflect that it now seeks to represent the whole chemical distributor sector.
The first formal general assembly is scheduled to take place the first week of June in Istanbul, where the full operating board will be elected and guidelines for the future work of the ICTA agreed.
https://chemicalwatch.com/45729/guest-column-icta-interim-director-general
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(ACC Mentioned) Barring Plastic Bag Bans, Another ALEC Law Takes Aim at Local Democracy
Mar 16, 2016 | PR Watch
By Jessica Mason and Calvin Sloan
The pay-to-play model of government advanced by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) scored another victory this week. On Tuesday, the Wisconsin Senate voted along party lines to approve a bill that would prohibit local communities from issuing their own rules on plastic bags and other containers.
This is part of an emerging national trend.
Preventing local governments from banning, charging a fee for, or otherwise regulating plastic bags is part of a national strategy by corporate interests and groups they fund, like ALEC to override progressive policy gains at the city and county level.
Similar state "preemption," or state intervention, measures have gone after popular city measures to increase the minimum wage, require paid sick leave, ban fracking, and bar discrimination.
The Wisconsin bill, AB 730/SB 601, was introduced by ALEC legislators including Reps. Rob Swearingen, David Craig, Mike Kuglitsch, David Murphy. ALEC legislator co-sponsors include Sens. Frank Lasee, Chris Kapenga, and Devin LeMahieu. (Through ALEC, corporate lobbyists get an equal vote with state legislators on ALEC task forces considering “model” bills that are priorities to the corporate legislative agendas of the special interests that fund ALEC or underwrite trips by ALEC legislators to resort meetings where they are wined and dined.)
In Wisconsin, no city had adopted a plastic bag ban to address the proliferation of the bags used to carry groceries or other goods, even though some such bags can take hundreds of years to degrade if left in the sun (and may never degrade if put in a landfill).
Nationally, Local Governments Are the Vanguard in Addressing Plastic Waste
An estimated hundred billion plastic bags are used in the U.S. annually, but only about 12 percent of them are recycled, making them a significant waste-disposal problem for towns and cities.
In addition to the cost of burying billions of disposable containers in landfills, plastic bag litter often ends up in streams and rivers, where it potentially leaches endocrine-disrupting chemicals such as bisphenol A into the water supply.
Single-use and disposable containers also threaten marine life and contribute to growing "garbage patches" in the Great Lakes and the world’s oceans.
The ocean’s five plastic gyres—the most infamous being the Great Pacific garbage patch—are rapidly expanding. At current rates, by 2050, there will be more plastic (by weight) in the ocean’s water than fish, leading the McKinsey Center for Business and Environment and the Ocean Conservatory to declare, "the amount of unmanaged plastic waste entering the ocean... has reached crisis levels."
Beyond threatening ecosystems and human health, plastic waste is already taking a financial toll on fishing industries, urban infrastructure, and tourist economies. The World Economic Institute concludes that "the cost of such after-use externalities for plastic packaging, plus the cost associated with greenhouse gas emissions from its production, is conservatively estimated at $40 billion annually—exceeding the plastic packaging industry’s profit pool."
U.S. cities started experimenting with ways to reduce plastic bag waste in the late 2000s, with cities like Washington, D.C., and Portland, Maine, adopting small fees on single-use plastic bags. Other cities like Honolulu tried out biodegradable and compostable bags. Still other cities, such as San Francisco, banned plastic bags altogether.
In 2013, the City Council of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, considered a measure that aimed to reduce—not ban—plastic bag use through voluntary measures and a 5-cent fee phased in over several years, a modest measure that would still be prohibited under AB 730, the bill that passed on Tuesday.
But disposable consumer goods—and the disposable bags that carry them home—are a lucrative business.
The plastics industry's response to these local bag regulations reveals a lot about how corporations can do an end-run around local democracy when affects their bottom line, even if the public interest supports such measures.
Who Needs Democracy When You Have the ALEC Inside Track?
One of the few pieces of model legislation adopted by the American City County Exchange (ACCE), the ALEC offshoot targeting local elected officials, is a resolution titled "Regulating Containers to Protect Business and Consumer Choice."
That resolution calls on municipal governments not to regulate single-use containers and packaging, such as "reusable bags, disposable bags, boxes, cups, and bottles that are made of cloth, paper, plastic, extruded polystyrene, or similar materials…”
It also asserts that "confusing" regulations will lead to increased costs to consumers and businesses, and claims that the "free market is the best arbiter of the container," despite the failure of the market to address the problem of the estimated nearly 88 billion plastic bags that are not recycled annually in the U.S.
A group calling itself the “American Progressive Bag Alliance” (ABPA), a trade group that has been funded by plastics manufacturers like Novolex, the Superbag Corporation, and Advanced Polybag, paid an unknown sum to ALEC to present a “workshop” to policymakers claiming that plastic bag regulations are "ill-advised and deliberately misleading legislation." That presentation was at the December 2014 ACCE meeting in Washington, D.C.
At ALEC/ACCE, Local Democracy on Fracking = "Hitler" and "Fascism" according to the American Petroleum Institute
Attendees of that meeting were also treated to an American Petroleum Institute lobbyist's presentation that likened local ordinances to bar fracking to "the rise of Hitler and the rise of Fascism."
APBA also paid to sit alongside local elected officials at the July 2015 ACCE conference in San Diego where the “model” resolution against plastic bag bans was drafted and adopted.
In December 2015, APBA also paid to send its policy chair, Philip Rozenski, to the ACCE meeting in Scottsdale, Arizona, where he claimed to elected officials that plastic bags were actually good for the environment.
Rozenski, who also works as the director for marketing of Novolex, warned that city plastic bag bans were "stepping stones to the regulation of all packaging."
State bills prohibiting local plastic bag bans were proposed in a number of states in 2015 and 2016, including in Georgia, South Carolina, and Idaho, as well as Wisconsin.
One such measure passed in Arizona, which is now being sued by Tempe City Councilmember Lauren Kuby. (Kuby attended one of the ALEC/ACCE meetings and wrote about the experience on CMD’s PRWatch.org.)
APBA has also led an effort to kill California's statewide ban on plastic bags. The trade group spent $3 million in 2015 on a petition drive in California to force a referendum on a statewide ban on plastic bags, which goes before voters later this year.
APBA’s website also links to a "recycling awareness campaign," abagslife.com, which doesn't highlight its authorship. Older posts on the site reveal that the campaign purports to be a "collaborative effort between the Florida Retail Federation, American Chemistry Council and Florida Recycling Partnership." But the site's domain was registered by the American Chemistry Council, the trade association for chemical manufacturers that merged with the American Plastic Councils in 2002.
APBA also directs visitors to bagtheban.com, a site that tracks local plastic ban ordinances and encourages visitors to send form letters to state legislators opposing regulation of disposable bags. The website names Novolex as its author, but the domain was registered by the huge PR firm Edelman, Inc.
Edelman is also the PR firm hired by ALEC in 2012 to "help it deal with recent corporate fallout and opposition to its legislative positions" after the shooting of Trayvon Martin drew outrage over ALEC's role in spreading "Stand Your Ground" legislation. (ALEC’s current spokesman is also an Edelman alum.)
ALEC Corporate Members Lobby for More Preemption in Wisconsin
Plastics manufacturers weren't the only corporate interest groups pushing for preemption in Wisconsin. In addition to APBA, several of other organizations that lobbied for Wisconsin's AB 730 are major national lobbyists and ALEC corporate funders that have actively worked to undermine local democracy all across the country.
The American Chemistry Council (ACC), which has been a member of ALEC's Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force. ACC has fought for years to keep the U.S. hooked on disposable plastic products. Its lobbyists have previously been caught editing environmental textbooks in California to support plastic bag use.
ACC was even discovered to have written entire sections of a discredited U.S. Food and Drug Administration decision that claimed that bisphenol A was safe for all uses. (Since then, the public has demanded products, particularly for children, not contain bisphenol A, and the FDA has de-authorized the use of the substance in baby bottles, even though the EU has banned the product in response to health concerns raised by experts independent of industry.)
The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) purports to be a nonpartisan trade group representing small business interests; however, NFIB primarily lobbies for big corporate interests and almost all of its political contributions support Republican candidates. Its funding sources have included the Koch brothers' Freedom Partners and Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS.
NFIB became a member of ALEC's corporate board in 2014, and NFIB has actively opposed local control on other issues such as paid sick days. (CMD’s SourceWatch has documented NFIB’s fronting for huge corporate interests on its NFIBexposed.org site.)
Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC) is the state chapter of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the Wisconsin Restaurant Association (WRA) is the state chapter of the National Restaurant Association; both national organizations are ALEC members.
WMC and WRA were major supporters of the 2011 Wisconsin preemption bill that blocked Milwaukee's paid sick days ordinance. As CMD uncovered, a few months later that bill was brought to ALEC as a model for the Labor and Business Regulation Subcommittee of the ALEC Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force. The National Restaurant Association even prepared a target list and a map of state and local paid sick leave policies for meeting attendees.
Last but not least, Koch Companies Public Sector, LLC, the lobbying arm of Koch Industries, has had a seat and a vote on ALEC’s corporate board for more than two decades, and previously chaired it. Koch Industries and the Koch family fortune underwrite ALEC in numerous ways making Koch money the biggest funder of ALEC. The total amount in millions that the Koch brothers’ company, foundations, and grantees have given ALEC is unknown.
The Koch fortune has been built in part on petroleum processing, which creates compounds that can be used to manufacture plastic bags. (Other major petrochemical corporations also fund ALEC, like Exxon.)
ACCE's model resolution claims to let the "free market" determine how to deal with wasteful single-use containers like plastic bags. But as the legislative preemption strategy shows, there's little room for local democracy in ALEC's vision of freedom.
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/03/13060/barring-plastic-bag-bans-another-alec-bill-takes-aim-local-democracy
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Solvents Industry Loses Push for EPA to Revise Finding on TCE's Risk
Mar 16, 2016 | InsideEPA
By Dave Reynolds
EPA has again rejected the solvents industry's Information Quality Act (IQA) request to reconsider its conclusion that the solvent trichloroethylene (TCE) poses a risk of cardiac birth defects, with the agency saying the finding -- which is driving costly mitigation at contaminated sites -- is supported by EPA science advisors and numerous studies.
A source with the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance, Inc. (HSIA) that filed the request for reconsideration says the group has just received EPA’s letter notifying it of the rejection and had not yet begun to consider how to respond, but says that litigation could potentially be an option.
“One can consider a lawsuit,” the source said, but also noted the second rejection could be “the end of the line” for industry’s long-standing push-back against EPA’s inclusion of a birth defects risk in the risk assessment.
The IQA allows groups to challenge the quality of federal data, though judges have denied suits over petition responses under the Administrative Procedure Act on grounds the responses are not "final" agency actions. Given limitations on a legal challenge, EPA’s denial of HSIA's request for reconsideration could end the solvents industry's long-standing fight over EPA’s risk assessment of TCE.
EPA's response is outlined in a Feb. 26 letter posted to the agency's website this month. “The conclusions of the Toxicological Review of TCE regarding developmental toxicity were based on the review and evaluation of dozens of studies, including 21 studies focused on cardiac developmental toxicity,” the agency says. “The quantitative values for the TCE reference values were also based on multiple studies,” the letter says in rejecting the request for reconsideration.
HSIA first petitioned EPA in November 2013 under the IQA to revise the Integrated Risk Information System's (IRIS) assessment of TCE that the agency issued in September 2011.
The group faulted the agency's reliance on a controversial 2003 toxicology study by Paula D. Johnson, which industry has argued is flawed and unreproducible, and so should not be used in regulation -- but the agency rejected that petition.
In June, HSIA then requested reconsideration of the agency's decision, reiterating opposition to EPA’s use of the Johnson study, arguing a peer review of a draft of the IRIS assessment was biased, and that a 2014 internal review showed some of EPA’s own scientists have little confidence in the Johnson study.
HSIA also last fall filed a separate request for correction under the IQA of EPA’s June 2014 assessment of certain uses of TCE.
EPA is relying on the assessment, conducted under a novel program using the agency’s Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) authority, in considering a rare ban of certain uses of TCE to prevent risks to workers and consumers. HSIA’s Oct. 6 IQA challenge to the TSCA assessment is still pending with the agency.
EPA's Response
To review HSIA's request for reconsideration of the IRIS review, EPA convened a three-person executive panel composed of the agency’s economics advisor, chief information officer, and associate administrator for the Office of Water. The review panel found HSIA has submitted 19 sets of comments to the agency, raising similar arguments.
In the Feb. 26 response, EPA reiterates that the agency's conclusion that TCE poses a developmental risk is based on numerous studies, and that a Science Advisory Board (SAB) review backed the conclusions of the IRIS assessment and specifically supported use of the Johnson study in risk assessment.
EPA says HSIA's push to base TCE regulation on an endpoint other than a risk of cardiac birth defects is “directly contrary to the SAB's conclusions and recommendations, such that to accept HSIA's [requests for correction] would require EPA to reject SAB's advice.”
The EPA panel also defends the agency’s 2014 TCE Developmental Cardiac Toxicity Assessment Update, which HSIA argues in the request for reconsideration shows EPA scientists’ lackluster support for the Johnson study. EPA says the scientists ascribing the Johnson study a “low” or “low to medium” level of confidence is not inconsistent with past agency statements that the available data has limitations.
“However, the majority of the team concluded that the database adequately supported a determination of 'Sufficient Experimental Animal Evidence' and 'Limited Human Data' regarding TCE developmental cardiac toxicity,” the letter says.
The panel also pushes back against HSIA's assertions that a member of the SAB review panel should have been ineligible given her work with Johnson, though not on the controversial study supporting a developmental risk for TCE.
EPA responds that HSIA failed to raise the concern in comments on the panelist's nomination for the peer review, and says the panelist was adequately vetted and not found to have a conflict of interest.
Peer Review
While HSIA also contends that a scientist on the panel that reviewed EPA’s TSCA assessment of certain TCE uses has faulted the agency's reliance on the Johnson study, EPA says the scientist’s opinion does not represent the consensus of the contracted peer review of that TSCA assessment.
The HSIA source says the producers’ group disagrees with virtually all of EPA’s arguments in the letter, and argued that while the agency may have reviewed other studies, a developmental risk for TCE hinges on the Johnson study.
The source also says EPA’s response to the still-pending IQA challenge of the TSCA assessment will have to include different arguments, because that assessment was contractor reviewed, rather than by the SAB, and EPA relies heavily on SAB's advice on heavily in the Feb. 26 rejection.
Meanwhile, Indiana's environment department this month issued a memo backing industry's arguments that EPA Region 9's controversial approach to protecting against the birth defects risk is “not scientifically supportable based upon current information.”
In the March 7 memo supporting a more flexible approach to assessing and mitigating potential risks from TCE at contaminated sites, the Indiana Department of Environmental Management faults EPA's reliance on the Johnson study, saying "the results obtained in the original study indicating increased incidence of fetal cardiac malformations have not been replicated despite several attempts to do so."
http://insideepa.com/daily-news/solvents-industry-loses-push-epa-revise-finding-tces-risk
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US EPA to Convene Advisory Committee in 1-BP Assessment
Mar 16, 2016 | Chemical Watch
The US EPA will convene its Chemical Safety Advisory Committee (CSAC) to review the draft risk assessment for 1-bromopropane (1-BP), used in spray adhesive, dry cleaning and degreasing applications.
The 24-26 May meeting will be the CSAC’s first. The committee was established last year to provide scientific expertise and recommendations to the Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT).
The meeting will look at “reviewing the scientific and technical merit of the draft 1-bromopropane risk assessment, focusing exclusively on the scientifically relevant issues pertinent to the assessment”, according to an announcement in the Federal Register.
This also provided notice that the EPA will be soliciting nominations of scientists to serve as review subcommittee members at the meeting.
It says that nominees should have expertise in at least one of the following areas:
epidemiology of neurotoxicity of volatile and semivolatile organic chemicals;risk assessment of neurotoxic chemicals;
risk assessment for developmental toxicity of volatile and semivolatile organic chemicals;
cancer assessment of mutagenic chemicals;
statistics with experience of bench mark dose response analysis of cancer and noncancer endpoints;
and/or occupational or consumer exposure to volatile and semivolatile organic chemicals.
The agency expects to select three to four review subcommittee members.
https://chemicalwatch.com/45780/us-epa-to-convene-advisory-committee-in-1-bp-assessment
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The Commission’s Decisions on Authorisation
Mar 16, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Tim Becker
The Commission makes the final decisions on the inclusion of substances in the authorisation list (REACH Annex XIV) and on subsequent industry applications for authorisation of Annex XIV-listed substances.
But what are the key stages and differences between the decision-making processes? For stakeholders, eager to influence these decisions, this is important to understand.
A complex system of checks and balances
Echa and its committees do not have the last word on REACH authorisation decisions. The agency makes recommendations on the inclusion of substances in REACH Annex XIV; Echa’s Risk Assessment (Rac) and Socio-economic Analysis (Seac) committees form opinions on applications for authorisation. Those proposals, addressed to the European Commission as the final decision maker, are non-binding.
At the same time, the decision-making powers of the Commission are limited and controlled by other bodies at the EU level – namely the REACH Committee, the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union – in the so-called ‘committee procedure’ (or comitology, as named in REACH Article 133). Thus, decisions on REACH authorisation may well have a different outcome than initially proposed by Echa, its committees and even the Commission.
The draft decisionThe Commission’s decisions on authorisation
Global Business Briefing, March 2016 / Europe, Alternatives assessment/substitutionTim BeckerChief EU compliance officer, REACHLaw
The Commission makes the final decisions on the inclusion of substances in the authorisation list (REACH Annex XIV) and on subsequent industry applications for authorisation of Annex XIV-listed substances.
But what are the key stages and differences between the decision-making processes? For stakeholders, eager to influence these decisions, this is important to understand.A complex system of checks and balances
Echa and its committees do not have the last word on REACH authorisation decisions. The agency makes recommendations on the inclusion of substances in REACH Annex XIV; Echa’s Risk Assessment (Rac) and Socio-economic Analysis (Seac) committees form opinions on applications for authorisation. Those proposals, addressed to the European Commission as the final decision maker, are non-binding.
At the same time, the decision-making powers of the Commission are limited and controlled by other bodies at the EU level – namely the REACH Committee, the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union – in the so-called ‘committee procedure’ (or comitology, as named in REACH Article 133). Thus, decisions on REACH authorisation may well have a different outcome than initially proposed by Echa, its committees and even the Commission.
The draft decision
The Commission needs to prepare a draft decision on authorisation applications (REACH Article 64(8)), within three months of receiving opinions from Echa. However, Echa has no such deadline for recommending Annex XIV substances. This draft decision is agreed by all responsible Commission Directorates General (DG). For REACH, these are DG Environment and DG Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs.
Already, at this stage, the influence of stakeholders may lead to a deviation from the Echa proposal. A recent example is the Commission note to the REACH Committee of 19 October 2015 on the 5th and 6th Echa Annex XIV recommendation, which considers that borates, n,n-dimethylformamide (DMF) and diazene-1,2-dicarboxamide (C,C’-azodi(formamide)) (ADCA) should not be included in Annex XIV, for the time being. This can partly be understood as a result of stakeholder claims that authorisation is not the appropriate risk management option; substitution is not possible; or continued use is considered critical.
It is, therefore, important for industry and other stakeholders to participate in the Commission call for information on the socio-economic consequences of the authorisation requirement, which was run in parallel to Echa’s public consultation on its draft Annex XIV recommendations in 2014 and 2015. The input provided is used by the Commission for its decision making on Annex XIV inclusion.
The REACH Committee opinion
The Commission has to present its draft decisions to the REACH Committee, which is composed of EU member states’ representatives and which it chairs (It has no voting rights).
Stakeholders do not know much about the committee discussions, because they are confidential.
For draft decisions on Annex XIV listings, the committee procedure still follows the old comitology decision 1999/468/EC (as amended by decision 2006/512/EC) with its “regulatory procedure with scrutiny”. Draft decisions on applications for authorisation follow the revised so-called “examination procedure”, introduced by Regulation (EU) No 182/2011. In both cases, the committee opinion requires a qualified - or “double” - majority of the member states, laid down in Article 16(4) of the treaty on the European Union:
majority of countries: at least 55 % of the member states – in practice, this means 16 out of 28; and
majority of population: member states comprising at least 65 % of the population of the Union.
Stakeholders, wishing to approach national delegations for lobbying purposes, should keep in mind that Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Spain and Poland are the six biggest EU member states by population, totalling over 70% of the 28 member states. A recent example, showing that the REACH Committee representatives are not just rubber-stamping Commission proposals, is the controversial case of the proposed lead pigment authorisation.
Right of scrutiny for the European Parliament and Council
Major differences between the two decision procedures occur in relation to the role of the European Parliament and Council. In both cases, the two EU institutions have a so-called “right of scrutiny”, that is they may indicate to the Commission that, in their view, the draft decision exceeds its implementing powers provided for in the REACH Regulation. However, the right of scrutiny has a different configuration.
Draft decisions on applications for authorisation
In case of draft decisions on applications for authorisation, where the REACH Committee delivers a positive opinion, the Commission shall in principle adopt them. The scrutiny by the European Parliament and Council is not a formal part of the examination procedure. However, they may, “at any time” during decision making, exercise their right of scrutiny. If they do so and oppose the proposal, the Commission shall review the draft decision, taking account of the positions expressed, and then inform the European Parliament and Council whether it intends to maintain, amend or withdraw it. This means that the Parliament and Council do not have a blocking right for the Commission decision on applications for authorisation, but they can force it to reassess its draft.
The European Parliament has recently made use of this right of scrutiny in a resolution dated 25 November 2015, where it expressed its objection to the Commission proposal to grant an authorisation for the formulation of recycled soft PVC, containing bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), and has demanded its rejection instead. As a result, the Commission needs to review its draft decision and submit it to the REACH Committee; which is planned for March.
Draft decisions on Annex XIV listings
By contrast, draft decisions on Annex XIV listings, endorsed by the REACH Committee, must be referred by the Commission without delay to provide the European Parliament and Council a three-month scrutiny period. Hence, the right of scrutiny is an integral part of this procedure. The two institutions may oppose the adoption of the Commission draft, not only on the grounds that it exceeds the implementing powers provided for in the REACH Regulation, but also by indicating that it is not compatible with the aim or the content of REACH or does not respect the principles of subsidiarity or proportionality.
If the draft decision is opposed within the three months, the Commission shall not adopt it. It may submit to the REACH Committee an amended draft decision or present a legislative proposal.
Therefore, the right of scrutiny for the two EU co-legislators gives them a blocking right – meaning the Commission is dependent on the support of the European Parliament and Council for its decisions on Annex XIV inclusions.
Experience gained, so far, has shown that the right of scrutiny is mainly of relevance for the European Parliament, because the Council consists of member state representatives, just like the REACH Committee.
By contrast, the EU Parliament is composed of representatives of the Union’s citizens, who elect them directly. Members of the European Parliament exercise their mandate independently, and are not bound by any instructions (Rule 2 of the European Parliament Rules of Procedure).
The final Commission decision
If the Commission proposal has passed the REACH Committee and the scrutiny of European Parliament and Council as outlined above, the Commission shall adopt its draft decision.
The final decision is published in the Official Journal of the European Union as a Commission Regulation amending REACH Annex XIV and as a summary of the Commission decision on the authorisation application, respectively. The Commission keeps an up-to-date list of decisions on authorisation applications.
As you can see, it is worth stakeholders being acquainted with the Commission side of the authorisation decision-making process. Echa’s proposals may well be overturned or amended. In each key step of the Commission’s decision-making process – draft decision, REACH Committee opinion, right of scrutiny for the European Parliament and Council – affected stakeholders have the ability to influence decision makers and representatives at the EU and national level, to make sure that the final Commission decision complies both with the REACH legal requirements and their interests.
https://chemicalwatch.com/45726/the-commissions-decisions-on-authorisation
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Niche Chemicals: A 2018 Concern?
Mar 16, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Leigh Stringer
Echa currently estimates that up to 70,000 registrations will be prepared, for up to 25,000 substances, in 2018 – three times more than in the previous deadlines in 2010 and 2013.
With dossiers at this level, it is understandable that the final deadline is regarded as the most challenging. But the challenge is not only in the number of registrations but also with the type of registrant.
Because the last deadline applies to substances produced or imported in small volumes (1 to 100 tonnes), many are expected to be inexperienced, small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
t is also anticipated that many of the 25,000 substances to be registered will be niche or speciality chemicals. Therefore, unlike during the last two deadlines, it is likely that more companies will be weighing up the pros and cons of registering.
“A company using or producing these type of chemicals will have to make a business decision on whether there is enough market for them to go through the registration process,” says Echa’s director of registration, Christel Musset.
This could mean that the potential for substances to disappear from the market is much higher than the previous two deadlines. But it is still too early to establish which, and how many, substances could be at risk of not being registered, says Ms Musset.
Dr Marko Susnik of the European Association of Craft, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (Ueapme), and the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber, says that it is likely that some products will disappear from the market because some substances are not registered but agrees that it is too soon to tell the extent of those that are at risk.
The picture may become clearer next year. Both Ueapme and Echa are considering carrying out surveys in 2017 to gather information.
However, Dr Susnik is already seeing companies in Austria deciding to opt out of registering certain substances in their portfolios. Others, meanwhile, have not yet started to prepare their registration dossiers.
“They are waiting till the very latest possible date to start the registration process to give them time to decide on whether they’re going to register or not,” he says.
Dr Susnik says Ueapme, which is an association made up of other SME associations, is hearing two sides to the issue.
On one side, he says, some companies are saying that substances have disappeared in the past and that they are not concerned because the chemical industry will “solve it by creating and providing suitable alternatives”.
The other group, however, are “really concerned about losing their substances and some are already looking for substitutes”.
With the introduction of REACH, says Dr Susnik, more substances now go through more regulatory processes in addition to other legislation – such as biocides, pesticides, f-gases regulations.
“Regulatory intensity is significantly higher than it was before REACH and so for SMEs the focus is transferred from innovation to compliance,” he says.
“You have two trends happening on the EU market right now – one, there is less capacity for innovation and two, more substances need to be substituted,” he adds.
“It is going to become harder for the chemical industry to develop substitutes in an efficient way,” he says.
Therefore, it is quite possible that some SMEs will opt out of registering to avoid complying with the increasingly stringent regulations, he adds.
Security of supply
The concerns are not limited to SMEs. Speaking to Chemical Watch, Echa’s executive director, Geert Dancet, said the agency is aware of certain sectors where there is more risk of substances not being registered.
One example is the essential oils for perfumes and flavours sector. The agency is working with such companies to identify orphan substances.
“The bigger companies need [these substances] but there is no one from the producers clearly saying that they will register them,” he said.
“The sector, however, is trying to stimulate the suppliers or even some of the downstream users to take over responsibility for registering them so they don’t disappear from the market,” he added.
Speaking at Chemical Watch’s Global Business Summit last month, Bert Handels, REACH programme manager at resins producer Aliancys, said there have been occasions where the company has stepped in as a registrant for an ‘orphan’ substance, if it makes sense economically.
In 2010, close to the deadline, one of Aliancys’s suppliers told the company that it would not be registering a substance and, therefore, would stop supply.
“We had to find a solution. Luckily we had a second supplier, which took over, but they had to rush to register and told us that we had to pay for the registration,” he says.
This was a dossier for over 100 tonnes. “We agreed on a joint development of the dossier and paid half the cost.”
Major printing inks supplier, Flint Group, says it, along with its suppliers, are assessing whether it is worth registering certain substances.
Flint’s Andreas Teuschen, director of global regulation, who also spoke at the summit, asked: “Is it worth registering a substance used in a product that has a turnover of around €60,000, when the cost of registering is €40,000?”
“REACH has so far had only minor impacts on business but this will change in 2018 because it will lead to a consolidation of raw material, not only for ecological reasons but more for economical reasons, which will result in bottlenecks and higher costs,” he says.
He said one concern for companies is a “weakness” in REACH that has enabled businesses to avoid registering substances if they split the business into several legal entities.
To tackle registration concerns, Flint has developed a “readiness check” process to ask its suppliers what stage they have got to with their 2018 registrations.
And, according to Mr Teuschen, trade associations have started recommending this approach.Communication
The challenge in the run up to 2018 has, and continues to be, raising awareness. Echa is contacting sectors, and in particular SMEs within those, which may be struggling to develop registration dossiers for complex substances.
It is doing this by working with member states, and the 2018 communicators network that it established to raise awareness of the last deadline.
This, said Ms Musset, is a challenge for the agency because some of the SMEs are not necessarily reachable through “our traditional communication channels”, such as trade associations Cefic and the Downstream Users of Chemicals Co-ordination group (Ducc).
“We are raising awareness, through communication campaigns with chambers of commerce and member states, so that we can reach the ‘unreachable’ because many are not a part of traditional trade associations,” said Ms Musset.
Echa’s Directors’ Contact Group (DCG) has also been used as a way of communicating registration issues and has, in recent years, focused on coordinating support for SMEs in the run up to 2018.
Dr Susnik says this is always going to be a challenge because reaching out to SMEs across the region is far more complicated than disseminating information through large trade bodies.
“We have set up workshops in Austria to raise awareness of the deadline but those participating are often known faces from companies, which already know about the obligations.”
REACH Registration
2010: 5,982 companies submitted 24,675 registration dossiers. 86% of registrations were made by large companies and 14% by small or medium-sized companies.
2013: 3,215 companies submitted 9,084 registration dossiers. 34% of the companies declared themselves as micro, small or medium-sized companies, accounting for 19 % of all registrations.
2018: estimated 70,000 registrations dossiers prepared for up to 25,000 substances.
https://chemicalwatch.com/45718/niche-chemicals-a-2018-concern
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Redeeming a ‘Maligned Science’
Mar 16, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Charlotte Niemiec
Chemistry has made substantive changes to the way we live since the industrial revolution, said Dr Swaminathan Sivaram of India’s National Chemical Laboratories, speaking at last December’s International Green Chemistry World (IGCW) conference, held in Mumbai.
Think aspirin, synthetic rubber, nylon or packaged goods. But these innovations, he said, have become ordinary; public perception is low. Chemistry is considered “mature” technology where everything that can be done, has been done.
“It is a maligned science, associated with global warming, pollution, disasters such as Minamata, Bhopal, Seveso, Love Canal, thalidomide and DDT,” he added.
The products of chemistry also cause an enormous amount of public indignation, he said
But he added that green chemistry has the potential to change this environmental impact and its associated negative perception.
How do we redesign chemistry to protect the future? How do we communicate to stakeholders and consumers that chemistry is a responsible science? Green chemistry, which began in the 1990s, is one step towards a safer, more sustainable science, he said.
More relevant than ever
The 12 principles of green chemistry focus on preventing and reducing hazardous waste, minimising energy use and emphasise always opting for less hazardous alternatives. Rule number one: if a safer alternative does not exist, create it.
A good contender for a green product could be one derived from waste, requiring little to no energy to produce, non-toxic and either recyclable or will biodegrade with no harm to human health or the environment.
Speaking to Chemical Watch, John Warner, president of the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry and co-founder of the 12 principles, who chaired some of the panel sessions at the conference, says that it should marry together safety, performance and cost in a sustainable product that performs as well as, or better than, the original, at the same or a lower cost.
These principles have stood the test of time, he says. Two decades later, they are “as relevant as they have ever been and require no supplementation”.
Aside from its core principles, should the definition of green chemistry change in light of any confusion surrounding what constitutes “green” , “sustainable” or “renewable”? Mr Warner says it shouldn’t. He explains: “Back in the early 1990s, if one looks at the sustainability landscape, chemists were noticeably absent. The reason they were absent is because the discussions around sustainability did not include the molecular sciences; most involved chemical policy, supply chain management, alternatives assessment and other things in which ‘beakers and flasks’ research chemists aren’t really involved.”
Green chemistry, however, is the molecular level science for such chemists and the molecular science part of sustainability. “If we expand the definition to include issues that do not focus on the molecular science, we risk returning to a situation where the ‘beakers and flasks’ research chemists are no longer centre stage. This must be avoided at all costs.”
While David Constable, director of the American Chemical Society, suggests more principles could be applied in theory, of more importance is clearing up the confusion between sustainability and renewability. Green chemistry is not the same as sustainable chemistry, and “sustainability should be emphasised”.
Ten years ago, the Green Chemistry and Commerce Council (GC3) found that one barrier to change was uncertainty around what green chemistry meant. However, today, Mr Warner says he visits hundreds of companies and “no one has ever said to me, ‘We are confused, we do not understand what green chemistry is’. The companies I interact with have embraced [it] as a strategy and are investing resources to further it.”
If confusion remains, he says, “cynically, I feel the companies … are setting up a smokescreen to avoid the necessary investment and justify using unacceptable materials.”
Mr Constable agrees. “People are confused about what they choose to be confused about,” but “some companies are beginning to understand that it’s often cheaper and more efficient to produce products using green chemistry the first time round, as they don’t have to reformulate later.”
Future steps for a greener world
According to a report by market analysts, Pike Research, the green chemistry market is estimated to grow from $2.8bn in 2011 to almost $100bn in 2020. To feed this growth, innovation is needed in academia, in the lab and in the process of putting a product to market. More resources are required: money, equipment, tools.
Education, however, is key. “We cannot rest until every university that gives degrees in chemistry requires students to have some minimal training in toxicology and environmental hazards,” Mr Warner urges.
There are two components, he says – moral and ethical on the one hand, commercial and economic on the other. He explains: “We must stop sending scientists out to invent new molecules and products, without providing them with some basic understanding of negative impacts.”
“As the vast majority of chemistry students ultimately take jobs in industry, one of the biggest barriers to success in the marketplace is the ability to anticipate and navigate environmental regulations,” he says.
Mr Constable says a better collaboration between chemistry and engineering is required to maximise resource efficiency, eliminate and minimise hazards and pollution, and design systems holistically, using lifecycle thinking. More time needs to be spent in the design phase, with more thought given to the end of a product’s life, to ensure the chemicals being designed are really sustainable.
Often, Mr Warner adds, “companies invent new technologies twice”. “The first invention occurs from students unaware of the ‘real world’ realities of manufacturing; a second, more experienced scientist must then step in and reinvent the technology to be consistent with the[se] realities.”
He says that if students, instead, learned some of these realities at university, companies would be more efficient and have a faster time to market. A better consideration of the human health and environmental impacts, during the invention process, would also provide a significant boost in innovation and creativity, he adds.
Ultimately, Mr Constable says: “Green chemistry is not about managing chemicals, it’s about imagining and creating chemicals that don’t have hazards associated with them.”
“It should be an idea that spurs innovation,” he says.
To regulate or not to regulate?
Companies that take a longer-term approach to development will inevitably reap the benefits, he says. As Tatiana Santos of the European Environmental Bureau (EBB) said, last year in an article for the GBB: “Sooner or later, since the substances of most concern will be regulated and/or phased out, companies using obsolete and hazardous chemistry risk being shut down.”
So should regulation, therefore, be a key driver for a more sustainable approach? Mr Warner believes it is, at best, an interim measure.
“It is more complicated than a simple cause and effect relationship,” he says. “If a better, more cost-effective alternative exists in the marketplace, chemical policy will mandate its use, support its commercial success and facilitate adoption. The problem occurs when an alternative has not yet been invented. We cannot schedule inventions or command a scientist to invent something.”
If there is no viable alternative, “chemicals policy must accommodate the gap in time.”
And there is still plenty to invent. Mr Warner argues that 10% of existing technologies are benign and 25% have available alternatives – the remainder have none.
Mr Constable is less optimistic, suggesting instead that regulation stifles innovation. He doesn’t believe imposing regulations will help boost green chemistry as “it has rarely been shown to help.” Of more importance is integrating green chemistry into the basic principles of chemistry itself; to include it in university courses, to change how we teach the subject and conduct business processes.
“The way we practice chemistry now is completely and utterly unsustainable,” he says. A cradle-to-grave process is required if we are to achieve Mr Warner’s goal for the term green chemistry to “disappear and simply become how we practice chemistry”.
https://chemicalwatch.com/45721/redeeming-a-maligned-science
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Fragrance Ingredient Disclosure and the Personal Care Products Safety Act
Mar 16, 2016 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Alexandra Scranton
When it comes to fragrance, what we don’t know is actually hurting us. Secrecy around ingredients is a long held tradition in the fragrance industry, but one that is outdated, unnecessary and poses a real barrier to ensuring the safety of personal care products.
The Personal Care Products Safety Act (S. 1014) is a bill that aims to improve the safety of cosmetics by increasing the regulatory authority of the FDA and requiring manufacturers to substantiate the safety of their products. These are important tools, but the bill also needs to close the loophole on fragrance ingredients, which by law are allowed to be kept secret from both consumers and cosmetic manufacturers. The only required disclosure for personal care products labeling is that the ingredients list includes the word “fragrance”.
Unfortunately, a “fragrance” can include dozens to hundreds of individual chemicals, some of which are known carcinogens, neurotoxins, endocrine disruptors, or known to cause allergies. Toxic fragrance ingredients, like styrene, phthalates and musks, which would raise eyebrows if they were listed on a package label, can legally be hidden from view by being collectively listed as “fragrance.”
In many cases, even the manufacturers of scented lotions, shampoos and other products do not know the components of the fragrances in their own products, because their fragrance suppliers won’t disclose them. The human health impacts of these secret fragrance ingredients are seen every day worldwide. Tens of millions of people, predominately women, experience skin reactions and rashes to “fragrance” without being able to identify the specific allergens causing the problem. It is well-documented that exposure to “fragrance” can exacerbate asthma and other breathing problems, and can trigger migraines. But again, the precise fragrance components causing these adverse reactions are unknown due to the fragrance disclosure loophole. The potential numbers of cancers, birth defects, immune diseases or other syndromes linked to fragrance exposure are simply unknown, but of great concern.
How can we truly work towards safer personal care products when we are prevented from even identifying many of the ingredients that are adversely affect our health? There is consensus that personal care product safety is vital to public health, given the direct and intimate exposures to the multiple products we use on a daily basis.
Requiring fragrance transparency, on a par with all other cosmetic ingredients, will serve to advance our knowledge, and allow individuals, manufacturers and the FDA to ensure that personal care products are safe and healthy to use.
Scranton is director of Science and Research at Women's Voices for the Earth.
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/273097-fragrance-ingredient-disclosure-and-the-personal-care-products-safety-act
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Strong Support for Offshore Energy
Mar 16, 2016 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Erik Milito
The Obama administration’s decision to backtrack on plans to explore for energy in the Atlantic is a major blow to the nation’s energy security. After including one potential Atlantic lease sale in last year’s draft five-year leasing plan, the Interior Department’s course reversal in the final plan released this week caters to environmental extremists at the expense of American consumers and coastal state voters who support offshore energy.
By doubling down on an outdated policy that keeps 87 percent of federally controlled offshore acreage – basically everywhere except the western Gulf of Mexico – off limits to energy exploration, federal policy is forfeiting the long-term potential for millions of barrels’ worth of energy security and thousands of jobs.
Given the long lead-time necessary to develop offshore projects, this decision packs a policy impact that will extend well beyond its 2017 – 2022 window.
Consider the Gulf of Mexico, which is on track to reach record high oil production levels next year, according to new projections from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). By the end of 2017, production is projected to reach 1.9 million barrels per day, accounting for 21 percent of total U.S. crude oil production. That’s a crucial contribution to America’s energy security, economy and global energy leadership. But it didn’t happen overnight. It’s the result of decades of planning, exploration and investment.
The Obama administration had the opportunity to lay the groundwork now, through the next five-year program, to initiate the same process in the Atlantic. A large bipartisan group of governors and numerous members of Congress from Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina are all onboard.New polling shows more than 60 percent of voters in each of those states support offshore energy development, including majorities of Democrats, Republicans and Independents.
Opening areas in the Atlantic, Pacific and Eastern Gulf of Mexico could lead to production of more than 3.5 million barrels of oil equivalent per day – almost twice the amount EIA projects we’ll reach next year in the western Gulf. For the Atlantic alone, production could reach 1.3 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, equal to about 70 percent of current Gulf output. This means long-term reliance on U.S. production, as opposed to an increased reliance on potentially hostile regions of the world to meet our continued demand for oil and natural gas.
Accessing offshore oil and natural gas resources is safer now than ever before. Regulators and the industry together have made great strides to enhance the safety of offshore operations in recent years.
Decades of experience in the U.S. and around the world demonstrate that commercial and recreational fishing, tourism and military activity can safely and successfully coexist with offshore oil and natural gas development.
With Americans enjoying some of the lowest gas prices of the decade and world energy markets less susceptible to shocks caused by turbulence in unstable regions, adding production capacity may not seem urgent. But that kind of shortsighted thinking is not the way to maintain our position as the world’s leading oil and natural gas producer. Expanding offshore development is key to sustaining an American energy resurgence that has proved vital to our economy and security. Instead of moving ahead with a forward-thinking offshore policy, the Obama administration is closing the door to jobs, government revenue and a critical opportunity to build energy security for the future.
Milito is director of upstream and industry operations at the American Petroleum Institute.
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-environment/273102-strong-support-for-offshore-energy
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Atlantic Announcement 'A Near Non-Event' for Industry
Mar 16, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Nathanial Gronewold
Atlantic offshore drilling was taken off the table long before the Obama administration made it official.
The Department of the Interior yesterday unveiled a revision to its proposed offshore oil and gas exploration leasing program to cover the years 2017 to 2022. The draft proposal was first put forward for public comment in early 2015.
Secretary Sally Jewell and her department noted one significant change to the plan: A proposal to hold a lease sale of acreage in the mid- and south Atlantic basin in 2021 has been removed. The change drew strong notice and a mix of ire and relief among oil and gas industry trade groups and environmental organizations.
Maria Sanchez, an industry analyst at Ponderosa Advisors LLC, says in practical terms the announcement means little, especially in light of low oil prices. There is no drilling in the Atlantic planned anyway, and the current state of the offshore sector made it very unlikely rigs will rush in to chase oil riches in those waters, even after the oil price recovers from current lows.
"To us, it's a near non-event," Sanchez said. "If this impacted the Gulf of Mexico, that would be a different story, but really there is no significant activity happening in the Atlantic right now."
Even as the oil price rises again, Sanchez notes that industry is not starved for drilling opportunities in the United States even if the Atlantic is kept off-limits.
"The U.S. has so many onshore reserves, and even offshore, the Gulf of Mexico is not going away," she said.
A broad swath of government and private-sector analysts see oil prices eventually recovering, but only slowly. Though predicting the future that far out is impossible, most believe that by the time Atlantic leases would have been offered, the global demand-supply balance will keep crude oil prices much lower than the $100-per-barrel average companies were enjoying before the price began tumbling.
One immediate effect of Interior's decision may be seen in active seismic imaging efforts underway to better understand the oil and gas potential of the nation's Atlantic waters. Those efforts may cease, as oil companies will only pay big money for survey data if there is a reasonable expectation they will actually be allowed to explore in the areas covered by the survey.
Jewell said vocal opposition to offshore drilling by East Coast communities, concerns from the Navy and the current condition of the oil market prompted the decision. Planned lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and offshore Alaska remain in the proposal.
A 90-day public comment period will allow industry and drilling opponents to vent. They are not hesitating to do so.
"Even if the offshore industry were able to explore along the East Coast, it would be a multi-year process with all the proper planning and environmental controls in place," said Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) President Barry Russell in a release. "This further deters investment and removes the flexibility that America needs, should the international situation change a few short years from now."
National Ocean Industries Association President Randall Luthi called concern over national security implications "a red herring," as the military has operated alongside the Gulf of Mexico's massive offshore oil and gas sector for decades unimpeded.
While mostly in a celebratory mood, some environmental groups were of split opinions.
Activists want Arctic leases canceled, too
Taking the Atlantic away from the industry was a good move, said Friends of the Earth, but the group wanted to see the Arctic Alaskan waters pulled from leasing consideration, as well. Leaving those areas in the proposal goes against the United States' commitments outlined in the Paris climate change agreements and is in violation of the spirit of climate mitigation cooperation with Canada recently announced, said FOE campaigner Marissa Knodel.
The Natural Resources Defense Council issued a call to reverse the Arctic leasing plan, as well.
Sanchez at Ponderosa thinks fear of an oil spill off the Eastern Seaboard was behind military concerns that nudged Interior toward a reversal. Longer term, the government may reverse itself again and offer up the Atlantic in the case of a geopolitical shock to oil supplies as IPAA alluded to, she speculated, but the market trend doesn't favor activity in that basin.
"Those reserves are not going anywhere," Sanchez said. "At some point, the U.S. might need them, they can stay there and things can change. But I think based on the outlook that we see right now for the onshore and even in the Gulf of Mexico, we don't see any impact necessarily to anything on the supply side."
Oil prices at $36 per barrel in North America are what's really driving companies away, in the Arctic and Gulf of Mexico.
Oil production from the Gulf is expanding and set to reach a record peak, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. But drilling activity has plunged there and is unlikely to recover until the oil price firms up. The number of active rigs operating in Gulf waters is down by half. Participation in lease sales under the current schedule has also fallen steeply.
The price collapse also preceded Royal Dutch Shell PLC's decision to pull out of Alaska. Others have followed it, and there is little evidence of industry interest in participating in more Alaska bid rounds.
Driller's death in Gulf scrutinized
Meanwhile, a fatality in the Gulf of Mexico last week is drawing closer scrutiny from federal investigators and further highlights the inherent dangers of working on offshore rigs and installations.
On Friday, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement and the Coast Guard announced the death of a Nabors Drilling worker, Roy Miller. BSEE said Miller was killed while doing maintenance on equipment for Whistler Energy LLC. BSEE Director Brian Salerno sent his condolences.
A four-member investigative panel has been formed to look into the cause of the death and recommend changes to prevent further injuries or fatalities.
http://www.eenews.net/energywire/2016/03/16/stories/1060034053
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IHS: “If Producers Have the Money, They Drill”
Mar 16, 2016 | Fuel Fix
By Collin Eaton
The break-even costs of drilling new wells in U.S. shale plays are becoming less important as an indicator of the nation’s future oil production growth. What’s more important? U.S. drillers’ access to capital, IHS says.
Analysts estimate most companies need crude prices to average $45 to $50 a barrel to break even on drilling new shale-oil wells. But IHS believes U.S. oil producers would need another $50 billion this year to keep their production flat through 2016. That would require oil prices to climb to just around $44 to $45 a barrel, said Jamie Webster, an oil-market analyst at IHS, during the consultancy’s World Petrochemical Conference in downtown Houston on Wednesday.
“Anything below that, and they’re going to need more money from the banks,” Webster said. “Banks have always give a lot of money and always allowed these producers since the dawn of the shale era to spend more money than they bring in that year. But we’ve seen a shift in the mindset of banks.”
Banks have signaled they’re bracing for energy loan losses and could try to reduce their exposure to beleaguered oil companies. And consultancy AlixPartners estimates oil companies face a $130 billion cash shortfall at $30 oil. But other sources of cash have sprung up this year. So far in 2016, stock-market investors have poured $9.96 billion into U.S. oil companies through a series of recent stock sales, with Gulfport Energy, PDC Energy and Matador Resources raising $817 million in recent weeks.
Exxon Mobil Corp., ConocoPhillips and Anadarko Petroleum have recently raised a combined $18 billion in corporate debt. And Morgan Stanley on Tuesday noted oil producers are hedging at increasingly high levels as crude prices continue to rally.
“They’re looking at every place they can to find money,” Webster said. “But generally what you see is, if producers have the money, they drill. Most of them are quite bullish (on oil prices).”
On Wednesday, U.S. crude climbed $1.29 to $37.63 a barrel amid renewed talk of an April meeting between the world’s largest oil producers and a smaller-than-expected build in U.S. crude inventories.
IHS believes U.S. crude production will fall this year and ease the global oil glut by the second half of the year, though Webster said there’s a risk that the recent oil price rally will keep U.S. output from falling enough to realign global supply and demand. If that happens, oil prices could fall further.
“The $26 a barrel we experienced in January is actually going to seem like a pretty high price if this happens,” Webster said. But Webster expects oil traders, unlike last year, to recognize they need to keep prices low to rebalance oil supply and demand, and that the rally will fade before it can U.S. keep production level this year.
“There’s a lot of concern by a lot of people that they don’t want to overtalk things too much and bring it back up,” Webster said. “Trying to find that Goldilocks space is very difficult.”
At the conference, IHS chief economist Nariman Behravesh said the global economy will remain in “low gear” for at least another year. But U.S. consumer spending and the domestic housing sector — together about 75 percent of the nation’s economy — have stayed healthy and have offset the recession in U.S. manufacturing sector amid sharply lower energy capital spending.
“Energy capex is just 2 percent of the U.S. economy, but a 50 percent drop in 2 percent of the economy is pretty intense,” Behravesh said. Still, “the big drop in gasoline prices is like an annual tax cut for consumers. They’re spending it, but in very small sums. The effect is still positive.”
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2016/03/16/cash-now-bigger-indicator-of-u-s-oil-production-than-break-even-costs-ihs-says/
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Lawmakers Move to Block Climate Rule Planning
Mar 16, 2016 | E&E Climatewire
By Emily Holden and Elizabeth Harball
Missouri lawmakers are pushing legislation to prohibit the state from planning for the Obama administration's climate change regulation until a Supreme Court stay on implementing the rule is lifted.
Two separate bills are working their way through the state Legislature: One, which advanced this week, would suspend U.S. EPA Clean Power Plan activities imposing greenhouse gas standards for power plants until litigation is resolved. The other would halt activity only while the Supreme Court stay is in place.
It would also require the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR), which is in charge of the state's response, to request an extension to submit a final plan if the rule is upheld.
Renew Missouri Deputy Director Mark Walter said agency officials testified in a public hearing last week that in the meantime they have ceased all work on the Clean Power Plan. He called the legislation more political than practical and noted that the agency's decision could be costly for Missouri.
"DNR should be as prepared as possible to comply with the Clean Power Plan as soon as possible," Walter said. "Just because the Supreme Court has put a stay on it doesn't mean that the deadlines are going to change if that stay is lifted, and then we're going to be behind the eight ball."
The governor's office and DNR did not return requests for comment. A halt to compliance activities would make Missouri the 20th state to suspend planning since the Supreme Court stay.
EPA has not said whether its schedule for states to submit plans and reach goals will change as a result of the stay, but critics of the rule have argued it is customary to "toll" deadlines, or postpone them to account for the length of any court action suspending implementation.
Another downside of suspending planning is jeopardizing the state's ability to get extra credit under EPA's Clean Energy Incentive Program for investing in energy efficiency in low-income communities and building up renewable energy early, Walter said.
Legislatures taking action
The House bill (H.B. 2543), passed yesterday by the House Standing Committee on Energy and the Environment, would bar planning work until all litigation is over -- which could mean indefinitely.
The Select Committee on Utilities, which will take up the measure next, plans to revise it to match Senate legislation (S.B. 858), Walter said. That bill is awaiting floor action. House legislators are expected to amend their bill to match the Senate version.
Walter said House lawmakers are also drafting a budget that would prevent DNR from spending funds to work on a Clean Power Plan blueprint. Wyoming legislators passed a similar measure recently but did not prohibit state agencies from spending money to attend meetings and stay apprised of any need to write a plan. Wyoming's Republican Gov. Matt Mead has expressed an interest in continuing planning work.
Aliya Haq, a special projects director tracking Clean Power Plan state action for the Natural Resources Defense Council, estimates legislatures in seven states have introduced bills to stop work on the Clean Power Plan. Measures introduced in about 15 states have attacked the rule in one way or another, she said.
Haq said "dirty energy interests" are behind the efforts.
"This is another leg of their strategy -- if you can't convince the governor, get the legislature to handcuff the governor," Haq said. She noted that "it's highly likely that utilities really don't want to see this go through because the short amount of time the state can plan for reducing carbon pollution is not helpful."
The conservative political group Americans for Prosperity, however, testified in favor of the Missouri bill and has been heralding state decisions to stop planning.
"States should do what they can to oppose complying with the rule while the legal issues are ongoing," said Chrissy Harbin, director of federal affairs and strategic initiatives for AFP. "This legislation is important because it will protect Missouri families and businesses from the higher electricity prices resulting from the rule while it's likely that EPA has overstepped its authority."
http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2016/03/16/stories/1060034060
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Supreme Court Ruling on Clean Power Plan Doesn't Halt EPA Action or Change Timeline
Mar 16, 2016 | The Hill - Contributors
By Richard Revesz
Last month, the Supreme Court unexpectedly issued a "stay" of the Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of the Obama administration's efforts to mitigate climate change. This decision unquestionably bars the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from enforcing any of the rule's requirements until the lawsuits against it are fully resolved. But opponents claim that the stay requires the EPA to halt all work related to the rule. Under their spurious interpretation, the agency could not, for example, provide additional guidance on emissions trading to the many states and power companies that are moving ahead with planning processes for meeting the rule's carbon reduction targets. In fact, there is ample precedent for federal agencies continuing to work on policies stayed by courts.
Opponents also argue that the stay automatically "tolls" all of the Clean Power Plan's compliance deadlines. In other words, they claim that even if the rule is upheld and the stay lifted, all future deadlines will be postponed for at least the amount of time that the stay was in place. This argument, too, is incorrect. The stay order itself says nothing about tolling, and prior practice suggests that if the rule is upheld, it will be up to the D.C. Circuit to decide whether and how to adjust the rule's timeline, which doesn't call for full compliance until 2030.
History shows that a "stay" doesn’t stop agency efforts
Before the Supreme Court's decision, the EPA released an initial draft — in a separate docket from the Clean Power Plan itself — of model trading rules for states seeking to use emissions trading systems to meet their carbon reduction targets. (The agency also released a draft federal plan outlining compliance options for states that do not submit their own plans to the EPA.) The agency planned to finalize the model trading rules during the summer of 2016 in order to support local planning efforts, which are continuing in many states (including several that are opposed to the Clean Power Plan). Legal precedent suggests that the EPA has the right to continue this work.
Opponents of the rule have argued to the contrary. The attorneys general of Texas and West Virginia (two of the states leading the challenge to the Clean Power Plan in court) recently claimed that "the States, their agencies, and EPA should put their pencils down." Jeff Holmstead, a former EPA official under President George W. Bush who is representing opponents of the Clean Power Plan, argued that further work by EPA would be the equivalent of "thumbing your nose at the Supreme Court." Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) recently made similar comments.
But the EPA has taken actions to implement stayed rules under both the Republican and Democratic administrations over a period spanning almost two decades. After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued a stay on the EPA's Cross-State Air Pollution Rule in 2011, the agency continued work on the rule by adjusting state emissions budgets and resolving issues related to modeling. At the time, the EPA argued that its action "is consistent with and is unaffected by the Court's Order staying the [rule]."
In 2003, under the George W. Bush administration, the EPA also declined to "put its pencil down" when faced with a stay of its rule adding an equipment replacement provision to the Clean Air Act's New Source Review program. Indeed, while the stay was in place, the agency solicited public comments on multiple issues related to the rule. (Holmstead was the EPA's assistant administrator for air and radiation at that time.)
During the Clinton administration in 1999, the D.C. Circuit stayed the NOx SIP (Nitrogen Oxides State Implementation Plan) Call, a rule limiting nitrogen oxides emissions affecting downwind states. While the stay was in place, the agency pursued a related regulation, but gave states the option to voluntarily comply with the stayed rule instead.
Recent claims that the EPA must halt all work on the Clean Power Plan would be persuasive if the court had granted an injunction rather than a stay. The nature of these remedies is very different, but the opponents of the Clean Power Plan treat them as if they were equivalent. As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion in Nken v. Holder (2009), a stay "halt[s] or postpon[es] some portion of the proceeding, or ... temporarily divest[s] an order of enforceability," whereas an injunction "directs the conduct of a party, and does so with the backing of [a court's] full coercive powers." In short, an injunction is a binding restriction on the conduct of the agency. A stay holds much less power, focusing only on the enforceability of the rule.
What happens to compliance deadlines?
The EPA's opponents have argued that the stay automatically delays, or "tolls" all Clean Power Plan deadlines, even though the Supreme Court made no mention of such tolling.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently posted a white paper on its website arguing that, if the Clean Power Plan is upheld by the courts, the "EPA is required to move all the Rule's deadlines into the future by at least the amount of time between the Stay's issuance and its expiration." Inhofe echoed this claim and wrote to the EPA administrator asking her to make clear that such tolling would take place.
Here, again, these claims fly in the face of precedent. Indeed, none of the cases cited in the Chamber of Commerce's white paper support this tolling position. Decisions of this sort are made after a stay is lifted, as was the case for both the NOx SIP Call and the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule. Consistent with the proper reading of prior precedent, if the Supreme Court upholds the rule, or declines to hear the case after the D.C. Circuit upholds it, the D.C. Circuit will decide what to do about the various deadlines. That is not a decision that the Supreme Court made when it granted the stay, and it is ultimately a matter to be decided by the federal courts, not the EPA.
The D.C. Circuit will eventually have wide discretion on what to do about the deadlines, and there are likely to be competing arguments. For example, the general counsel for the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners suggested that "[t]he deadlines that are further out — the 2030 and 2022 deadlines — may change less than the nearer-term ones" after the stay is lifted. Given the extensive lead time and compliance flexibility already built into the Clean Power Plan, and various market forces and policies that are continuing to drive emissions reductions in the power sector, the judges may well decide that revisions to the Clean Power Plan's later deadlines are not justified.
While the stay is in effect, the EPA cannot impose Clean Power Plan requirements on any state that does not voluntarily act. But nothing bars the agency from continuing to develop guidance on emissions trading. Finalizing the model trading rules would both support states that want to move forward with their planning now and speed up the implementation process if the courts ultimately uphold the Clean Power Plan, thereby avoiding unnecessary delays that would further compromise our well-being. Providing interested states and regulated entities with tools to aid their planning is the responsible thing for the EPA to do.
Revesz is dean emeritus and Lawrence King Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, and director of the Institute for Policy Integrity. He is the co-author, with Jack Lienke, of the new book "Struggling for Air: Power Plants and the 'War on Coal.'"
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/energy-environment/273189-supreme-court-ruling-on-clean-power-plan-doesnt-halt
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House Subcommittee Approves Pipeline Safety Bill
Mar 16, 2016 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Andrew Restuccia
A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee easily approved legislation today that would reauthorize the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration — but lawmakers delayed votes on a series of amendments that are certain to divide the panel.
The subcommittee approved the bill by voice vote after lawmakers withdrew more than a dozen amendments in hopes of finding a middle ground before the full committee votes later this spring.
Democrats agreed to withdraw amendments that would, among other things, increase PHMSA's maximum civil penalties, re-insert a provision allowing citizens to file lawsuits to force PHMSA to implement regulations and require broader use of automatic shut-off valves. Republican Rep. Joe Barton also agreed to withdraw his amendment to strike language that would give the Transportation Department new authority to impose widespread emergency restrictions on the country's pipelines.
Committee Chairman Fred Upton hopes to make the PHMSA reauthorization bipartisan. But today's hearing made it clear that there are big disagreements between Republicans and Democrats, particularly on the issue of emergency authority.
The full committee is expected to vote on the bill in the coming weeks. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which also has jurisdiction over PHMSA, is expected to act on its own reauthorization bill later this month, with a floor vote on a combined bill expected by August.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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Overcoming Ethylene Oxide Transport Challenges
Mar 16, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Tom Baker
Ethylene oxide is one of the chemical industry’s most versatile and valuable raw materials for large-scale chemical production. However, it is also one of the most dangerous to transport.
Ethylene oxide derivatives are key chemicals for a range of industrial applications, from production of plastics and household cleaners to petrochemical and agrochemical products. The chemical itself is widely used in healthcare, primarily for the sterilisation of medical devices and products, such as adhesive bandages. Like all high consequence dangerous goods, transporting ethylene oxide in bulk creates several challenges in supply chain management to chemical manufacturers, hauliers and emergency responders.
It is a toxic and flammable gas, with wide explosive limits, and its vapour is capable of undergoing explosive decomposition, even in the absence of air. The blast radius of an ethylene oxide explosion can be several thousand feet wide, with devastating consequences to the surrounding population and environment. The cost of a major incident to the company involved will be similarly severe: the combination of the damage to people and property, cost of clean-up, loss of production and longer term reputational harm. For example, an ethylene oxide explosion at materials sterilisation company Sterigenics in 2004 injured four personnel and rendered its plant unusable for nine months.
Due to their potential for misuse, if intercepted during transport, ethylene oxide and other high consequence dangerous goods – such as packages of packing group I toxic substances or tanks of flammable gases – must be kept secure under the requirements of the European agreement concerning the international carriage of dangerous goods by road (ADR). For companies transporting them, implementing a chemical risk mitigation and management infrastructure, that delivers security throughout the supply chain, is essential.
Building security into the supply chain
The key to a company’s security plan for ethylene oxide, and any other high consequence dangerous goods, is guaranteeing the safety of the load while it is stopped en-route. Haulage can be disrupted for planned stoppages, such as waiting for sea transport or for driver rest, or for unforeseen reasons, such as a flat tyre. Best practice requires companies to pre-vet the route that the load is going to take and plan the stops so they can be made at locations known to be secure.
This requires a step-change in mentality, and a reappraisal of what an ‘emergency’ really means. For a normal load, a flat tyre would be a logistical issue at most. However, when handling high consequence dangerous goods, simply stopping at an unsecured location immediately counts as an emergency and requires an instant response. For example, in dealing with the flat tyre, the driver of an ethylene oxide tanker may run out of allocated driving time and be unable to reach his pre-approved secure stopping point. A new stopping point may have to be found at short notice (hopefully from a pre-planned back-up list), or the driver may have to be guided from his allowed route to another approved passage.
Companies also need to be prepared for technical issues in transporting the load. Gaseous ethylene oxide is capable of undergoing spontaneous explosive decomposition and so it is transported as a liquefied gas, under pressure. Drivers transporting the substance have reported a drop in pressure in their tanks, thinking it is a technical issue when, in fact, the chemical has begun vaporising and is approaching its explosive range.
Worse still, the temperature of the tank contents could start to rise, indicating that dangerous decomposition has begun. In one incident in Germany, an entire rail tanker of ethylene oxide was inspected at a stopping point and found to be at an elevated temperature. The rail operator had not understood the hazards of the load and allowed the train to continue on its journey.
As a formality the operator called the company’s emergency line, once the train had left, where the situation was instantly raised to an emergency incident. Ensuring that all stakeholders across the supply chain have the depth of understanding and training required to identify these issues, and that processes are robustly audited, is key for mitigating incidents along the supply chain.
Planning for emergencies, involving high consequence dangerous goods, also requires companies to consider specialised first aid and decontamination processes. For instance, ethylene oxide and water mixtures can cause severe skin damage, so any decontamination with water needs to be extremely thorough to make sure all of the ethylene oxide is removed. Depending on the situation it can even be safer to let the chemical evaporate, instead of washing the affected area with water.
https://chemicalwatch.com/45724/overcoming-ethylene-oxide-transport-challenges
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Obama’s Supreme Court Nominee Leans Green
Mar 16, 2016 | PoliticoPro
By Alex Guillen
If he makes it to the Supreme Court, Judge Merrick Garland is likely to be a reliable green vote, potentially swinging the court in support of major climate change rules destined to go before the justices as early as next year.
Garland, the chief judge for the D.C. Circuit Court whom President Barack Obama plans to nominate to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia, has a long history on energy and environmental cases. During the Bush administration, he sided with environmentalists in several high-profile cases, and in the Obama administration he has sided with EPA against some key industry challenges.
Green lawyers “regard him as a good judge to have on their panel,” one environmental attorney told POLITICO, “and you can guess how the [Republicans] feel about that.”
Another environmental attorney said Garland is well suited to mull the oftentimes technical and complex issues presented by environmental cases.
The attorney described Garland as “a sort of classic D.C. Circuit, technical, judge’s judge, or lawyer’s judge.”
“I think he’s a fantastic judge, just super diligent, he always digs into the appendix,” the attorney added.
Garland would replace Scalia, who joined a majority in issuing an unprecedented stay of EPA's Clean Power Plan that regulates carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. A three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit is scheduled to hear oral arguments in June, placing a ruling in the late summer or fall and teeing up a Supreme Court review potentially as early as next spring.
Early opposition focused largely on Obama’s decision even to choose a nominee, not Garland himself.
American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity President and CEO Mike Duncan said the choice should not be made by “a lame-duck president with a history of executive overreach.”
“Given the split of the court, the power to decide who fills the vacancy should be made after the electoral dust settles and the people have spoken,” he added.
One of Garland’s recent, high-profile environmental cases was ultimately reversed by the Supreme Court — in an opinion authored by Scalia last year.
Garland and two other D.C. Circuit judges in 2014 broadly upheld EPA’s mercury rule for power plants, though one of the panel members, George W. Bush appointee Brett M. Kavanaugh, dissented on one point: whether EPA should have considered costs of the rule earlier in its process when it made the decision to regulate.
Scalia seized on that point when the case reached the Supreme Court, which in a 5-4 decision last year sided against EPA on that narrow issue, reversing Garland. Still, the justices returned the case to the D.C. Circuit, where Garland and the D.C. panel decided the mercury rule could stay alive until EPA fixes the flaw that was identified by the Supreme Court. That fix, due next month, is also expected to face its own fresh legal challenge, focusing on EPA’s use of co-benefits.
Other rulings have also been praised by environmentalists, though the cases don’t always reveal a partisan split.
In 2003, Garland rejected a challenge to the Endangered Species Act that contended the law was a violation of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause. And in 2004, he sided with environmentalists in concluding the Bush EPA had given the D.C. metro area too much time to comply with an ozone standard.
More recently, in 2014, Garland led a panel that rebuffed industry challenges to EPA performance standards that limited emissions of pollutants like sulfur dioxide and particulates from new fossil fuel power plants.
Each of those rulings was unanimous, and each one was joined by one or two Republican appointees.
Some unusual political calculus played a role in the selection of Garland, generally seen as a middle of the road liberal who had been shortlisted during Obama’s previous Supreme Court considerations.
At 63, Garland is older than Chief Justice John Roberts and two other justices, and is older than any of the eight current justices were when they were named to the bench. For the last few decades, presidents have sought out justices in their late 40s or early 50s, a calculation designed to give them a chance to sit for three or four decades on the high court.
If the Republican-controlled Senate sticks to its promise not to act on an Obama appointee, a Democratic successor to Obama is under no obligation to select Garland again.
Garland does bring to the table a deep interest in administrative law, a wonky jurisprudence that some legal experts say is an increasingly critical part of environmental law. (Scalia in 1989 famously said that administrative law is “not for sissies.”)
Justices Elena Kagan and Ruth Bader Ginsburg have some background in administrative law, but Garland would offer a new level of enthusiasm, according to an environmental attorney. “That would be an important aspect if you were actually to make it to the court, to have a serious ad law expert,” the attorney said.
It is not immediately clear whether Garland will lessen his case load while his nomination is pending, particularly given Republicans’ opposition to considering his nomination. Garland is not on the panel hearing the high-profile challenge to EPA’s Clean Power Plan.
Coincidentally, on Thursday Garland is scheduled to hear oral arguments in a dispute regarding the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/story/2016/03/obamas-supreme-court-nominee-leans-green-102045
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House GOP Plan Would Reverse Obama's Green Policies
Mar 16, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By George Cahlink
The House Budget Committee will mark up a fiscal 2017 budget resolution tomorrow that amounts to a complete rebuke of the Obama administration's green policies.
The $1.07 trillion budget plan may not make it beyond committee, though, with the conservative House Freedom Caucus vowing to oppose it because it fails to make cuts. If the 40 or so members of the hardline caucus remain united, GOP leaders would not have the votes to adopt it on the House floor.
While the budget may not advance, its policy proposals are likely to guide appropriators as they write the fiscal 2017 spending bills. In that regard, House Republicans once again are likely to deny funding for most of the administration's clean energy programs and call for steep funding cuts to U.S. EPA.
A budget summary states the administration has declared war on "traditional energy sources" and suggests new clean technology research should be led by the private sector, rather than through government grants. It would in effect, reject plans by the administration to double clean energy research and programs over the next decade, saying it wants to avoid "future boondoggles like Solyndra." California solar manufacturer Solyndra went bankrupt in 2011 after receiving a Department of Energy loan guarantee, sparking sharp criticism from Republicans.
The budget also calls for continued oil and natural gas exploration on and off shore as well as on both public and private lands. It also endorses "tremendous breakthroughs" in drilling technologies like hydraulic fracturing.
The budget plan makes no direct mention of climate change.
The GOP budget continues long-standing Republican criticism of EPA for its "unprecedented activist regulatory policy to the detriment of states, localities, small businesses, and energy consumers." It said the budget would provide dollars for EPA to enforce existing laws rather than "continuously attempting to re-write them through regulations."
The budget does not contain a specific figure for EPA funding, but any spending proposal from House Republicans is certain to fall below the agency's $8.1 billion request for fiscal 2017.
The fiscal plan also criticizes EPA rules for forcing the closing or conversion of about 300 coal-fired power plants, noting it would likely raise electricity costs and eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Democrats were quick to lambast the GOP budget plan.
"The Republican budget plan would do savage damage to good-paying jobs, education and infrastructure in America. It would increase poverty and erode our nation's promise of basic economic security for all Americans, continuing to stack the deck for the wealthiest and well-connected at the expense of everyone else," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said.
House Democrats and the Congressional Progressive Caucus are expected to release budget proposals of their own this week.
http://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2016/03/15/stories/1060034036
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The Economy is Growing, But Carbon Emissions Aren’t. That’s a Big Deal.
Mar 16, 2016 | Washington Post
By Chris Mooney
Roughly a year ago, the International Energy Agency announced a wonky yet nonetheless significant development. Looking at data for the year 2014, the agency found that although the global economy grew — by 3.4 percent that year — greenhouse gas emissions from the use of energy (their largest source) had not. They had stalled at about 32.3 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, just as in 2013.
The agency called this a “decoupling” of growth from carbon dioxide emissions, and noted that it was the “the first time in 40 years in which there was a halt or reduction in emissions of the greenhouse gas that was not tied to an economic downturn.” For decades prior to 2014, economic growth had pretty much always meant more pollution of the atmosphere, and a worsening climate problem.
It now seems like 2014 wasn’t just a fluke — IEA is saying the same thing about 2015. In a news release Wednesday, the agency said that 2014’s hint of decoupling had now been “confirmed,” as 2015 also saw flat emissions combined with 3.1 percent global GDP growth. Emissions, the agency said, were just 32.1 billion metric tons in 2015, based on preliminary data — indicating perhaps even a slight downturn from 2014.
“The new figures confirm last year’s surprising but welcome news: we now have seen two straight years of greenhouse gas emissions decoupling from economic growth,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol in the press statement. “Coming just a few months after the landmark COP21 agreement in Paris, this is yet another boost to the global fight against climate change.”
That this decoupling is occurring is certainly a landmark. The relationship between economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions (and other environmental assaults) has been intensively studied, based on the premise that, as one paper put it, “Energy is considered to be the life line of an economy.”
When people have more money, they can drive their cars more, take more trips on airplanes, buy new appliances, and much more. Businesses can build new plants and factories. Houses get constructed – and on, and on, and on. And it all takes energy.
“Using GDP and emissions data over multiple countries and time periods, studies consistently find that GDP per capita and emissions per capita move in the same direction among most or all of the sample,” noted the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007.
So how do you break this relationship? Simple: Find a new way of getting energy. Sure enough, the IEA attributed the second straight year of decoupled growth and emissions to a greater uptake of renewable energy, particularly wind, and fewer emissions in China and the United States, the two largest emitters by far. The former country is cutting back its coal use deliberately, while in the U.S., market forces have had a similar effect, as cheap natural gas has pushed out a considerable volume of coal in electricity generation.
The finding echoes a late 2015 study, which also said that the year’s global carbon emissions appeared to have declined slightly, relative to 2014. However, at that time experts cautioned that it was far from clear that emissions had actually peaked overall – the growth slowdown might be temporary. Many rapidly developing nations, led by India, are actually expected to increase their use of fossil fuels over the coming decade or more, as global populations grow and energy demand increases.
The news comes as global temperatures in early 2016 have spiked to an unprecedented high, and several new studies have called into question whether emissions, even if stalled now, can actually decline fast enough to prevent warming from reaching 2 degrees Celsius, widely considered to represent a “dangerous” level of climate change.
The problem is that once emitted, a significant proportion of carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for a very long time, so whether emissions are rising or simply flat, every year is an added accumulation.
For precisely this reason, scientists have said we can only emit a fixed amount of carbon dioxide — sometimes claimed to be 1,000 billion tons from the year 2011 — if we want a good chance of holding warming to 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels. However, recent research has suggested that the actual carbon “budget” could be even tighter than that.
From this perspective, a decoupling of growth from emissions, while certainly good news, is not enough — emissions need to decline, quickly, to preserve hope of staying within a climate safety zone. Still, the new data suggest that the twin clean energy and natural gas booms are having a global impact — and at least leaving humanity a chance of fixing the carbon problem before it’s too late.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/03/16/this-key-rule-of-economics-and-the-environment-just-failed-again/
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