EPA’s 2023 rule revising confidential business information (CBI) claims under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) is only unlawful insofar as it could lead to certain inadvertent waivers of confidentiality by downstream entities, the D.C. Circuit ruled on December 20, 2024. The case, Environmental Defense Fund v. EPA, No. 23-01166, consolidated petitions from the Environmental […]
The D.C. District Court has entered two consent decrees concerning over twenty overdue Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) risk evaluations, holding the incoming administration’s EPA to aggressive deadlines for completing the chemical reviews. The consent decrees, approved November 22, concern 20 risk evaluations initiated by EPA in December 2019 and two manufacturer-requested risk evaluations initiated […]
The Center for Environmental Health (CEH) has sued AOC, LLC, a resins and specialty materials company, alleging that it failed to report imports under EPA’s Chemical Data Reporting (CDR) rule. The Toxic Substances Control Act citizen suit is the latest of several complaints filed by CEH against chemical importers for alleged CDR violations. CEH’s complaint, […]
ExxonMobil deceived the people of California by falsely promoting single-use plastics as sustainable, a complaint filed by California’s attorney general on September 23, 2024, alleges. The lawsuit, filed in the San Francisco County Superior Court, argues that ExxonMobil conducted a “decades-long campaign of deception” to convince the public that plastics recycling was a sustainable solution […]
Verdant Law is pleased to announce that Irene Hantman and Philip Moffat presented on green marketing and product stewardship at the PSX 2024 conference in Denver. Their October 16 presentation covered greenwashing, US regulation of green marketing, and enforcement and litigation. Green marketing is on the rise, partly because consumers are willing to pay more […]
On October 9, 2024, EPA issued a test order under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) for the PFAS chemical 6:2 FTAc (CASRN 17527-29-6). The order is the fifth issued under EPA’s National PFAS Testing Strategy, which was launched in 2021. The order employs a tiered testing approach, as required by TSCA. Studies on 6:2 […]
Significantly more PFAS substances would be subject to Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) reporting under a proposed rule published by EPA on October 8, 2024. The proposed rule would add 16 individual PFAS and 15 PFAS categories to the TRI list, which currently contains 196 PFAS. The proposed additions would be made due to their potential […]
On August 30, 2024, EPA released its draft risk evaluation for diisononyl phthalate (DINP). The draft risk evaluation determined that most uses of DINP under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) “do not pose risk to the environment or the general population.” The draft only identified three uses that “raise concerns” out of 47 evaluated […]
This August, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) released draft language to implement April 2024 amendments to Maine’s PFAS in products legislation. The draft language was described by DEP as an “initial, informal outreach process” with the goal of initiating rulemaking this fall. Under Maine’s PFAS in Products law, DEP has broad authority to […]
The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) expressly preempts a Pennsylvania law that allegedly requires Monsanto to include a cancer warning on its “Roundup” weedkillers, the Third Circuit ruled on August 15, 2024. The decision in Schaffner v. Monsanto Corp. creates a split with the Ninth and Eleventh Circuits, which have found that similar state-level […]
