All Things Chemical

This week I had the pleasure of sitting down again with one of my favorite people on planet Earth, Kate Sellers, Technical Fellow at ERM, where Kate leads a multidisciplinary team of professionals dedicated to helping companies recognize the business value of product stewardship. Kate is also an adjunct professor at Harvard Extension School and Indiana University's School of Public Health, where she is an instructor in the Master of Science in Product Stewardship program. Kate and I last spoke on the podcast in December 2020, when we vowed to speak again in about a year.

Over the past year, Kate has seen an uptick in several product sustainability trends, including implementation of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), life-cycle assessment, circular economy programs, and sustainability initiatives. We discuss all of these trends and more in our conversation.

ALL MATERIALS IN THIS PODCAST ARE PROVIDED SOLELY FOR INFORMATIONAL AND ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES. THE MATERIALS ARE NOT INTENDED TO CONSTITUTE LEGAL ADVICE OR THE PROVISION OF LEGAL SERVICES. ALL LEGAL QUESTIONS SHOULD BE ANSWERED DIRECTLY BY A LICENSED ATTORNEY PRACTICING IN THE APPLICABLE AREA OF LAW.

©2022 Bergeson & Campbell, P.C. All Rights Reserved

This week, I sat down with Dr. Steven Bennett, Executive Vice President, Scientific & Regulatory Affairs, Household & Commercial Products Association, here in Washington, D.C. Steve's membership represents an amazing diversity of products used to clean and disinfect homes and commercial environments. As Executive Vice President of scientific and regulatory affairs, Steve routinely addresses an equally diverse and challenging range of scientific, regulatory, and science policy issues, from consumer exposures, to chemicals used in cleaning products, to the role HCPA members play in addressing COVID-19 and related public health issues.

ALL MATERIALS IN THIS PODCAST ARE PROVIDED SOLELY FOR INFORMATIONAL AND ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES. THE MATERIALS ARE NOT INTENDED TO CONSTITUTE LEGAL ADVICE OR THE PROVISION OF LEGAL SERVICES. ALL LEGAL QUESTIONS SHOULD BE ANSWERED DIRECTLY BY A LICENSED ATTORNEY PRACTICING IN THE APPLICABLE AREA OF LAW.

©2022 Bergeson & Campbell, P.C. All Rights Reserved

This week, I sat down with Jim Aidala, Senior Government Affairs Consultant at B&C and its consulting affiliate, The Acta Group. As a former Assistant Administrator in what is now the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, Jim has a truly unique and exceedingly focused perspective on EPA and Congressional initiatives involving the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). Unsurprisingly, the new (or not so new now) Administration has taken positions on key FIFRA issues that are quite different from those of the prior Administration. We cover pollinators, Pesticide Registration Improvement Extension Act of 2018 (PRIA 4) renewal, the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and a host of other FIFRA hot topics, reported as only Jim can describe, given his extraordinary experience and entertaining style.

ALL MATERIALS IN THIS PODCAST ARE PROVIDED SOLELY FOR INFORMATIONAL AND ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES. THE MATERIALS ARE NOT INTENDED TO CONSTITUTE LEGAL ADVICE OR THE PROVISION OF LEGAL SERVICES. ALL LEGAL QUESTIONS SHOULD BE ANSWERED DIRECTLY BY A LICENSED ATTORNEY PRACTICING IN THE APPLICABLE AREA OF LAW.

©2022 Bergeson & Campbell, P.C. All Rights Reserved

This week, I was delighted to visit again with Alexandra Dunn, now a Partner with Baker Botts and immediate past Assistant Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP). As Assistant Administrator, Alex was respected and liked by a diversity of industrial and agricultural chemical stakeholders, revered by her immediate staff, and hugely popular as an EPA senior leader. Alex led OCSPP at a pivotal time in EPA's implementation of revisions to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and worked tirelessly to meet the many deadlines imposed under the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act (Lautenberg). We discuss Alex's transition back into the private law sector, get a sense of the issues on which Alex is focusing now that she is back in private practice, and reflect on current EPA policies under TSCA and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) to understand what has changed since Alex left EPA.

ALL MATERIALS IN THIS PODCAST ARE PROVIDED SOLELY FOR INFORMATIONAL AND ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES. THE MATERIALS ARE NOT INTENDED TO CONSTITUTE LEGAL ADVICE OR THE PROVISION OF LEGAL SERVICES. ALL LEGAL QUESTIONS SHOULD BE ANSWERED DIRECTLY BY A LICENSED ATTORNEY PRACTICING IN THE APPLICABLE AREA OF LAW.

©2022 Bergeson & Campbell, P.C. All Rights Reserved

This week, I sat down with Dr. Jane Vergnes, Director of Toxicology and Vice President, Scientific Affairs, here at B&C and its consulting affiliate, The Acta Group (Acta®), and Dr. Steven P. Brennan, Senior Manager of REACH at Acta, and resident in our UK office in Manchester, England. In our podcast, we seek to answer the question "How is the UK government doing in implementing UK REACH?" We are just past year one of UK REACH as it came into force at 11:00 p.m. UK time on December 31, 2020. Creating a parallel regulatory framework for the management of industrial chemicals in Great Britain is no small feat, and Jane and Steven bring us up to speed on what has happened over the past year and tell us what to look forward to in 2022.

ALL MATERIALS IN THIS PODCAST ARE PROVIDED SOLELY FOR INFORMATIONAL AND ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES. THE MATERIALS ARE NOT INTENDED TO CONSTITUTE LEGAL ADVICE OR THE PROVISION OF LEGAL SERVICES. ALL LEGAL QUESTIONS SHOULD BE ANSWERED DIRECTLY BY A LICENSED ATTORNEY PRACTICING IN THE APPLICABLE AREA OF LAW.

©2022 Bergeson & Campbell, P.C. All Rights Reserved

This week I had the pleasure of sitting down with Kelly Scanlon, DrPH, CIH, Director of Environmental Policy & Research, Global Government Relations, at IPC. IPC, as many of you know, is an organization accredited by the American National Standards Institute as a standards development organization. It publishes the most widely used acceptability standards for the electronic industry. Dr. Scanlon was brought on at IPC in 2019 to direct environment, health, and safety (EHS) policy and research, a role that has become critically important given certain Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) rulemakings that have extended TSCA jurisdiction to certain electronic product manufacturers. These regulatory developments, implemented against a backdrop of supply chain disruption occasioned by COVID-19, have made for a very eventful and likely unexpected first two years on the job. Dr. Scanlon and I discuss IPC's work on EHS policy, enhanced regulation of articles under TSCA, and other challenges the electronics industry faces.

ALL MATERIALS IN THIS PODCAST ARE PROVIDED SOLELY FOR INFORMATIONAL AND ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES. THE MATERIALS ARE NOT INTENDED TO CONSTITUTE LEGAL ADVICE OR THE PROVISION OF LEGAL SERVICES. ALL LEGAL QUESTIONS SHOULD BE ANSWERED DIRECTLY BY A LICENSED ATTORNEY PRACTICING IN THE APPLICABLE AREA OF LAW.

©2022 Bergeson & Campbell, P.C. All Rights Reserved

This week I had the pleasure of sitting down with Baskut Tuncak, newly named Director, Toxics Use Reduction Institute (TURI), at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. Baskut is a lawyer and former research chemist with a truly distinguished and fascinating career in a diverse range of public and private sector roles in toxics issues. Baskut most recently served as the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights. In our conversation, Baskut explains the role of rapporteur to the UN and outlines for us his goals as Director of TURI, one of three agencies implementing the Massachusetts Toxics Use Reduction Act.

ALL MATERIALS IN THIS PODCAST ARE PROVIDED SOLELY FOR INFORMATIONAL AND ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES. THE MATERIALS ARE NOT INTENDED TO CONSTITUTE LEGAL ADVICE OR THE PROVISION OF LEGAL SERVICES. ALL LEGAL QUESTIONS SHOULD BE ANSWERED DIRECTLY BY A LICENSED ATTORNEY PRACTICING IN THE APPLICABLE AREA OF LAW.

©2022 Bergeson & Campbell, P.C. All Rights Reserved

This week I was thrilled to sit down with James V. Aidala, B&C's Senior Government Affairs Consultant, and Dr. Richard E. Engler, B&C's and The Acta Group's (our consulting affiliate) Director of Chemistry, to discuss what to expect in 2022 with regard to industrial and agricultural chemical regulation. As our listeners know, each year we publish a Forecast, a written summary of our best professional judgment as to the trends and key developments we expect in the New Year. Our 2022 Forecast is a monster -- 103 pages of well written, expert analysis on global chemical developments. My conversation, spirited and candid, with Jim Aidala and Rich Engler, focuses on domestic industrial and pesticide policy, trends, and regulatory developments.

ALL MATERIALS IN THIS PODCAST ARE PROVIDED SOLELY FOR INFORMATIONAL AND ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES. THE MATERIALS ARE NOT INTENDED TO CONSTITUTE LEGAL ADVICE OR THE PROVISION OF LEGAL SERVICES. ALL LEGAL QUESTIONS SHOULD BE ANSWERED DIRECTLY BY A LICENSED ATTORNEY PRACTICING IN THE APPLICABLE AREA OF LAW.

©2022 Bergeson & Campbell, P.C. All Rights Reserved

Mathy Stanislaus was recently appointed as Vice Provost and Executive Director of Drexel University's Environmental Collaboratory, which brings interdisciplinary expertise in environmental sciences, engineering, law, health, business, economics, policy, and humanities to co-design transformative environmental solutions in partnership with community leaders, nonprofits, corporations, and governments. He was formerly the Interim Director and Director of Public Policy and Engagement for the Global Battery Alliance (GBA), a partnership of over 70 businesses, governments, and non-governmental organizations focused on ensuring that battery production supports green energy, safeguards human rights, and promotes health and environmental sustainability. During this episode of All Things Chemical, Lynn L. Bergeson and Mathy Stanislaus cover a broad range of issues, including the mission of GBA, Mathy's new role, GBA's fascinating and potentially transformational Battery Passport project, and other interesting topics.

ALL MATERIALS IN THIS PODCAST ARE PROVIDED SOLELY FOR INFORMATIONAL AND ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES. THE MATERIALS ARE NOT INTENDED TO CONSTITUTE LEGAL ADVICE OR THE PROVISION OF LEGAL SERVICES. ALL LEGAL QUESTIONS SHOULD BE ANSWERED DIRECTLY BY A LICENSED ATTORNEY PRACTICING IN THE APPLICABLE AREA OF LAW.

©2022 Bergeson & Campbell, P.C. All Rights Reserved

This week I was delighted to sit down with Katherine Meighan, Associate Vice-President and General Counsel of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a United Nations agency headquartered in Rome, Italy. We spoke with Katie in the summer of 2019, after an International Bar Association (IBA) webinar on sustainable investment in agriculture I helped organize in my role as Vice Chair of the IBA Agricultural Law Section. I was so impressed with Katie's work, we decided to do a podcast shortly thereafter. Since then, much has changed, and IFAD's role in eradicating poverty and hunger by investing in the rural poor has intensified greatly over the past two years. As the world now looks past the major climate conference that just wrapped up in Glasgow, there has been discussion about the inherent dilemma/contradiction between greening the planet/decreasing emissions and the need to feed people and support their livelihoods across a diverse range of populations. Katie discusses the delicate balance between food and climate, and the essential the role IFAD plays in addressing this challenge.

ALL MATERIALS IN THIS PODCAST ARE PROVIDED SOLELY FOR INFORMATIONAL AND ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES. THE MATERIALS ARE NOT INTENDED TO CONSTITUTE LEGAL ADVICE OR THE PROVISION OF LEGAL SERVICES. ALL LEGAL QUESTIONS SHOULD BE ANSWERED DIRECTLY BY A LICENSED ATTORNEY PRACTICING IN THE APPLICABLE AREA OF LAW.

©2022 Bergeson & Campbell, P.C. All Rights Reserved