Lab Science News

In June 2010, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a draft of its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit. Through the permitting process, the EPA is seeking to decrease the amount of pesticides discharged into waterways. The new permit, also known as the Pesticides General Permit (PGP), was developed in response to a 2009 court decision, which ruled that pesticides can be classified as pollutants under the Clean Water Act.

The EPA’s PGP authorizes the controlled release of the following substances into U.S. waterways:

Read more about EPA’s Proposed New Permit Requirements for Pesticide Discharges…

By Steve Wing

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Lead: Renovation, Repair, and Painting Rule, issued in 2008, was to take formal (enforceable) effect on April 22, 2010. However, due to difficulties with compliance, the EPA has extended this deadline to December 30, 2010.

This rule mandates a number of specific practices for contractors to mitigate the health hazards associated with disturbance of lead-based painted surfaces in homes, child care facilities, and schools constructed prior to 1978.¹ Under this rule, all contractors in the U.S. conducting work on lead-based painted surfaces are required to be EPA certified and to follow specified work practices for preparation, clean-up, and record keeping. Painters, plumbers, electrical workers, general contractors, and a miscellany of other service providers will be affected. The rule applies to the disturbance of lead-based painted interior surfaces of six or more square feet and exterior surfaces of 20 square feet or more. Guidelines are also provided for window replacement and demolition in such facilities and homes. Under the statute, contractors not in compliance could be fined as much as $37,500 a day.²

Read more about EPA’s lead paint rule…

By Gregory Salata, Ph.D.

The objective of environmental sampling is to quantify contamination at a given location. In situations where sample collection may result in discrete samples of a heterogeneous nature, results may be biased based on the particle size of each sub-aliquot collected at the site. One option to help reduce the errors associated with non-uniform sample composition is to use multi-increment sampling (MIS) to create a representative, homogeneous aliquot for analysis of semi-volatile analytes.

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by Alyson Fortune and Nicole Pannone

Ambient air monitoring is a priority in the ongoing efforts to contain and manage the oil spill from the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico.

The following provides information about the kinds of airborne contaminants that are currently being monitored in the Gulf, how they are collected and how they are analyzed. For a given project, a suitable sampling plan – developed by environmental or industrial hygiene professionals – will determine which methods are most applicable to the project objectives.

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In a Federal Register notice published June 23, the EPA proposed changes to its permitting program under the Clean Water Act (CWA) to ensure the use of sufficiently sensitive analytical methods for monitoring chemical pollutants in discharge water.

Specifically, the new rule affects the CWA’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES). Its purpose is to specify that applicants and permittees must use analytical methods that are capable of detecting and measuring pollutants at, or below, current water quality criteria.

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by Brian Lewis, Ph. D

The regulation of greenhouse gases (GHG) has had a contentious history and continues to be a topic of much debate. The debated topics range from what agency should be in charge of GHG regulations to whether GHG needs to be regulated at all.

On June 10, the U.S. Senate voted 53-47 against a resolution of disapproval that would have stripped the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the authority to regulate GHGs under the Clean Air Act.^1-3 The resolution’s defeat paved the way for the EPA to regulate GHG emissions from both new automobiles and stationary sources. The EPA has now enacted rules that would require large-scale GHG producers to acquire permits.

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Under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), the EPA has proposed a rule that would regulate coal combustion residuals (CCR) for the first time.

CCRs, commonly known as coal ash, are residues captured from the combustion of coal at power plants and are typically disposed of at large surface impoundments in liquid (wet or slurried) form and at landfills in solid (dry) form. CCRs are currently considered exempt wastes under an RCRA amendment.

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