Effective July 1, 2017, manufacturers of children’s foam-padded sleeping products, such as nap mats, with flame-retardant chemicals, must eliminate or find safer alternatives for TDCPP or TCEP, used as flame retardant, for any such products sold in California. This is the first regulation under the Department of Toxic Substances Control’s Safer Consumer Products Act, which requires manufacturers to make products safer, or face DTSC imposing institutional controls on the products […]

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In May 2017, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt formed a Superfund Task Force with the goal to streamline and improve the Superfund program. On August 10, 2017, the new Superfund task force provided recommendations on cleaning up sites currently on the NPL in an expedited manner. The task force is cross populated with representatives from the Office of Land and Emergency Management and the Office of Enforcement and […]

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The definition of “solid waste,” under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, came under scrutiny as the D.C Circuit Court ruled on Am. Petroleum Inst. v. Envtl. Prot. Agency, No. 09-1038, 2017 WL 2883867 (D.C. Cir. July 7, 2017) on July 7th.  By striking down restrictions that were added in 2015, this ruling altered an EPA hazardous waste rule to appear more similar to its 2008 form.    The D.C […]

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On May 19, 2017, in Bartlett v. Honeywell Int’l, Inc., (N.D.N.Y. May 19, 2017), the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York dismissed common law claims for property damages based on CERCLA preemption.  Plaintiffs alleged their property was damaged because it is adjacent to a property used to store and treat dredged sediment from the Onondaga Lake Bottom Superfund Site. The Plaintiffs asserted three causes of action: […]

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