Environmental Protection Agency December 8, 2008 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

On November 21, 2008, the Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards (OAQPS) of EPA made available a final report titled, Risk and Exposure Assessment to Support the Review of the NO2 Primary National Ambient Air Quality Standard: Final Report. This final report has two primary purposes. The first is to convey the approaches taken to characterize human exposures and health risks associated with ambient NO2 and to present the results of these analyses. The second is to present a discussion of the NO2 scientific evidence and the exposure- and risk-based information specifically as it relates to the current and potential alternative NO2 standards.

On behalf of the U.S. government agencies comprising the Interagency Working Group (IWG) on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) (hereafter USG), EPA is issuing this notice to promote transparency, increase awareness of the proposals concerning chemicals for addition to the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (hereafter Convention), to make interested persons aware of the process for adding chemicals to the Convention, to indicate at which steps receiving comments or information from interested persons would be useful to the interagency process, and to indicate for those steps the type of information to be submitted and the due date. EPA is issuing this notice to ensure that the process for the review of chemicals proposed for addition to the Convention allows sufficient time for the submission and consideration of public comments on chemicals proposed for addition to the Convention. EPA, on behalf of USG, intends to issue future notices that alert interested persons to additional chemicals proposed for addition to the Convention and for which the approach to commenting described in this notice will be applied. EPA's responsibility with respect to this process will be to ensure that comments received are considered by the Agency as part of its internal process and to ensure that comments received are made available to USG for their consideration.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to allow refiners and laboratories to use more current and improved fuel testing procedures with twelve American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) analytical test methods. Once these test method changes are adopted, they will supersede the corresponding earlier versions of these test methods in EPA's motor vehicle fuel regulations. EPA is also proposing to take action to allow an alternative test method for olefins in gasoline.