Small business agency asks EPA to end high-priority risk consideration for styrene
Some uses of polystyrene foam, made from polymerized styrene, have been banned in several US states and cities due to potential health risks. The US Small Business Administration has asked the Environmental Protection Agency to end its consideration of styrene as a “high priority” chemical under the Toxic Substances Control Act. Credit:
Shutterstock
The US Small Business Administration on Tuesday asked the US Environmental Protection Agency to stop its ongoing assessment of whether styrene should be designated a “high priority” chemical under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
In a letter to EPA administrator Lee Zeldin (PDF), acting chief counsel for the SBA Office of Advocacy, Everett Woodel Jr., points to the recent federal appeals court decision to strike down the EPA’s ban of most uses of methylene chloride as a reason to pull styrene off the high-priority consideration list.
“The decision is relevant here because the court specifically found fault with multiple aspects of the EPA’s existing TSCA regulatory framework,” Woodel says in the letter.
The SBA wrote the letter recently due to growing concerns from businesses that styrene use might be banned under TSCA rules, says Brian Waldrip, the acting director of communications at the SBA Office of Advocacy. “The issue has been brought up on multiple occasions,” he says.
The EPA proposed moving to a faster but less thorough TSCA risk evaluation process in September 2025. Those changes have yet to be finalized. Woodel says the SBA supports the changes as “they would protect small businesses from unnecessary restrictions on safe uses of chemicals like styrene.”
The EPA announced that styrene was being considered for the high-priority designation in December 2024, near the end of the Joe Biden administration. The comment period closed on March 18, 2025, but a final decision has not been made.
Styrene is “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen” (PDF), according to the National Toxicology Program’s 15th Report on Carcinogens from 2021. Multiple states and cities in the US have banned some uses of polystyrene foam, including California, Oregon, and New York.
According to the EPA, a high-priority chemical “may present an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment because of a potential hazard and a potential route of exposure under the conditions of use.”
Waldrip says styrene is used in boats, sea-based drones, bathtubs, hot tubs, and other products.
—Leigh Krietsch Boerner
HHS announces another push to speed up clinical trials
The US Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday announced new efforts under the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to speed up clinical trials in the US, lower their costs, and conduct them with fewer participants.
The Simulation-augmented, Real-time Platform Adaptive Seamless Trials (SURPASS) program will use tools like computer models and automated data collection, as well as tactics like common control groups, to accelerate the drug development process.
“SURPASS is developing the technology and biostatistical frameworks needed to analyze trial data as it accumulates, allowing teams [to] learn in real time, adapt when needed, and generate stronger evidence faster with less operational burden,” SURPASS program manager Daria Fedyukina says in a statement.
HHS also announced initiatives to create more clinical trial sites in the US, recruit participants faster, and improve data sharing between researchers and regulators.
This announcement is part of a broader effort across the department to accelerate medical research. Over the summer, HHS launched Operation TrialBlazer to shrink the timelines for conducting randomized clinical trials and to lower their costs. The Food and Drug Administration also launched a pilot program to expedite human trials of investigational new drugs. The goal is to draw early-stage pharmaceutical research back to the US after years of companies shifting their trials abroad to countries like Australia and China.
Speeding up drug trials is a key priority for the Donald J. Trump administration. Trump’s nominee to lead the FDA, Heidi Overton, says increasing the number and pace of clinical experiments in the US would be a central agenda item for her if the Senate approves her to head the agency.
“If I have the privilege of being confirmed, I will work with the dedicated career professionals to make sure every aspect of clinical trials and drug development is optimized,” Overton said during her confirmation hearing in September. “This will not only bring development back to the United States, it will bring cures to patients faster.”
—Umair Irfan
Democrats blocked in effort to stop Trump from withholding HHS funds
Democrats on the US Senate Committee on Appropriations on Wednesday sought unanimous consent for a bill to halt the White House’s efforts to unilaterally block $810 million of appropriated fiscal year 2026 funding from federal agencies, mainly from the US Department of Health and Human Services. But Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) blocked the move.
The White House last Friday evening announced it was using a maneuver called a “pocket recission” to withhold the money, including $567 million from what the White House, in a statement, calls “taxpayer-funded HHS services for non-citizens” and $28 million from “overfunded and unaligned HHS research programs.”
Among the targeted programs are research into racism in emergency medicine, a study on how Medicaid gender-affirming care influenced the use of hormones and gender-affirming surgery, and public service announcements aimed at reducing carbon emissions from the health-care sector.
The move echoes a similar maneuver the Donald J. Trump administration undertook last year to withhold $4.9 billion previously appropriated for foreign aid.
“We’re already looking at whether there’s language we can put in the next set of appropriations bills that would prohibit this from happening. But it’s going to take some legal work,” Senate Committee on Appropriations chair Susan Collins (R-ME) told reporters Monday evening, according to Politico. The current continuing resolution that is funding the federal government expires on Dec. 11.
Last week, Collins pushed back on another White House effort to impose political control over funding at the National Institutes of Health.
The US Government Accountability Office on Monday also asserted that the president’s maneuver was unlawful under the legal basis invoked by the White House, the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (ICA). In a letter to Congress, GAO general counsel Edda Emmanuelli Perez writes that the ICA allows the president only to temporarily withhold funding and that budgeting decisions ultimately lie with Congress. “The President cannot rely on the authority in the ICA to withhold amounts from obligation, while simultaneously disregarding the ICA’s limitations,” Emmanuelli Perez writes.
—Umair Irfan
Russian drone hits Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences, killing two
Damage to the main building of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, which was struck by a Russian drone on Sept. 28. Some 4,650 educational institutions across Ukraine have been damaged since Russia’s invasion began in 2022, and 423 have been destroyed. Credit:
Friedemann Kohler/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images
Two people died, and others were injured, after a Russian drone hit the headquarters of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NAS) in central Kyiv, Sept. 28.
In a statement released Sept. 29, the NAS called the attack a strike against science and the country’s intellectual potential. The NAS also urged the international scientific community “not to resume or legitimize institutional cooperation with Russian state scientific and educational institutions as long as Russia is waging an aggressive war against Ukraine.”
Many European and US scientific institutions cut ties with Russian institutions when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, although some individual collaborations continue.
The European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities (ALLEA), which has been excluding the Russian Academy of Sciences from its network, continues to stand with the Ukrainians. ALLEA said in a statement released Sept. 29 that “science, research, and education are not legitimate targets, either in war or in any other context. The destruction of scientific institutions is the destruction of a society’s capacity to understand, adapt, and rebuild.”
According to ALLEA, over 4,650 educational institutions across Ukraine have been damaged since Russia’s full-scale invasion, and 423 have been destroyed.
Many chemists have left the country since the war began. Others have been killed or injured. Those who have remained have had to contend with damage to labs, interruptions to work, and loss of funding. A report by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2024 described deterioration to the scientific sector that will cost over a billion dollars to rebuild.
But the chemists that C&EN spoke to in Kyiv this week say that while the city has become more dangerous, they are still working and will continue to work.
—Laura Howes
US federal workers spared from layoffs in future government shutdowns
Federal employees can no longer be fired during government shutdowns, according to a court settlement announced Sept. 25 between several federal worker unions and the Donald J. Trump administration.
As part of the agreement, agencies will have to modify their shutdown plans to remove any authorization of reductions in force (RIFs) and provide worker unions with 30 days’ notice if they subsequently plan to update their shutdown plans to include RIFs.
The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) directed agencies to draft RIF plans during the 2025 government shutdown, which lasted from Oct. 1 to Nov. 12. Upon hearing of the Trump administration’s plans to fire federal workers during the shutdown, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) sued the Trump administration on Sept. 30, 2025, saying these mass firings would be an abuse of power. The lawsuit was later expanded to include six other government-employee unions.
Around 4,000 federal employees ended up receiving RIF notices, though an October 2025 preliminary injunction prevented those layoffs from taking effect. Nearly a year later, the two parties finally reached a settlement, officially rescinding the OMB memo and any associated guidance.
“The administration tried to turn a shutdown into an excuse to fire the public servants who kept this country running without a paycheck on payday,” Everett Kelley, national president of the AFGE, which represents National Science Foundation employees, says in a statement. “They deserve to be treated with dignity and respect for their service, not used as pawns in a political fight they had no part in creating.”
The settlement also states that the case will be placed on hold until the end of the year to allow the unions to reopen it should the Trump administration conduct RIFs during any shutdown that happens within that time frame.
—Krystal Vasquez
