EPA gets deadline to comply with TSCA The Environmental Protection Agency has been ordered by the U.S. District Court of the Southern Dis­trict of New York to get its act to­gether and comply with the statutes of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

In an opinion handed down by Judge Lawrence W. Pierce, a sum­mary judgment was granted to the National Resources Defense Council in its lawsuit to make EPA begin testing 18 potentially hazardous compounds. EPA has been given only until Feb. 29 to submit its proposed plans for testing these chemicals. According to NRDC, the case marks the first major victory by a public health advocacy group under the toxic substances law. EPA as yet has not responded to the decision.

The issue arises from the section of TSCA that requires EPA to test hazardous and potentially hazardous chemicals for their effects on health and the environment. The act estab­lished an interagency testing com­mittee to recommend "priority" compounds that EPA should test first. Further, the act gives EPA one year from the time such priority compounds are designated to initiate action on them or to give reasons why the agency has failed to do so.

The first set of priority chemicals was announced by the interagency

Miles to rent drug reseai Yale University and Miles Labora­tories have forged a landlord-tenant agreement that Yale president A. Bartlett Giamatti terms "a significant achievement in strengthening the links between the university and private industry."

Under the agreement, the univer­sity is renting to Miles 4500 sq ft of space not now being used in the 70-year-old Osborn building, one of its science buildings. Miles will set up an Institute for Preclinical Pharmacol­ogy there, initially with seven or eight scientists and technicians.

Miles, which has a plant at nearby West Haven, Conn., will renovate sections of the Osborn building as part of its payment to Yale, which also includes rental fees and taxes as well as a program of financial support for graduate studies in Yale's de­partment of biology.

The contract between Yale and Miles runs through August 1982, and the company has an option to renew the lease for an additional two-year period. When the contract eventually

committee in October 1977. A second list was made public six months later. The 18 compounds or groups of compounds listed represent sub­stances (to which thousands of workers are exposed) used in many consumer products.

EPA, because of the myriad prob­lems it faced in establishing standards and rules for testing chemicals, chose to respond at the end of the 12-month period by saying that it had not had sufficient time to finish evaluating the proposed compounds or to pre­pare testing standards for public comment. With this response, EPA asserted that it was in compliance with TSCA.

The court, however, disagreed. Judge Pierce writes in his opinion that "the reasons published by EPA are insufficient as a matter of law to comply with the Congressional intent and the mandate of the act."

An EPA attorney working on the case says the agency was aware that some sort of ruling was coming be­cause the initial decision against EPA was made in December 1979. But EPA was unable to respond until now because it did not know what it would be required to do. The schedule EPA will submit in response to the ruling probably will be an initial rule-mak­ing requiring testing of the com­pounds. However, the agency might again, and presumably more con­vincingly this time, explain why it still cannot begin work on these sub­stances. D

h lab at Yale terminates, Yale plans to use all of the space in the building.

The biology department faculty was consulted before the agreement was reached and voted its approval. Department chairman Frank R. Ruddle says that the agreement is especially significant for the basic biological sciences, since close ties with industry hadn't existed previ­ously at Yale.

"Because of new technical and theoretical developments in biology," he says, "we believe that such rela­tionships will be mutually beneficial and therefore more common in the future."

Calling the relationship a "very useful arrangement," Theodor H. Heinrichs, chief executive officer of Miles, says that it will enable the company to do the kind of first-rate preclinical research necessary to de­velop new pharmaceuticals. "Yale University," he says, "will provide the academic atmosphere conducive to thorough and productive research."

For Miles, a subsidiary of West

Heinrichs: very useful arrangement

Germany's Bayer, the new institute marks an intensification of its re­search and drug development activi­ties that it hopes will take its product line into a broader spectrum of pharmaceuticals. It will be developing new drugs, partly from compounds developed at Bayer.

Some sticky issues that might arise in the relationship have been con­sidered—for example, conflict be­tween a university's requirements for public research and a company's need for confidentiality. In their contract, the parties have agreed that for a temporary period while seeking pat­ents or Food & Drug Administration approvals, Miles' research can be considered confidential but that it must be published thereafter.

To head off any problems, the parties have established an overview committee with four members each from Yale and from Miles. D

Salary gap closing for women and minorities Though women and minority-group scientists and engineers employed by the federal government earn less than white males in comparable jobs, the differences are less than they are often thought to be, according to a survey just released by the National Science Foundation.

And the picture may be improving, particularly for women, because the current trend is for younger women to enter the work force at equivalent or near-equivalent salaries to men. Moreover, a greater number of women and of minority-group scien­tists and engineers are replacing outgoing federal workers, suggesting that they will eventually make up an

Feb. 18, 1980C&EN 5