Linda Breggin

Senior Attorney and Director, Nanotechnology Program
202-558-3102 or 615-279-1861
breggin@eli.org

Expertise

• Chemicals: Toxic Substance Control Act reform; nanotechnology governance
• Enforcement: environmental enforcement under state and federal laws
• Industrial Agriculture: water and air pollution; climate
• Toxic Waste: Superfund law; brownfields cleanup and redevelopment; toxics release inventory; environmental justice
• Water: point source and nonpoint source pollution

Profile

Linda Breggin works on a wide range of environmental law and policy issues. She currently directs the Institute’s Nanotechnology Program, which seeks to develop effective environmental, health and safety governance structures for nanotechnologies. Her work also includes research and convenings on programs under several of the major federal environmental laws, including the Comprehensive Environmental, Response, Compensation, and Liability Act and the Clean Water Act. Breggin is located in Nashville, Tennessee and works on Southeastern regional environmental projects, in addition to national issues. In collaboration with Vanderbilt University Law School, she leads the Environmental Law and Policy Annual Review, which identifies innovative environmental law and policy ideas from the academic literature and presents them to policy makers and practitioners. She also writes the “Around the States” column for The Environmental Forum, ELI’s award-winning policy journal.

Prior to joining ELI in 1997, Breggin served as an Associate Director in the White House Office on Environmental Policy and as a Special Assistant to the Assistant Administrator for Enforcement at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She also served as Counsel to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Transportation and Hazardous Materials of the U.S. House of Representatives. In addition, Breggin was in private practice in Washington, DC.

Education

• J.D., University of Chicago, 1988
• B.A., Tulane University, 1984

Selected Publications

Linda. K Breggin & Bruce Myers, Subsidies with Responsibilities: Placing Stewardship and Disclosure Conditions on Government Payments to Large-Scale Commodity Crop Operations, (Envtl. L. Inst. 2012).

Columnist, “Around the States” (column), Envtl. F. (January 2011 to present).

Contributing Co-Author, International Handbook on Regulating Nanotechnologies (eds. Hodge, Bowman and Maynard), chapters entitled Regulation of Nanoscale Materials Under Media- Specific Environmental Laws and International Coordination and Cooperation: The Next Agenda in Nanomaterials Regulation (Edward Elgar 2010).

Co-Author, Consumer Labeling of Nanomaterials in the European Union and the United States, 40 ELR 10117 (Feb. 2010) (Envtl. L. Rep.).

Co-Author, Securing the Promise of Nanotechnologies: Towards Transatlantic Regulatory Cooperation, Chatham House (2009).

Linda K. Breggin & John Pendergrass, Where Does the Nano Go? End-of-Life Regulation of Nanotechnologies (Woodrow Wilson Int’l Ctr. for Scholars 2007).

Linda K. Breggin & Leslie Carothers, Governing Uncertainty: The Nanotechnology Environmental, Health, and Safety Challenge, 31 Colum. J. Envtl. L. 286 (2006).

Linda K. Breggin, James McElfish, John Pendergrass, & Susan Bass, Inventing Nonpoint Controls: Methods, Metrics, and Results, 17 Vill. Envtl. L.J. 87 (2006).

Linda K. Breggin, Securing the Promise of Nanotechnology: Is U.S. Environmental Law Up to the Job?, (Envtl. L. Inst. 2005).

Linda K. Breggin & Susan George, Planning for Biodiversity: Sources of Authority in State Land Use Laws, 2 Va Envtl. L.J. 81 (2003) (reprinted in Zoning and Planning Law Handbook (West 2004)).

Linda K. Breggin & Mark Cohen, Looking Ahead to the Coming Decade: Some Key Environmental and Natural Resources Issues Facing Tennessee, (Vanderbilt Ctr. for Environmental Management Studies 2002) available at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/vcems/tcl/tclindex.html.