The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has opened interagency review of EPA’s final TSCA rule governing perchloroethylene (PCE), setting up a renewed battle among stakeholders over the agency’s proposal to ban PCE in many sectors, while imposing strict exposure limits in others and a decade-long phaseout of the solvent for dry-cleaning.
November 15, 2026
Worksafe, a California-based employee-advocacy group that often weighs in on workplace safety issues, has filed what appears to be the first formal lawsuit over EPA’s final overhaul of the TSCA “framework” for risk evaluations of existing chemicals, underlining the focus unions and worker advocates are placing on the agency’s chemical-safety program.
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The United Steelworkers (USW) is signaling that it will seek to formally defend elements of EPA’s TSCA chrysotile asbestos rule that industry groups are seeking to loosen or overturn, in one of the first substantive moves of what could be a precedent-setting legal battle over the landmark regulation.
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OSHA and an Ohio contracting firm are sparring over whether the Supreme Court should let stand an appellate ruling that upheld OSH Act provisions empowering the agency to craft safety standards under the nondelegation doctrine, including a new test the employer is floating that would block Congress from giving agencies discretion to address “major questions” in rulemaking.
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The federal Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation is sending litigation over the Biden administration’s landmark TSCA rule phasing out uses of chrysotile asbestos to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit -- the same court that overturned the agency’s first attempt to ban asbestos more than 30 years ago when it drastically narrowed EPA’s authority to regulate existing chemicals.
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EPA has issued its final TSCA “framework” rule governing risk evaluations of existing chemicals, aiming to broaden the scope of its reviews and codify several controversial Biden administration policies including its rejection of a Trump-era approach to considering workers’ use of personal protective equipment (PPE), despite several industry groups’ claims that the new method is unlawful.
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EPA has formally published its TSCA chrysotile asbestos rule, starting a 60-day clock for potential court challenges and a rolling series of compliance deadlines for industries to phase out the mineral -- starting with bans on new imports or installation of several asbestos-based products that are now set to take effect in late November.
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Just-released fiscal year 2024 spending legislation keeps OSHA and other Labor Department (DOL) worker-protection agencies at their current funding despite an overall cut to the department, while preserving some of the budget for the lapsed Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standard (CFATS) program -- which could allow Congress to revive it later in the year.
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EPA has released its final TSCA risk-management rule for chrysotile asbestos, aiming to phase out the carcinogen from chlor-alkali production on a sliding timeline that will run between five and 12 years based in part on the alternative technology to which a facility is switching -- a win for industry groups that argued the proposed two-year deadline was impossible.
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EPA’s long-awaited draft TSCA evaluation of formaldehyde says all of its industrial uses and many commercial applications of the ubiquitous chemical pose “unreasonable risk” to workers and others, which could form the basis for a landmark rule regulating or even banning such uses amid industry’s broad attacks on the agency’s science and review process.
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