The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) is praising a recent set of draft Significant New Use Rules (SNURs) that they say appears to include EPA’s first-ever use of worker exposure protection levels, known as New Chemical Exposure Limits (NCEL), in TSCA regulations governing specific new chemical uses.
November 15, 2026
Maria Hegstad
Maria Hegstad is managing editor of Inside EPA’s Risk Policy Report, where she has been writing about all things chemicals, risk assessment policy and toxicology since 2008. Before joining Inside EPA, Maria reported for local newspapers in Manassas, VA, and D.C., covering courts and local government. Maria is a proud native of the “other” Washington, raised in Tacoma. She earned her BA from the College of William & Mary and her MSJ from Medill.
Archived Articles
Environmental health experts at a recent National Academy of Sciences (NAS) meeting said extensive new research is needed to identify the full range of workers exposed to toxic per- and polyfluorinated substances (PFAS), based on newer studies suggesting exposure even for those who may not knowingly handle the chemicals directly.
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A trade group is calling on EPA to partner with OSHA on a reworked version of its proposed rule banning current uses of chrysotile asbestos, arguing that TSCA requires the two agencies to coordinate and gives a leading role to the work-safety agency, even as unions and public health advocates say OSHA’s asbestos limits too outdated to protect workers.
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Major industry associations are calling on EPA to drop its proposed ban on current uses of chrysotile asbestos and instead agree that the notorious carcinogen can be “safe” with strong enough worker protections, signaling they may be uninterested in negotiating a phase-out even after previously backing legislation that would have imposed a ban.
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With little warning, EPA has revived and finalized a 2016 proposal that aims to harmonize its approach to regulating new chemicals with OSHA’s overall worker protection practices and the terms of that agency’s 2012 Hazard Communication Standard (HCS) -- rejecting industry objections that certain policies are either inconsistent with TSCA or redundant.
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A top TSCA official says EPA’s pending rule banning use of chrysotile asbestos is not “indicative” of how it will regulate workplace exposures and other risks from chemicals under the reformed toxics law, telling stakeholders to look instead at upcoming rules for several solvents, starting with methylene chloride, as a better model for the future.
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Environmentalists are pushing EPA to tighten its new draft risk assessment of formaldehyde by setting a cancer estimate based at least in part on the ubiquitous chemical’s links to leukemia, rejecting agency arguments that while such a link exists, the studies establishing it are too uncertain to use in an Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) review.
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Industry groups are calling for EPA to rework its draft formaldehyde risk assessment to address what they say is a long list of scientific faults, ranging from the agency’s handling of a controversial workplace-exposure study to a failure to “harmonize” its approach to evaluating the chemical’s cancer risks with 2005 guidelines.
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EPA plans to “learn from” OSHA’s enforcement of workplace chemical-exposure limits as it prepares for the demands of enforcing new TSCA risk management rules, a spokesperson says, while an industry attorney sees a formal memorandum of understanding (MOU) or other partnership between the two agencies as an option to aid those efforts.
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EPA is refusing an array of requests from industry and members of Congress to extend the June 13 comment deadline on its latest draft Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) assessment of formaldehyde, arguing that criticism of its development process is unfounded and that there will be more chances for the public to weigh in during peer review.
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