EPA’s final TSCA risk evaluation of the solvent-ingredient 1,1-dichloroethane (1,1-DCA) finds fewer unreasonable risks to workers than a Biden-era draft version of the document, narrowing the categories of affected workers that may win protections from seven to three, and drops unreasonable risk findings for the general population or the environment.
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
The Trump EPA’s plan to rewrite the Biden-era TSCA phaseout of chrysotile asbestos to limit workplace exposures and further delay litigation over the measure is raising questions over whether the agency will continue to enforce the existing rule as it expects it will take 30 months -- much of the administration’s remaining term -- to redo the rule.
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A former Trump administration official is hoping that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit helps define the threshold “unreasonable risk” standard EPA must use when regulating chemicals to protect workers and others under TSCA given Congress’ and the agency’s failure so far to define the term.
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A panel of 5th Circuit judges appears skeptical of EPA’s TSCA authority to regulate workplace exposures, as well as its threshold risk finding of methylene chloride, raising the prospect that any ruling in the potentially precedent-setting case could again undercut agency efforts to regulate chemicals as the circuit did in a 1991 asbestos case.
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The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) is renewing its calls for OSHA to amend its Process Safety Management (PSM) regulation in response to an incident at a Louisiana chemical facility, an action the Trump administration is almost certainly not going to take.
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The Trump EPA plans to expand its chemicals office “by at least 130 people,” the office’s top political appointee told staff earlier this week, which is expected to speed TSCA reviews of chemicals, including consideration of risks to workers, though the additional personnel are being moved from EPA’s gutted research office, a move that is drawing criticism.
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EPA deputy chemicals chief Nancy Beck is reminding agency science advisors that TSCA evaluations inform regulations that have “real consequences” for both workers and the general public who need to use chemicals such as 1,3-butadiene, and urged them to let staff know if the Biden-era evaluation missed something or is “overly conservative.”
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A panel of D.C. Circuit judges appear likely to rule on the merits of the Biden-era TSCA framework rule laying out procedures for evaluating existing chemicals’ risks to workers and others, after judges repeatedly questioned EPA and industry attorneys’ arguments that the court lacks jurisdiction to do so.
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A federal appellate court has backed calls from labor and other groups to hear oral arguments March 21 in a case over EPA’s Biden-era TSCA framework rule laying out the procedures for evaluating -- and thus regulating -- worker and other risks under the law, though the court has directed the parties to discuss EPA’s request to remand the rule.
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The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is retaining two EPA chemical assessment programs on its “high risk list” of programs susceptible to waste, fraud, mismanagement and abuse, finding that its combined ratings of the programs that include assessments of chemical risks to workers remain “unchanged” from 2023.
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