EPA has unveiled its long-awaited final TSCA evaluation of “legacy” asbestos uses, finding ongoing risk to workers and the general population from several asbestos fiber types and applications that were excluded from its Trump-era “Part 1” review -- and triggering a mandate for the incoming Trump administration to regulate those dangers.
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
Industry attorneys say the incoming Trump EPA will likely try to reverse a host of the Biden administration’s TSCA actions including chemical-specific rules and risk evaluations that aim to limit workplace chemical exposures, but could struggle to overcome legal barriers to quick rollbacks as well as a potential wave of court challenges to its efforts.
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Chemical-sector groups are urging EPA and the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to ease the strict workplace exposure standard that the agency proposed in its TSCA rule for trichloroethylene (TCE), by either easing the final regulation or allowing for greater flexibility on enforcement.
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Trade groups and a chemical company suing EPA over its redone rule governing TSCA risk evaluations are divided on what bar the agency must clear to defend its new policy, teeing up a question that will shape how appellate judges decide whether the agency has properly justified its approach to measuring workplace risk, among other key issues.
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Trade groups are asking a federal appeals court to hold that the reformed TSCA gave OSHA, not EPA, primary responsibility to regulate any “unreasonable risks” to workers from toxic substances, seeking to scrap the agency’s approach to chemical-specific rules that has focused primarily -- sometimes exclusively -- on workplace dangers.
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Unions and worker-safety advocates are asking the D.C. Circuit to hold that TSCA forbids the agency from considering workers’ use of personal protective equipment (PPE) when evaluating chemicals’ risks, saying its rule on the subject shows a “fundamental misunderstanding” of OSHA’s requirements for employers to provide protective gear.
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Trade groups are pushing EPA to craft a “consistent approach” for setting de minimis exemptions in its TSCA risk management rulemakings, while also renewing pressure on the agency for more transparency on workplace exposure limits for the solvent 1-bromopropane (1-BP) in particular -- limits some say should have been crafted by OSHA instead.
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EPA’s response to comments on its final risk evaluation of the flame retardant tris(2-chloroethyl) phosphate (TCEP) lays out arguments against requests from industry and environmental groups alike to significantly broaden the review or rework its conclusions, defending both the TSCA office’s analysis of TCEP and its approach to setting workplace exposure limits.
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Chemical manufacturers say EPA’s landmark rule phasing out chrysotile asbestos uses -- largely over workplace dangers -- “usurps” OSHA’s statutory power to protect workers, amid broader arguments seeking to cabin EPA’s power to regulate existing chemicals under the reformed TSCA.
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A chemical firm trying to intervene in litigation over the deadlines for 22 overdue EPA risk evaluations of toxic substances says the agency and environmentalists are raising “straw man” arguments against its participation in the case in order to prevent it from extending the proposed 2024 settlement deadline for formaldehyde.
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