EPA is telling a federal district court that its plan to defer to the National Academy of Sciences’ (NAS)’ peer review of a draft risk assessment of formaldehyde in its TSCA evaluation that could support new workplace limits on the chemical does not help industry’s suit over the NAS process, saying trade groups still have shown no harm to their members.
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
Chemical-sector and other industry groups are urging EPA to loosen a host of new worker-safety requirements in its proposed reworking of Trump-era TSCA rules governing two persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic (PBT) chemicals that they say would be too restrictive, saying the agency should instead defer to occupational-safety “professionals” on what protections are needed.
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EPA chemicals chief Michal Freedhoff told GOP senators during a Jan. 24 hearing that the agency will ease its approach to calculating workplace existing chemical exposure limits (ECELs) when risk evaluations would support limits below “background” levels -- a move that could partly address employers’ arguments that its proposals so far have been unachievably strict.
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An industry law firm is urging companies to be ready to report workplace monitoring data for the five chemicals EPA has targeted for TSCA’s prioritization process, warning that regulators may assume any sectors that have not sent such data will be unable to implement new exposure limits and should have their uses of the substances banned instead.
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Trade groups are urging EPA to rewrite not only its proposed TSCA exposure limit for trichloroethylene (TCE) but also its broader approach to crafting existing chemical exposure limits (ECELs) under the toxics law, arguing that the current process is “opaque” and must at minimum go through a public peer review.
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EPA is requiring chemical manufacturers and processors to report all data they possess on “significant adverse human health and environmental effects” from exposure to the industrial chemical 4,4'-Methylene bis(2-chloroaniline) (MBOCA), invoking a little-used power requiring employers to submit information on worker harms gathered as long as 30 years ago.
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EPA’s proposal to change how TSCA chemical evaluations consider workers’ use of personal protective equipment (PPE) is drawing starkly different interpretations from industry and a labor-environmental coalition, with each side insisting that the agency is enacting the other’s preferred approach and demanding a reversal.
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EPA has released a draft TSCA evaluation of the flame retardant tris(2-chloroethyl) phosphate (TCEP), finding that nine of 20 uses the agency considered contribute to unreasonable risk from the “whole chemical” and floating a workplace limit for airborne exposures -- measures that if finalized could support broad regulation under the toxics law.
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The semiconductor industry is urging the White House to limit workplace safety provisions in EPA’s upcoming TSCA rule for the solvent n-methylpyrrolidone (NMP) to codifying the sector’s existing practices, arguing that those safeguards already reduce exposures to near zero.
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An industry attorney is highlighting novel language in EPA’s proposed TSCA rule for the solvent trichloroethylene (TCE) that requires companies to limit worker exposures only “to the extent possible” as evidence that its occupational exposure standard is unworkably strict, underlining likely objections to the policy from trade groups and employers.
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