Daily News

Labor advocates and environmental groups are asking an appeals court to review EPA's recent Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) rule that bans consumer uses of paint strippers containing methylene chloride, attempting to broaden the ban to include workplace exposures.

“If dozens of confirmed deaths are not enough to get the Trump administration to protect workers from methylene chloride paint strippers, nothing short of a court order will,” Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, a staff attorney at Earthjustice representing some of the plaintiffs, says in an April 23 statement.

Congressional Democrats are renewing their long-standing push to reinstate, and update Obama-era policies aimed at barring federal contract awards to contractors with poor worker safety records after they were rescinded by Republicans and President Donald Trump.

While labor advocates acknowledge the legislation will not clear the Republican controlled Senate, they nevertheless view it as an important tool to lay the groundwork and build political support for future labor and worker safety measures, which they hope a future Democratic president could push.

A National Academies of Sciences (NAS) panel is weighing the Defense Department's (DOD) approach to developing an occupational exposure limit for DOD personnel exposed to trichloroethylene (TCE) in the workplace -- an effort the department launched after finding OSHA and EPA exposure limits differed greatly.

The White House has completed review of a draft final rule that will remove or revise duplicative, unnecessary, and inconsistent safety and health standards though the measure is not expected to include an Obama-era plan to expand when OSHA’s safety standard applies to power equipment that is shut off for repairs.

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) April 16 completed review of the final Standards Improvement Project (SIP) IV rule, one of a series of non-controversial changes to OSHA rules, according to OMB’s website.

EPA has expanded the number of renewed asbestos uses for which manufacturers would have to seek agency approval though its final significant new use rule (SNUR), issued under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), still falls short of calls from some states and environmentalists for even broader restrictions or a total ban.

Complicating Trump EPA plans to rollback Obama-era facility safety rules, industry lawyers are warning that the agency faces constitutional challenges over its plan to retain provisions that require companies to hold a public meeting to disclose data on an incident, saying the mandate helps potential plaintiffs and seeks to regulate by “shaming.”

EPA is floating its rule governing chemical use and other data industry must submit in 2020 under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), a measure that include provisions aimed at reducing reporting burdens which industry groups had failed to win when a negotiation collapsed in 2017 in part over an overlap with OSHA.

Senate Republicans have begun approving Trump administration nominees for the Labor Department under new rules that limit debate, suggesting they may soon confirm the president's long-time pick to lead OSHA, though the move is frustrating Democrats who say the GOP is unfairly blocking two of their nominees for labor panels.

Citing EPA’s failure to account for the chemical hazards to which firefighters are exposed, the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) is sponsoring its own research to study the risks posed by chemicals in the per- and polyfluoroakyl substances (PFAS) class, which were widely used in firefighting foam.

“We can’t wait for EPA to help us,” says Patrick Morrison, a retired fire fighter assistant to the general president for Occupational Health, Safety and Medicine of the IAFF.

At the request of Congress, NIOSH is seeking comment on the feasibility of creating a national mesothelioma registry, an effort the agency says could help improve prevention and treatment of workers' exposure to asbestos -- the main pathway to contracting the fatal disease.

A National Academies of Sciences (NAS) panel is backing the use of chemical dispersants to address oil spills but is urging federal regulators to improve their oversight of and data collection on the chemicals before the next major spill to ensure that future use of the substances does not adversely impact cleanup workers.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts' currently unknown position on when courts should defer to EPA and other federal agencies' interpretations of their regulations will largely determine whether and to what degree the current standard remains, according to legal experts.

EPA has finalized significant new use rules (SNURs) on 13 new chemicals using an approach intended to speed up reviews but which environmentalists and others oppose, setting the stage for a likely first-time suit on how EPA addresses new chemicals and protects workers under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

Labor advocates and their supporters in Congress are preparing to launch a long-awaited push aimed at better protecting workers from heat stress, with a public awareness campaign slated for later this month and legislation requiring OSHA to set a safety standard expected later this summer.

Homebuilders and other industry groups have amended their pending complaint challenging the anti-retaliation provisions in OSHA's recordkeeping rule to account for Trump administration rollbacks though their revised suit maintains most of the claims the groups made in their original complaint.

OSHA is promising to carefully scrutinize and document its decision-making before issuing regulatory guidance in response to a report from the Labor Department's Inspector General (IG) that found the Obama administration did not establish adequate steps for distributing regulatory guidance, opening the agency up to legal challenges.

Rejecting petro-chemical industry arguments, an OSHA review panel has upheld an enforcement action against an Oklahoma refiner for alleged process safety management (PSM) violations, a ruling that industry officials say “dramatically” expands the PSM rule's applicability to boilers and other “interconnected” units even if hazardous chemicals are not present in sufficient quantities.

The Labor Department (DOL) has begun implementing a recently enacted data management law that requires agencies to better share and manage data, a move that observers say will allow OSHA and other agencies to bolster inspections and enforcement to target employers who have multiple violations across the different agencies.

“You may be able to establish patterns that target enforcement,” says Debbie Berkowitz, a former OSHA official in the Obama administration who is now the National Employment Law Project's (NELP) program director for worker safety and health.

The Trump administration is once again proposing to increase the budget for EPA's toxics office, a rare bump up for an EPA program, as it works to implement the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), an effort that is a priority to industry and agency leaders as they gain insight on the resources needed to operate the new program.

Supreme Court justices at March 27 oral argument appeared unlikely to completely overturn a key precedent granting deference to OSHA and other federal agencies' interpretations of their regulations, though several of the justices appeared open to the Trump administration's call to narrow the deference.