Trade groups and chemical firms used recent meetings with White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) officials to raise in-depth scientific critiques of the occupational exposure limit EPA floated last year for carbon tetrachloride (CCl4 or CTC), just days before OMB cleared the agency to propose a TSCA risk management rule for the solvent.
EPA officials are hoping to sign an agreement with OSHA ahead of final action on their slate of pending TSCA chemical-safety rules that would set terms for the two agencies to coordinate on enforcement of the toxics program’s planned workplace protections, including exposure limits that observers say EPA would struggle to implement on its own.
An industry attorney says EPA’s TSCA program appears poised to “supersede” and even “replace” OSHA as the primary regulator of workplace chemical exposures, pointing to both the precedent set by the toxics program’s proposal on methylene chloride and broad statutory language that he argues goes much further than the OSH Act.
An industry attorney says EPA has used recent TSCA risk management proposals to translate “unreasonable risk” -- a key term in the statute that neither Congress nor the agency has defined -- into strict workplace exposure limits, creating for the first time a “bright line” standard that employers and others could question in comments on the new rules.
Stakeholders on both sides are raising doubts on worker safeguards in EPA’s newly proposed TSCA rule for perchloroethylene (PCE), with one environmentalist querying its focus on protective gear over engineering controls while trade groups say the agency has not shown a need for an exposure limit much stricter than OSHA’s existing level.
Trade association officials, attorneys and individual business owners are warning EPA of “massive” complications from its proposal to phase out methylene chloride or mandate strict worker protections for its use, saying that many firms or entire sectors see no ready substitute for the solvent, and others have no way to separate uses subject to the rule from exempt ones.
EPA is proposing new workplace exposure limits for the solvent perchloroethylene (PCE) in several sectors that would be over 100 times stricter than OSHA’s current standard, but would allow employers in some sectors to continue using it indefinitely, including those who use the chemical to manufacture alternatives to climate-warming refrigerants.
EPA is poised to propose its TSCA rule governing the solvent perchloroethylene (PCE or perc) after a draft version cleared White House review on June 1, an action that comes less than two months after the agency released its methylene chloride plan and could show how broadly it intends to apply that rule’s strict approach to worker protections.
Officials with the American Chemistry Council (ACC) say EPA failed to fully consider either less-burdensome alternatives to its proposed rule aimed at protecting workers from the toxic solvent methylene chloride or the true economic costs of a widespread phaseout, including the range of employers that could be forced to under a total ban.
EPA has submitted its proposed TSCA carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) rule to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), teeing up renewed battles over industry groups’ bids to exempt “critical uses” of the solvent from restrictions, as well as arguments that the Trump-era risk evaluation used a deeply flawed approach to model workplace exposures.