OSHA is agreeing to strengthen its involvement in EPA’s program for reviewing new chemicals’ potential hazards before they enter the marketplace, but the new memorandum of understanding (MOU) seems to exclude evaluations of existing chemicals even though EPA has faced calls to boost its consideration of worker safety in its risk reviews.
A federal appellate court is slated to hear arguments in March in the long-running suits brought by industry, labor and environmental groups seeking to reverse EPA’s first-time TSCA rule banning consumer uses of paint strippers containing methylene chloride, marking an early legal marker for how the Biden administration may address such rules.
The United Auto Workers (UAW) is pushing EPA to tighten its assessment of workplace risks from pigment violet 29 (PV29), arguing that the agency’s draft evaluation of the chemical underestimates the dangers of worker exposures, especially amid a respirator shortage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
OSHA’s final revisions to beryllium worker exposure standards follow through on the agency’s proposal to “tailor” the rule’s application to the shipyard and construction industries, setting up potential legal battles with health and labor and industry groups that have said various aspects of the proposal lack a legal or scientific basis.
OSHA is finalizing its rule to “clarify” key elements of the 2017 general-industry exposure standards for beryllium including a new definition of “work areas” that won support from unions as a way to ease compliance with the standards and thus bolster worker protections, even as litigation over the underlying policy continues.
Chemical industry groups and other sectors are looking to Congress to reauthorize the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) chemical facility safety program before its looming July 23 expiration, although one industry source says it is unlikely that a reauthorization bill would include any proposed policy revisions to the program.
EPA’s science advisors are deepening their concerns over the narrow scope of the agency’s draft evaluation of asbestos raising questions during a June 8 meeting on why EPA excluded consumer uses and all but chrysotile fiber types from its evaluation, as well as over EPA’s decision to evaluate legacy uses separately.
EPA science advisors are unable to agree on whether the agency appropriately chose to base its analysis of the risks of the common solvent trichloroethylene (TCE) on the chemical’s adverse immune system effects rather than its historical -- and more conservative -- focus on fetal heart defects.
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) says a just-released Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that calls for strengthening cybersecurity protocols in a federal chemical facility safety program underscore what he says is a need to reauthorize an enhanced versions of the program.
A senior EPA toxics official says the agency is preparing to issue in the next month a series of unilateral orders against some submitters of new chemical use notifications, though the official says the moves will be done carefully to target unresponsive companies in a way that is being supported by industry.