Chemical Safety

EPA’s proposed TSCA rule on carbon tetrachloride (CTC) is drawing heavy criticism from environmentalists, with one key advocate saying the plan is fatally flawed because it proposes only worker protections rather than banning uses of the solvent, meaning it fails to protect fenceline communities whose exposures may increase under some safety measures.

OSHA recently posted a slew of new regulatory interpretation letters offering responses to employers’ and industry professionals’ questions on matters such as the categories of chemicals considered “associated with” formaldehyde gas, occupational noise exposure standards, shipment of hazardous materials and silica dust exposure control methods.

Major unions are criticizing EPA for excluding organized labor from stakeholder discussions on its pending TSCA methylene chloride rule, warning that the failure to consult them led to significant omissions in the proposal’s workplace protections compared with OSHA standards -- even as they praise the agency’s strict occupational exposure limits for the solvent.

EPA has unveiled a proposed TSCA risk management rule for carbon tetrachloride (CTC or CCl4) that would allow uses that it says represent “essentially all” annual production of the solvent to continue indefinitely if facilities meet strict new worker protection mandates -- as well as a bar against increasing air emissions to surrounding communities.

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.