The American Chemistry Council (ACC) is stepping up attacks on the peer review of EPA’s draft formaldehyde risk assessment, charging that the National Academy of Science (NAS) is unlawfully concealing key information on its review process amid a long-running battle over the ubiquitous chemical’s risks to workers.
September 16, 2026
A top union official is urging EPA to follow OSHA’s approach to assessing workplace risks from toxic chemicals rather than “reinventing the wheel” for the TSCA program, saying a new framework would create unnecessary difficulties for employers and workers alike, while other experts warned that contradictory systems will frustrate data-sharing.
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An industry attorney says employers are facing a “big change” in the worker safeguards required by EPA’s significant new use rules (SNURs) for chemical safety after that agency adopted a new policy tightening several elements of the rules, including adoption of a hierarchy of controls model long favored by OSHA.
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The American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA) has scheduled a series of workshops that will seek in part to address industry concerns over differences in how EPA’s occupational risk analyses under TSCA differ from practices at agencies like OSHA or the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), and those of industrial hygienists.
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California’s plan to list nail products containing toluene as a “priority product” under its green chemistry program is drawing fire from labor and health groups, who charge its use of an industry-backed “alternatives analysis threshold” (AAT) will expose too many salon employees to unsafe levels of the chemical.
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Oil sector groups are joining industry attacks on EPA’s decision to drop an assumption that workers will use personal protective equipment (PPE) from Trump-era TSCA evaluations, echoing claims that the new policy is unlawful and irrational while also asserting it is impossible to fit with the existing risk reviews and requires a new, multi-year process.
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The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has provisionally selected the panel that will peer review the Biden administration’s draft assessment of the risks of workplace and other exposures to formaldehyde, despite calls from GOP lawmakers who had sought additional scrutiny on whether the panel selection process and staff are impartial.
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The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) is praising a recent set of draft Significant New Use Rules (SNURs) that they say appears to include EPA’s first-ever use of worker exposure protection levels, known as New Chemical Exposure Limits (NCEL), in TSCA regulations governing specific new chemical uses.
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Environmental health experts at a recent National Academy of Sciences (NAS) meeting said extensive new research is needed to identify the full range of workers exposed to toxic per- and polyfluorinated substances (PFAS), based on newer studies suggesting exposure even for those who may not knowingly handle the chemicals directly.
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A trade group is calling on EPA to partner with OSHA on a reworked version of its proposed rule banning current uses of chrysotile asbestos, arguing that TSCA requires the two agencies to coordinate and gives a leading role to the work-safety agency, even as unions and public health advocates say OSHA’s asbestos limits too outdated to protect workers.
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