EPA’s long-awaited final TSCA evaluation of formaldehyde concludes that the ubiquitous chemical poses unreasonable risk to workers in a wide variety of sectors, and to consumers, but significantly loosens the occupational exposure standard after members of Congress and industry critics called the draft value a “de facto ban” on its use.
EPA is defending the legality of its landmark rule banning many uses of the solvent methylene chloride and imposing strict worker-protection mandates on those that continue, saying the policy is “reasonable” and grounded in statutory language -- even as the incoming Trump administration could drop those positions next month.
EPA has proposed a safety rule for pigment violet 29 (PV29) that would require facilities to provide personal protective equipment (PPE) to workers who could be exposed to its dry-powder form, but in a break from its other risk-management policies, the agency is not setting an exposure limit for the chemical or seeking to ban any of its uses.
EPA has issued a final TSCA risk management rule for the solvent carbon tetrachloride (CTC) that sets strict new worker-protection requirements for many applications of the chemical while allowing industry to continue most if not all of those current uses, while extending key compliance deadlines from what it proposed last year.
EPA has signed its long-awaited final TSCA rules restricting uses of the industrial solvents trichloroethylene (TCE) and perchloroethylene (PCE) with several changes from the 2023 proposals, including a much more lenient “interim” workplace exposure limit for TCE and an extended deadline for facilities to adopt new worker protections for PCE.
The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has completed review of final EPA rules seeking to limit workplace risks from three toxic solvents, teeing up their release in the last weeks of the Biden administration -- and likely efforts to narrow or reverse them after President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
EPA has issued a draft TSCA evaluation of the synthetic rubber component 1,3-butadiene finding that inhalation exposure to the ubiquitous chemical poses unreasonable risk to the health of workers and the general population, just weeks after finalizing court settlements that set deadlines for that review and more than 20 others.
EPA has unveiled its long-awaited final TSCA evaluation of “legacy” asbestos uses, finding ongoing risk to workers and the general population from several asbestos fiber types and applications that were excluded from its Trump-era “Part 1” review -- and triggering a mandate for the incoming Trump administration to regulate those dangers.
Industry attorneys say the incoming Trump EPA will likely try to reverse a host of the Biden administration’s TSCA actions including chemical-specific rules and risk evaluations that aim to limit workplace chemical exposures, but could struggle to overcome legal barriers to quick rollbacks as well as a potential wave of court challenges to its efforts.
Three chemical-sector groups are pressing EPA not to prioritize hydrogen fluoride (HF) -- used as a catalyst in oil refineries and other industrial contexts -- for risk evaluation under TSCA despite renewed calls from the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB), saying OSHA standards and other rules already provide “comprehensive” protections.