Chemical Safety

The Biden EPA has released for public comment a draft scoping document that outlines its plans for what uses of -- and occupational exposures from -- vinyl chloride the agency’s TSCA evaluation will consider, although the incoming Trump administration will craft the evaluation and may have different ideas of how to do so.

OSHA and EPA have released an agreement months in the making that outlines how the two agencies will share information and coordinate when EPA is reviewing workers’ safety in its TSCA existing chemical evaluations and enforcing risk management rules, while reiterating the two agencies’ unique authorities and responsibilities.

An EPA draft evaluation of a phthalate known as DCHP finds that inhalation exposure to the widely used plasticizer presents unreasonable risks to worker’s health, a finding that if finalized would require the agency to write risk management rules to address risks stemming from nine “conditions of use” (COU) that contribute to the finding.

EPA’s final TSCA evaluation for the phthalate DIDP finds that six of the chemical’s uses pose “unreasonable risk” to workers warranting regulation -- a significant departure from its earlier draft that found risk from just one use -- likely teeing up attacks from industry groups that requested the review, and could now ask the incoming Trump administration to redo it.

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.