House and Senate lawmakers have agreed to a one-year extension of the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) ahead of a looming Jan. 19 deadline when the program's funding will expire, planning to use the next few months to debate potential legislative changes to CFATS.
Public interest groups are suing EPA over its failure to ban paint-stripping uses of methylene chloride after finding that it does not meet the Toxic Substances Control Act's (TSCA) risk standard, marking one of the first legal tests of the agency's responsibilities to regulate toxic substances under the law since Congress revised it in 2016.
Environmentalists fear a proposed EPA training program to limit commercial exposures to methylene chloride in paint strippers hints at a retreat from an Obama-era plan to prohibit the use outright, suggesting the agency will instead finalize a scaled-back ban that will allow some paint-stripping uses of the chemical despite potential risks to workers.
The Senate unanimously confirmed President Donald Trump's nominees to lead EPA's toxics and international offices in the final hours of the 115th Congress, but his nominee to lead OSHA and the EPA office overseeing facility safety and waste cleanups remain stalled.
EPA has denied a petition from health and other groups seeking to expand industry reporting of asbestos uses in the workplace, concluding the petitioners' proposal to drop exemptions from the Chemical Data Reporting (CDR) rule aren't warranted because they would not provide new data and would not affect EPA's ongoing asbestos risk analysis.
A coalition convened by NIOSH has outlined plans for a broad research agenda aimed at improving worker safety in the oil and gas extraction industry amid signs that while drilling activities have increased significantly, drillers may not be willing to invest in safety technologies and programs as fuel prices remain low, cutting into industry profits.
A bipartisan group of senators is pushing federal health agencies to study the health effects of occupational exposures to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) on firefighters and others in future studies on the chemicals, expressing disappointment that the agencies recently precluded the subjects from an ongoing investigation.
OSHA is consulting with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and weighing enforcement to protect workers from exposure to strong antimicrobial disinfectants used in meat and poultry processing, after the Government Accountability Office (GAO) warned of serious gaps in federal oversight and urged coordination on the chemicals' risks.
Lawmakers negotiating a new five-year Farm Bill have agreed to Democrats' demands to drop language originally included in the House version of the bill that aimed to codify a permanent waiver from OSHA's process safety management (PSM) standards for retail facilities, Capitol Hill sources say.
White House officials have completed review of an OSHA proposed rule seeking to revise an Obama-era final rule strengthening the agency's beryllium standards in accordance with a settlement with an industry group that calls for clarifying ancillary provisions of the rule's standard for general industry.