Chemical Safety

Labor and environmental groups challenging the Trump administration's rules for reviewing existing chemicals' risks to workers and the environment under the revised toxics law are rejecting EPA assertions that the law grants the agency broad discretion to determine the chemical uses it considers for possible regulation, charging that EPA must consider all conditions of use.

EPA and OSHA, the lead agencies once charged with implementing an Obama-era Executive Order (EO) on improving facility safety after a 2013 disaster, are heeding long-standing industry calls to enforce existing rules while scaling back or shelving new protections advanced under the Obama administration.

Democrats are stepping up their efforts during Congress' lame duck session to kill House Farm Bill language that would codify a permanent waiver for retail facilities from OSHA's safety standards, though sources say that if lawmakers are unable to reach a deal on the Farm Bill this year, prospects for killing the OSHA language in 2019 would improve as Democrats will control the House.

Labor and safer chemicals groups are threatening to sue EPA within 60 days in a bid to compel the agency to finalize an Obama-era proposed rule banning use of methylene chloride (MC) in paint strippers, noting that former Administrator Scott Pruitt committed to the rule.

The Chemical Safety Board (CSB) is launching an “actionable dialogue” with workers, managers and others to limit workplace hazards from combustible dust in the face of inaction by the Trump OSHA, which shelved a rulemaking setting a first-time standard to protect workers against hazards from combustible dust.

The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) is urging an appellate court to overturn a lower court ruling that partially denied its request for a broad subpoena for information related to an incident at an Exxon Mobil refinery, arguing the court abused its discretion in rejecting some subpoenas as “not relevant and material” to its inquiry.

OSHA and EPA are crafting a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to guide consultations between the two agencies on protections to workers who may be exposed to new chemicals that EPA is reviewing under the revised toxics law to determine whether and under what conditions they should enter the market.

As a federal appellate court weighs the Natural Resources Defense Council's (NRDC) standing to sue, the group is moving to drop its suit challenging the agency's draft framework for reviewing new chemicals under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), arguing that EPA has decided not to implement the framework.

EPA has dropped an early plan to consider risks of asbestos exposures to firefighters and other first responders due to its policy of excluding legacy uses from consideration for possible regulation under the revised toxics law, a move that is drawing protest from a group representing the workers and highlights the controversy around the policy decision.

Industry attorneys are welcoming EPA's recent approval of a new chemical that took a narrow view of the substance's “reasonably foreseen uses” that the agency is required to consider, but are urging officials to clarify whether the approach is intended to apply more broadly to agency reviews of other new chemicals under the revised toxics law.