Trade groups and a chemical company suing EPA over its redone rule governing TSCA risk evaluations are divided on what bar the agency must clear to defend its new policy, teeing up a question that will shape how appellate judges decide whether the agency has properly justified its approach to measuring workplace risk, among other key issues.
September 16, 2026
Trade groups are asking a federal appeals court to hold that the reformed TSCA gave OSHA, not EPA, primary responsibility to regulate any “unreasonable risks” to workers from toxic substances, seeking to scrap the agency’s approach to chemical-specific rules that has focused primarily -- sometimes exclusively -- on workplace dangers.
Date:
Industry trade groups and individual companies are asking the 5th Circuit to scrap EPA’s rule governing methylene chloride for a litany of reasons, saying the agency ignored research on the chemical’s dangers, improperly refused to consider their workers’ use of protective gear and misapplied science to craft a strict workplace exposure limit, among other claims.
Date:
Unions and worker-safety advocates are asking the D.C. Circuit to hold that TSCA forbids the agency from considering workers’ use of personal protective equipment (PPE) when evaluating chemicals’ risks, saying its rule on the subject shows a “fundamental misunderstanding” of OSHA’s requirements for employers to provide protective gear.
Date:
Vehicle manufacturers say EPA’s Trump-era evaluation of industrial and commercial uses of chrysotile asbestos overestimated exposures, cherry-picked data and used flawed science to find that that nearly all such applications pose “unreasonable risk” to workers, backing chemical-sector groups’ calls to scrap both the rule based on the review and the analysis itself.
Date:
Trade groups are pushing EPA to craft a “consistent approach” for setting de minimis exemptions in its TSCA risk management rulemakings, while also renewing pressure on the agency for more transparency on workplace exposure limits for the solvent 1-bromopropane (1-BP) in particular -- limits some say should have been crafted by OSHA instead.
Date:
EPA’s response to comments on its final risk evaluation of the flame retardant tris(2-chloroethyl) phosphate (TCEP) lays out arguments against requests from industry and environmental groups alike to significantly broaden the review or rework its conclusions, defending both the TSCA office’s analysis of TCEP and its approach to setting workplace exposure limits.
Date:
Chemical manufacturers say EPA’s landmark rule phasing out chrysotile asbestos uses -- largely over workplace dangers -- “usurps” OSHA’s statutory power to protect workers, amid broader arguments seeking to cabin EPA’s power to regulate existing chemicals under the reformed TSCA.
Date:
Unions representing industrial workers and firefighters, as well as a broad coalition of environmentalists and public-health advocates, are urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to conclude that EPA’s landmark TSCA rule for chrysotile asbestos is unlawfully weak, arguing that the agency unjustifiably declined to regulate or even evaluate risks from several uses of the mineral.
Date:
A chemical firm trying to intervene in litigation over the deadlines for 22 overdue EPA risk evaluations of toxic substances says the agency and environmentalists are raising “straw man” arguments against its participation in the case in order to prevent it from extending the proposed 2024 settlement deadline for formaldehyde.
Date: