Practical EHS Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
Today’s workplace uses thousands of chemicals, many of which are hazardous. The resources in this section will help guide you in the safe and legal identification, storage, transport, and use of these chemicals, and in making sure that your employees right to know how to be safe around such substances is provided, as required by law.
In March 2019, the EPA used its authority under Section 6(a) of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to issue a final rule prohibiting the manufacture (including import), processing, and distribution in commerce of methylene chloride for consumer paint and coating removal (stripping). The action carried out part of a proposal the Agency published in […]
Stating that the benefits of a National Primary Drinking Water Regulation (NPDWR) for perchlorate do not justify the costs of such a regulation, the EPA is nonetheless proposing an NPDWR for the chemical. Under the proposal, the Agency would set the NPDWR at a Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) of 56 micrograms per liter (µg/L). The […]
As summer nears, environmental compliance efforts turn toward Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) reports, which are due July 1. So far in 2019, the EPA has issued multiple five-digit fines to companies that submitted TRI reports but overlooked a chemical that should have been reported but wasn’t.
In February 2019, the EPA issued its Action Plan for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The Plan listed five priority actions and four short-term actions to address “key PFAS-related challenges.” One of the priority actions is to provide guidance for groundwater cleanup at sites contaminated with the two PFAS that have prompted the most concern—perfluorooctanoic […]
In September 2017, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit to find five aspects of the EPA’s final rule, TSCA Inventory Notification (Active-Inactive) Requirements (Aug. 11, 2017, Federal Register (FR)), unlawful. On April 26, 2019, a three-judge panel responded by denying four of the EDF’s challenges, therefore […]
In a key action under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), the EPA is proposing to approve reregistration of the herbicide glyphosate, the active ingredient in over 750 products, including Roundup®, the world’s most popular herbicide.
The EPA’s final Significant New Use Rule (SNUR) for asbestos is a partial step to limit potential human exposure to the toxic substance.
The Process Safety Management (PSM) standard applies to equipment like boilers that don’t involve highly hazardous chemicals if the equipment is interconnected with or located near equipment that does, the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission recently decided.
In its latest action to implement the 2016 amendments to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the EPA has proposed regulations under which it will review claims by businesses that information about chemical substances on the confidential portion of the TSCA Inventory must be protected from disclosure to the public.
According to a rare Management Alert from the EPA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG), information reported to the Agency on chemicals released to the environment by publicly owned treatment works (POTWs) conflicted with information the OIG obtained separately from the Agency.