Category: Chemicals

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.

Tier II Reporting Essentials

by Tim Fagan The Tier II reporting deadline is approaching. This infographic provides essential information to help you determine if you need to report, along with some helpful tips for preparing and submitting a Tier II report.

OSHA Respirator Fit Testing Bolstered

Industry can expect little relief from OSHA’s respirator fit testing requirements in light of a new National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) study that bolsters the Agency’s requirements and adds a recommendation that fit testing be performed for employees who lose a specific amount of weight. According to NIOSH, over 3 million workers […]

Identifying EHSs

Q. How do I identify extremely hazardous substances (EHSs) and hazardous substances on EPA’s List of Lists and SDSs?

There’s an App for That! Estimating Respirator Cartridge Service Life

Whenever you put workers in an air-purifying respirator, it’s vital to know when they need to change their cartridges. Until passive visual end-of-service-life indicators become standard—something that has been a long time coming—employers must calculate, based on employee exposures and workplace factors, just how long a cartridge remains useful. There are a number of computer-based […]

Ramped Up to RMP Program Level 3? Here’s How to Get Started

As discussed in yesterday’s Advisor, thousands of retail facilities face stricter requirements under the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Risk Management Program (RMP) because of a controversial Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) interpretation of a retail exemption under the Process Safety Management (PSM) standard. Here’s how to get started in RMP Program Level 3. Beginning […]

Tougher RMP Requirements for Retail

Thousands of retail facilities face stricter requirements under the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Risk Management Program (RMP) because of a controversial Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) interpretation of an exemption under the Process Safety Management (PSM) standard. Today we will review EPA’s reaction to OSHA’s narrowing of the retail exemption. Beginning in July 2016, […]

Chemical Facility Safety: OSHA delays enforcement of new retail exemption policy

In the wake of Executive Order (EO) 13650, issued in August 2013 and titled Improving Chemical Facility Safety and Security, federal agencies have been working to modernize key policies, regulations, and standards, including EPA’s Risk Management Program (RMP) and OSHA’s Process Safety Management (PSM).

Cleaning Chemicals Sicken 20 Workers; How to Avoid Deadly Mixtures

When Taylor Farms workers in Tracy arrived for the morning shift on October 15, 2015, they immediately noticed a strong chlorine smell. Twenty workers, including two pregnant women, became sick enough that they evacuated the building and called 911. According to the Tracy Fire Department, the plant’s sanitation crew had accidentally mixed two cleaning chemicals, […]

Cyanotoxins Dominate Proposed Contaminant List

The EPA has proposed 30 chemical contaminants/groups for its 4th Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule (UCMR 4). The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) specifies that the UCMR must list no more than 30 contaminants or groups—called the contaminant candidate list (CCL)—and that the EPA must produce a revised list every 5 years. Also, as required by […]