Practical EHS Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
Q. We spray paint small items such as pumps and motors and puncture the empty paint cans to capture the remaining teaspoon or so of paint that is placed in a drum. Is this remaining paint a hazardous material, and if so, how should we label the drum?
What WOTUS Does Briefly, WOTUS redefines which waters are waters of the United States and, by doing so, decides whether your project will need a permit. According to the EPA, the rule does not alter existing exemptions from Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction, including exemptions for normal farming, ranching, and silviculture activities. The major and most […]
Under a new EPA proposal, pulp and paper mills subject to the Agency’s National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) will not need to undertake new compliance measures as a result of the Agency’s residual risk review. However, the EPA believes developments in this sector warrant revisions to the existing opacity requirements. Several other […]
OSHA’s Alliance Program Construction Roundtable is a forum for employers to share information and address challenges. Participants represent organizations in OSHA’s construction alliance program. In a recent blog post, Dr. John W. Mroszczyk provided an update on the work of the group and shared statistics about ongoing challenges the industry faces.
Record Settlement Will Pump Billions into Cleanup Activities January 20, 2015, marked the last day for any appeals in the historic settlement with a Woodlands, Texas, energy company to address deadly uranium and other wastes. However, because no appeals were submitted, the $5.5 billion in payments are now secure. In the announcement, the EPA noted […]
A Camden, New Jersey, auto recycler and auto parts supplier will pay $868,628 in Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) penalties as part of a settlement agreement with the Department of Labor, OSHA announced April 11. The settlement with Auto Store LLC, which does business as My Auto Store, following litigation was prompted by OSHA’s […]
The EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (OECA) has stepped away from an earlier policy that created an expectation that in settlements with violators of environmental law and regulation, Agency case teams are expected to make use of “innovative enforcement” tools. The Agency now states that while such tools have proven useful, case teams […]
Last week, the National Safety Council (NSC) released its annual list of states with the lowest and highest rates of unintentional, preventable deaths, which include poisonings (largely from drug overdoses), car crashes, and falls. Death rates were calculated per 100,000 population, and all analysis was conducted by NSC using 2017 data from the National Center […]
Conclusions from the TSCA Assessment of Dichloromethane According to the EPA, the use of products containing DCM for paint stripping poses some of the highest exposure risks compared to all uses of DCM. The chemical is a volatile organic compound (VOC) and is also considered to have “likely carcinogenic properties.” In 2012, 261.5 million pounds […]
In its final rule adding an applicability date for the Obama administration’s 2015 Clean Water Rule (more commonly called the waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule), the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) state that action simply maintains the status quo (i.e., the definition of waters of the United States that prevailed before […]