Practical EHS Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
OSHA is expected to revise its Hazard Communication (HazCom) Standard this year to bring it in line with the current Globally Harmonized System (GHS) of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals and formalize various enforcement policies that have been issued since the last major update to HazCom in 2012. Employers that manufacture, import, distribute, or use […]
Since it was introduced in 1986, California’s Proposition 65 (Prop 65, shorthand for the state’s Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986) has regularly broken new ground on ways government can compel businesses to warn the public about the dangers of chemicals in products, structures, and the environment. Here we will summarize Prop […]
On January 18, 2019, one day after the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards program (CFATS) was scheduled to expire, President Trump signed a bill that provided the program 15 months of new funding. News of the extension provides an opportunity to review one of the more unusual aspects of the CFATS […]
The EPA has issued its first-draft risk evaluation for the first 10 chemicals the Agency must evaluate under the 2016 amendments to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
A spill or release of a chemical just occurred at your facility. What do you do? Does it need to be reported? What information needs to be reported, to whom, and how soon?
The use of e-cigarettes, commonly called vaping, has been promoted by manufacturers and retailers as a safe alternative to smoking tobacco smoke. The chemical evidence backs up this claim, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), but there’s more to the picture.
The 2016 amendments to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) state that by December 22, 2019, the EPA must have at least 20 high-priority chemical substances undergoing risk evaluation. Additionally, by this date, at least 20 chemical substances must have been designated as low-priority substances, or substances for which a risk evaluation is not warranted […]
The 2016 amendments to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) require that the EPA charge fees to persons who either submit information the Agency must review or manufacture chemicals for which the Agency must conduct risk evaluations. The EPA has now published a final rule that establishes fees for certain activities under TSCA Sections 4, […]
After the EPA extended the public comment period on its problem formulation documents for the first 10 chemicals that will receive risk evaluations under the amended Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), major stakeholders provided radically divergent views of both the documents and the EPA’s approach to developing them.
The EPA is taking steps to address the presence of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in drinking water and other media, but, to date, the Agency’s actions involve gathering more information rather than issuing regulations. In its latest announcement, the EPA discusses its use of nontargeted analysis to identify PFAS in samples. This method allows […]