EPA Settles with Four Companies to Improve Community Safety, Chemical Reporting

The EPA has taken action against four companies in New York, New Jersey and Puerto Rico for failing to report the use of hazardous chemicals, as required by Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA). These settlements strengthen community safety by ensuring companies comply with the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) program, which helps neighborhoods stay informed about potentially dangerous substances nearby.

 

“EPA is helping protect human health and encouraging safer chemical management practices,” said EPA Regional Administrator Michael Martucci. “EPA is doing its job to ensure that facilities continue to comply with important laws.”

 

The settlements include the following companies:

 

TRI tracks the management of certain toxic chemicals that pose a threat to people and the environment. Facilities that meet TRI reporting requirements must report the details of releases of toxic chemicals to air, land and water, transfers of chemical waste to offsite locations, and methods of waste management and pollution prevention.

 

These settlements reflect EPA’s commitment to ensuring compliance with environmental laws to protect and inform communities about the potential hazards associated with chemical releases.

 

Hazardous chemicals are located in many types of facilities and areas. Responders need to know where hazardous chemicals are used and stored, how to assess the risks associated with those chemicals and how to ensure community preparedness for accidents or incidents that may occur. Many facility owners and operators rely on local resources for emergency preparedness and response, including first responders, emergency medical services and hazardous materials response teams. It is important for communities and facility owners and operators to work closely together to ensure chemical safety and security.

 

 

Two health alerts published last month by MSHA focus on lead hazards and housekeeping practices.

 

The health alert “Protecting Miners from Lead Hazards” urges miners to wear fit-tested, air-purifying respirators with high-efficiency filters in all work areas where they may be exposed to lead dust or fumes. Other actions miners can take to help prevent lead exposure include changing into clean work clothes and shoes before beginning work, washing their hands and faces before eating and drinking, and eating and drinking in areas free of lead dust and fumes. MSHA also advises miners to vacuum their work clothes and shoes before removing them and launder clothes at work when possible.

 

The agency’s alert on housekeeping describes similar recommendations for miners’ dusty work clothes and boots, which MSHA says can be “a significant source of secondary exposures” to respirable dust and silica. The alert recommends the use of cleaning stations and booths for work clothes, boot-washing stations near production areas, and boot brushes outside of equipment cabs, control rooms, and offices. Practices such as using a sweeping compound to reduce dust when dry sweeping and using wet methods in housekeeping can also help reduce exposures, according to MSHA.

 

A fatal explosion at a Pennsylvania steel plant in August occurred during maintenance on a gas isolation valve, according to an update issued by the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB). The explosion killed two employees and caused extensive damage at the U.S. Steel Clairton Coke Works facility, which processes raw coal into coke, a component in the making of steel and iron. Five other workers at the facility were seriously injured.

 

Workers performing a procedure to “exercise” the valve by closing and reopening it flushed the valve seat with water to remove accumulated residue from coke oven gas. The workers’ carbon monoxide monitors alarmed at this time, as did a four-gas monitor carried by one of the workers. According to CSB, workers reported hearing a popping sound and smelling gas. U.S. Steel ordered the workers to evacuate. Less than a minute later, the explosion occurred.

 

CSB found that the gas isolation valve had failed but has not yet determined whether the failure caused the explosion or resulted from it. The valve was manufactured in 1953 and refurbished in 2013. CSB’s investigation is ongoing.

 

 

A proposed rule published in the Federal Register on Sept. 23 outlines amendments EPA has put forward for its procedural framework rule on conducting existing chemical risk evaluations under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). The proposed changes would rescind or revise certain amendments to the rule made in 2024.

 

EPA’s proposal seeks to remove provisions requiring the agency to consider every condition of use, exposure route, and exposure pathway “based on reasonably available information without exception when conducting a risk evaluation under TSCA” and to return to a previous approach to risk determination in which the agency determined risk based on each condition of use for a chemical substance. The agency’s current approach calls for a single risk determination on each chemical substance as a whole.

 

The new proposal also seeks to revise a provision regarding how exposure controls, including personal protective equipment, are accounted for in EPA’s risk evaluations and determinations. Under the revised provision, EPA would consider “reasonably available information on the implementation and use of occupational exposure control measures such as engineering and administrative controls and personal protective equipment,” according to the Federal Register. The agency currently does not assume that workers always use PPE when conducting its chemical risk evaluations because “EPA believes that the assumed use of PPE in a risk determination could lead to an underestimation of the risk to workers.”

 

EPA is accepting comments on this proposal through Nov. 7. For more information, see the Federal Register notice outlining the proposed rule.

 

 

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