The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has recently published a draft revision of the risk determination for perchloroethylene (PCE) (87 Fed. Reg. 39085), N-methylpyrrolidone (NMP) (87 Fed. Reg. 39511), methylene chloride (87 Fed. Reg. 39824) and trichloroethylene (TCE) (87 Fed. Reg. 40520). The draft revisions reflect the policy changes announced by the EPA, which aim to protect human health and avoid unreasonable risks arising from the use of chemical substances. The EPA considers that these substances present an unreasonable risk to human health when evaluated under their conditions of use (COU).
The revised draft risk determination does not assume that workers always and appropriately wear personal protective equipment (PPE). Nevertheless, the EPA states that this decision should not be interpreted as an indication that the Agency believes there is widespread non-compliance with applicable Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards. The EPA is aware that workplace protections may, and should, be in place; however, the choice not to assume PPE use reflects the EPA’s recognition that unreasonable risks may exist for potentially highly exposed worker subpopulations—either because they are not covered by OSHA standards, or because their employers are not in compliance with OSHA standards, or because many of the OSHA chemical-specific permissible exposure limits adopted largely in the 1970s are described by OSHA as “outdated and inadequate for ensuring worker health protection,” or because the OSHA permissible exposure limit may be insufficient to protect worker health.
Separately, the EPA is also conducting a screening-level approach to assess potential risks from air and water pathways for several of the “first 10” chemical substances, including PCE, NMP, methylene chloride, and TCE. In any case, the previous administration excluded from the risk evaluations for these substances the exposure pathways that were or could be regulated under a different statute administered by EPA, resulting in some air and water exposure pathways not being fully evaluated.