EPA Solvent Rule Said to Signal Hurdles Ahead for US Industries

The EPA’s recent proposal to limit a potentially deadly solvent’s use and production signals challenges for diverse industries as the agency prepares to release more rules restricting widely used chemicals, according to an industry attorney.

A proposed rule the Environmental Protection Agency released on April 20 would ban methylene chloride—an ingredient in adhesives, sealants, and more—in all consumer products and most commercial and industrial ones.

The rule would require factories and military sites that continue to make or use the solvent to cut workers’ exposure significantly below the limit set by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The EPA’s proposed limit of 2 parts per million (ppm) is 92% less than OSHA’s 25 ppm standard, which is less than the limits in some other industrialized countries.

Information the agency has released about other chemicals it plans to regulate suggests the 92% reduction could pale in comparison to the workplace limits that the agency could propose for other chemicals, said W. Caffey Norman, a senior partner with Squire Patton Boggs.

The EPA released in June 2022 potential worker exposure limits for methylene chloride and four other solvents it plans to regulate. The EPA’s April 20 proposed rule kept the limit it released in 2022 for methylene chloride. That signals the limits for carbon tetrachloride, perchloroethylene, and trichloroethylene could be 100s or 1000s times lower than existing OSHA standards, Norman said.

It “would be extremely challenging for industry to come down to these levels,” said Norman, who counsels the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance Inc., which represents companies making, distributing, and using halogenated solvents.

“Other industrial countries don’t have levels anywhere close to these levels,” he said.

Uses of methylene chloride and other solvents in the EPA’s pipeline for some type of restriction include those used to make electronics, lubricants, car care products, and metal cleaners, along with refrigerants and other chemicals.

Supply Chain Impacts

The American Chemistry Council, which represents major US chemical producers, declined to comment on the implications of the methylene chloride proposal for other planned EPA chemical rules.

But, the proposal introduces regulatory uncertainty and confusion into worker safety oversight, the council said in a statement. “For this particular chemistry, EPA has not established the necessity to set an additional, independent, occupational exposure limit in addition to those already in place.”

The agency also failed to fully evaluate the supply chain impacts of its proposal, which would ban 52% of methylene chloride’s production volume in many industries within 15 months, ACC said.

“That scale of reduction in production, that rapidly, could have substantial supply chain impacts if manufacturers have contractual obligations they need to follow through on or if manufacturers decide to cease production entirely,” the group said.

Enforcement

Daniel Rosenberg, a senior attorney with Natural Resources Defense Council, which works to reduce exposure to toxic chemicals, dismissed criticism of the EPA’s worker safety limits.

The standards would have to be stronger than OSHA’s to be taken seriously, he said.

Many of OSHA’s chemical limits haven’t been updated in years or decades.

David Michaels, who served as assistant secretary for occupational safety and health under President Barack Obama, detailed in an undated letter problems his agency had protecting workers from chemicals.

The letter became public months after Congress overhauled the Toxic Substances Control Act in 2016 and directed the agency to ensure that people, including workers, didn’t face unreasonable risks from chemicals.

What’s critical to examine in the EPA’s methylene chloride and future chemical rules, however, are the requirements the agency would use to determine compliance with its workplace limits and enforce the final regulations’ requirements for those uses that would continue, said Rosenberg and Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, a staff attorney at Earthjustice.

The EPA allowed methylene chloride applications that it deemed essential to continue, some on a time-limited basis. These include using it to make climate-friendly refrigerants and to remove paints and coatings on safety-critical parts of commercial air carriers and aerospace vehicles and hardware.

Workers would be protected by not only the inhalation limits, but exposure monitoring, recordkeeping, downstream notification requirements to companies that would purchase the chemical, and other aspects of the proposal.

The EPA’s enforcement office hasn’t traditionally overseen worker safety practices of companies making and using industrial chemicals. The more companies the agency allows to use methylene chloride or other chemicals, the more challenging it will be for the EPA to enforce its requirements, Kalmuss-Katz said.

Future Proposed Rules

Perchloroethylene is the next chemical for which the EPA expects to propose controls based on unreasonable risks the agency identified as it evaluated the solvent’s risks as required by the 2016 Toxic Substances Control Act amendments, said Michal Freedhoff, assistant EPA administrator for chemical safety and pollution prevention, on April 20.

Proposed rules for carbon tetrachloride, trichloroethylene, n-methylpyrrolidone, and 1-bromopropane are expected to follow as the agency completes interagency reviews of them, she said.

Future chemical regulations are likely to reflect similar sifting processes as the agency determines when a chemical can be banned, restricted, or otherwise controlled and when its uses should continue, said Maria Doa, senior director of chemicals policy at the Environmental Defense Fund.

Climate-friendly refrigerant production and military and aerospace applications of other solvents, for example, may be exempted in the rules the EPA will propose for them, said Doa, who worked on chemical and scientific issues at the EPA for 22 years before joining EDF.

As EDF reviews methylene chloride and other future proposed rules, it will examine whether the agency is protecting people living near places that can keep making, using, and disposing of the chemicals, she said.

Chemicals the agency is evaluating to decide if they’re risky enough to warrant restrictions include formaldehyde, a building block compound used to make thousands of chemicals and products; 1,3-butadiene, which is used to make tires, five other solvents, and seven phthalates, which are used to soften plastics and to help the performance of personal care products like shampoo.