Are You Applying Best Practices for Engineered Nanomaterials?
Does your company deal with engineered nanomaterials (ENM)? If so, the federal government wants to know your occupational safety and health practices.
Category: Chemicals
Today’s workplace uses thousands of chemicals, many of which are hazardous. The resources in this section will help guide you in the safe and legal identification, storage, transport, and use of these chemicals, and in making sure that your employees right to know how to be safe around such substances is provided, as required by law.
Pruitt: New Chemical Backlog Is Gone
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s “core statutory mission” includes implementing the 2016 amendments to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and particularly completing new chemical reviews more quickly. Upon taking charge of the Agency, one of Pruitt’s initial challenges was reducing a backlog of 600 new chemicals stuck in the EPA review process. Now, 6 months […]
Plastic-to-Fuel Facilities Report Low Emissions
Pyrolysis, a process that converts certain post-consumer plastics into fuel and other chemistry products, has the added benefit of emitting low amounts of air pollution when compared to facilities in some industrial sectors.
Chemical Prioritization and Evaluation Rules Issued by EPA
The EPA has finalized two rules required by the amended Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which are intended to guide the Agency in both prioritizing chemicals for risk evaluations and actually conducting those evaluations.
Prevent Ammonia Releases During Loading and Unloading Operations
On June 12, 2017, hazardous materials (hazmat) crews were called to a South Texas Cold Storage in Corpus Christi, Texas. A cooling unit at the facility was leaking ammonia. Nearby residents were instructed to shelter in place while hazmat crews controlled the leak. That same day, in Phelps, New York, two homeowners became ill after […]
Prevent Ammonia Releases During Normal and Shutdown Operations
During the early morning hours of June 6, 2017, an ammonia leak at a Mrs. Grissom’s Salads production facility just outside Nashville, Tennessee, trapped 32 people—some of them inside an administrative building at the site; others at the Coca-Cola bottling plant next door. The leak was outside the Mrs. Grissom’s facility, but the cutoff valves […]
Is Beryllium Involved in that Operation?
Under the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) new beryllium standard, employers have until March 10, 2020, to implement engineering controls if they are needed to control beryllium exposure. OSHA has recommended some minimum exposure control strategies for specific operations that involve beryllium. Let’s take a look.
Tips for Controlling Beryllium Exposure in Your Workplace
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) new beryllium standard recently went into effect. Yesterday we addressed the new standard for general industry and the looming compliance dates. Today we offer general tips for controlling beryllium exposure in your workplace, and tomorrow we will look at exposure control recommendations related to specific activities.
New Standard for Beryllium: The Who and the When
The Obama administration’s standard for addressing beryllium exposure in the workplace has taken effect after a short delay by the Trump administration. The new rule contains standards for general industry, construction, and shipyards.
OSHA Wants to Scale Back Coverage of Beryllium Rules
OSHA proposed on Friday, June 23 to exclude construction and shipbuilding from a final rule issued on January 9, 2017 reducing workers’ exposure to beryllium. The lightweight metal is used primarily in foundry and smelting, composites manufacturing, dental lab work, among other applications. Under the proposal only general industry workplaces would be subject to the […]