Practical EHS Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
Consistent with President Obama’s June 2013 Climate Action Plan, the EPA is using its Significant New Alternatives Policy (SNAP) to propose restrictions on the end uses of certain hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), approve new alternatives to substances with high global warming potential (GWP), and change the status of other substances already on the SNAP list.
Chemotherapy was first used to fight cancer in the 1940s. By the 1970s, chemotherapy drugs were being used to treat noncancerous health conditions, such as lupus, vasculitis, and autoimmune disorders. By the 1980s, the adverse health effects of chemotherapeutic agents on healthcare workers were well known enough to prompt the publication of the first recommendations […]
A Mississippi steel pipe manufacturer has reached a settlement agreement with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to resolve citations and penalties involving one worker’s death and another’s amputation injuries, the agency announced November 22. On January 19, two employees of Jindal Tubular USA LLC in Bay Saint Louis were setting up a site […]
Young workers are involved in a disproportionate number of forklift accidents. Lack of training, inexperience, and risk taking are all culprits in these accidents. But they are no excuse. Federal laws and regulations require you to protect your young workers and prevent forklift-related incidents. OSHA’s Powered Industrial Truck standard (29 CFR 1910.178) requires you to […]
The midterm evaluation (MTE) of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions limits for cars and light-duty trucks, which President Obama’s EPA released 16 months before the deadline for doing so, will be reconsidered by President Trump’s EPA. The reconsideration is needed, the EPA now says, because the MTE was not developed in consideration of a second MTE […]
Q. In an automobile dealership service department, can the floor (inside of a building) or oil/water separator drains be counted as secondary containment for containers ranging from 55 gallons (gals) to 500 gals?
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is modernizing its approach to environmental compliance and efficiency through a project called “E-Enterprise for the Environment.” Today we will review EPA’s plans for E-Enterprise as outlined in the Agency’s 2017 budget pertaining to air quality, water quality, and inspections. Tomorrow we will look at EPA’s budgetary plans for […]
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently released its proposed amendments to the Chemical Accidental Release Prevention Program, aka the Risk Management Program. Concurrently, the Agency also released a Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA). Yesterday we reviewed EPA’s estimated costs for changes concerning third-party audits, root cost analyses, and safer technology and alternative analyses. Today we […]
In addition to the personnel requirements we reviewed yesterday, Part 109 also defines how facilities that do not have a Facility Response Plan (FRP) in place and that have made the determination that required secondary containment is impracticable, should both have and be prepared to obtain necessary spill response equipment. In general, according to the […]
In an action that parallels EPA’s rulemaking to write a new definition of the Clean Water Act (CWA) term waters of the United States (WOTUS), the Agency is soliciting comments on whether pollutant discharges into groundwater that has a hydrologic connection to WOTUS are subject to CWA regulation.