Washington — The Environmental Protection Agency wants feedback as it considers revising a final rule requiring “robust worker safety programs” that protect against carbon tetrachloride, a carcinogenic chemical substance.
An agency notice published Oct. 9 cites multiple legal challenges to the rule. Those challenges were consolidated in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit. In September, EPA announced its decision to “reconsider the CTC final rule through further rulemaking”; the notice requests comment on the rule’s “requirements and implementation.”
In the rule, which went into effect Jan. 17, EPA states that CTC poses “unreasonable” risk of injury to human health under multiple conditions of use. Found in commercial and industrial products, CTC has been linked to cancer and liver toxicity related to inhalation and being exposed to or absorbed through the skin.
The rule allows EPA to establish a workplace chemical protection program that sets the chemical exposure limit at 0.03 parts per million over an 8-hour time-weighted average for uses including:
- Domestic manufacture
- Import
- Processing as a reactant in the production of hydroflourocarbons and perchloroethylene
- Repackaging for uses as a laboratory chemical
- Recycling
- Industrial and commercial use as an industrial processing aid in the manufacture of agricultural products
By comparison, OSHA’s permissible exposure limit to CTC is 10 ppm over an 8-hour time-weighted average.
“EPA intends to consider information received in response to this public comment solicitation, and other reasonably available information, to inform the development of any proposed rule to amend the CTC regulation as appropriate,” the agency says.
The deadline to submit comments is Nov. 10.
