
On January 13, 2025, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) signed a long-awaited memorandum of understanding (MOU), formally coordinating EPA’s efforts to evaluate and manage current chemicals under Section 6 of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
According to EPA’s press release, “EPA and OSHA anticipate that better coordination under this MOU will result in improved workplace health and safety protections for workers using existing chemical substances under TSCA and the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act and allow for effective implementation of our national workplace and environmental protection statutes.”
According to EPA, the MOU will further facilitate information sharing in the form of notification, consultation, and coordination where appropriate, while maintaining the current partnership between EPA and OSHA on workplace exposures as part of EPA’s prioritization, risk evaluation, and risk management of existing chemicals. EPA reports that the agencies will exchange data on:
- TSCA Section 6 prioritization, risk evaluation, rulemaking, and implementation efforts as it pertains to chemical hazards in the workplace;
- Outreach and communication materials for stakeholders about EPA rules and OSHA requirements, including TSCA Section 6 and OSHA rules that regulate the same chemical hazards;
- Inspections and enforcement activity such as each agency’s areas of focus, complaints, inspections, and potential violations where mutual interest exists; and
- Protocols to ensure that confidential information is being properly exchanged between the agencies when carrying out law enforcement actions or otherwise protecting health or the environment.
According to the EPA’s press release, the 2016 TSCA amendments increased the EPA’s power and duty to safeguard workers by mandating that the EPA take into account susceptible and possibly exposed groups in chemical risk assessments—a group that specifically includes workers.
EPA claims that the agencies collectively have a legislative obligation to protect the public’s and the country’s workers’ health and safety by implementing federal laws and regulations, such as the OSH Act and the TSCA, in a timely and efficient manner. According to EPA, the chemical regulations issued by OSHA under the OSH Act and EPA under TSCA Section 6(a) have a largely comparable goal, and the control mechanisms that each agency needs to implement to meet the goals of its statutes may overlap or coincide.
The EPA claims that the TSCA and OSH Act are different in several ways, including jurisdiction: the OSH Act governs workplace health and safety, whereas the TSCA regulates the use of chemicals more generally. Volunteers, independent contractors, and certain employees of state and local governments are among the broader categories of workers protected by TSCA that are not covered by the OSH Act. OSHA’s conclusions and occupational risk mitigations may therefore differ from EPA’s.
For instance, although OSHA has established regulation exposure limits for certain chemicals, the majority of these limits were established soon after the OSH Act was passed in 1970. EPA notes that by contrast, the exposure limits it is establishing as part of current risk management rules “are derived from current scientific review.”
EPA notes that “[r]equirements set under TSCA must use the best available science to address unreasonable risk — identified without consideration of cost or other non-risk factors; whereas standards set under the OSH Act are constrained by requirements that OSHA prove proposed controls are economically and technically feasible.” EPA states that although it considers non-risk factors such as the effect on the national economy and technological innovation when weighing options sufficient to address the unreasonable risk under TSCA, “the differences in statutory authorities can also lead to differences between the two agencies’ regulatory approaches.”