The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced plans to regulate nearly a dozen uses of 1,3-butadiene to safeguard American workers. This decision follows a court-ordered deadline and an extensive review process that took six years and considered approximately 20,000 scientific studies across 30 different use cases.
The EPA's comprehensive evaluation identified potential health risks for workers exposed to this chemical in 11 specific industrial settings. The agency noted that personal protective equipment commonly used in these workplaces could help mitigate these risks. However, the EPA did not find unreasonable risks to the environment, consumers, or the general population, including those living near facilities.
Under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the EPA is now tasked with developing rules to protect workers from identified risks. This rule-making process will involve careful consideration of health effects, exposure levels, economic impacts, and benefits of use. Stakeholder engagement will be extensive to ensure that resulting regulations are both effective and practical.
Throughout its review process, the EPA incorporated real-world data and refined conservative assumptions from earlier drafts to enhance accuracy and reliability. For instance, switching to a more detailed database provided precise geographic information about emissions sources. Additionally, feedback from peer reviewers led to combining risk estimates for bladder cancer and leukemia into a higher overall cancer risk assessment.
The final rules aim to provide regulatory certainty for companies while ensuring worker protection. The EPA emphasized its commitment to transparency throughout this process and said it would adapt protections if new scientific findings or changing conditions necessitate further action.
1,3-butadiene is a colorless gas crucial in manufacturing everyday products like car tires and adhesives. While consumer products contain only trace amounts deemed safe, industrial settings pose higher exposure levels potentially leading to health issues such as reduced birthweight pregnancies, anemia, leukemia, and bladder cancer.
