13 Carcinogens (4-Nitrobiphenyl, etc.)

DEPARTMENT OF LABOR <SUBAGY>Occupational Safety and Health Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>29 CFR Parts 1910, 1915, 1917, 1918, 1926</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. OSHA-2025-0013]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1218-AD56</RIN> <SUBJECT>13 Carcinogens (4-Nitrobiphenyl, etc.)</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Labor. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This proposed rule revises some substance-specific respirator requirements to allow different types of respirators to be used under OSHA's 13 Carcinogens standard and better aligns this standard with OSHA's respiratory protection standard. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments and other information, including requests for a hearing, must be received on or before September 2, 2025. <E T="03">Informal public hearing:</E> OSHA will schedule an informal public hearing on the rule if requested during the comment period. If a hearing is requested, the location and date of the hearing, procedures for interested parties to notify the agency of their intention to participate, and procedures for participants to submit their testimony and documentary evidence will be announced in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> <E T="03">Written comments:</E> You may submit comments and attachments, identified by Docket No. OSHA-2025-0013, electronically at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> which is the Federal e-Rulemaking Portal. Follow the instructions online for making electronic submissions. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions must include the agency's name and the docket number for this rulemaking (Docket No. OSHA-2025-0013). When uploading multiple attachments to <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> , please number all of your attachments because <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> will not automatically number the attachments. This will be very useful in identifying all attachments. For example, Attachment 1—title of your document, Attachment 2—title of your document, Attachment 3—title of your document. For assistance with commenting and uploading documents, please see the Frequently Asked Questions on <E T="03">regulations.gov.</E> All comments, including any personal information you provide, are placed in the public docket without change and may be made available online at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Therefore, OSHA cautions commenters about submitting information they do not want made available to the public, or submitting materials that contain personal information (either about themselves or others), such as Social Security Numbers and birthdates. <E T="03">Docket:</E> The docket for this rulemaking (Docket No. OSHA-2025-0013) is available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> the Federal eRulemaking Portal. Most exhibits are available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov;</E> some exhibits ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> copyrighted material) are not available to download from that web page. However, all materials in the dockets are available for inspection at the OSHA Docket Office. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> <E T="03">For press inquiries:</E> Contact Frank Meilinger, Director, OSHA Office of Communications, Occupational Safety and Health Administration; telephone: (202) 693-1999; email: <E T="03">meilinger.francis2@dol.gov.</E> <E T="03">General information and technical inquiries:</E> Contact Andrew Levinson, Director, OSHA Directorate of Standards and Guidance, Occupational Safety and Health Administration; telephone: (202) 693-1950; email: <E T="03">osha.dsg@dol.gov.</E> <E T="03">Copies of this</E> <E T="7462">Federal Register</E> <E T="03">notice:</E> Electronic copies are available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> This <E T="04">Federal Register</E> notice, as well as news releases and other relevant information, also are available at OSHA's web page at <E T="03">https://www.osha.gov.</E> A “100-word summary” is also available on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Executive Summary</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Legal Authority and Preliminary Findings</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Events Leading to the Proposed Rule</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Summary and Explanation of the Proposed Requirements</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Economic Analysis</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. Additional Requirements</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VII. Authority and Signature</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VIII. Regulatory Text</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Executive Summary</HD> This proposed rule is intended to promote more effective use of respirators, provide greater compliance flexibility, and clarify the policies and procedures employers must follow when implementing a respiratory protection program in conjunction with OSHA's 13 Carcinogens standard (29 CFR 1910.1003). OSHA is proposing to revise some respirator-related provisions where they are unnecessarily prescriptive, which would result in employers having greater flexibility in the respirators they select for exposed workers, while providing equivalent worker protection. This proposal is also consistent with OSHA's intent, when it published the revised respiratory protection standard (29 CFR 1910.134), to use it as a foundation for respirator selection in substance-specific standards. Additionally, OSHA believes that this proposed rule appropriately incorporates advances in technology, which have made some provisions of the 13 Carcinogens standard outdated, and would allow employers to take advantage of future technological advances. This proposed standard is intended to account for modern knowledge and technology and to streamline the selection of respirators. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Legal Authority and Preliminary Findings</HD> The purpose of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (29 U.S.C. 651 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) (“the Act” or “the OSH Act”) is “to assure so far as possible every working man and woman in the Nation safe and healthful working conditions and to preserve our human resources” (29 U.S.C. 651(b)). To achieve this goal, Congress authorized the Secretary of Labor (“the Secretary”) to promulgate standards to protect workers, including the authority “to set mandatory occupational safety and health standards applicable to businesses affecting interstate commerce” (29 U.S.C. 651(b)(3); <E T="03">see also</E> 29 U.S.C. 654(a)(2) (requiring employers to comply with OSHA standards), 29 U.S.C. 655(a) (authorizing summary adoption of existing consensus and established federal standards within two years of the Act's enactment), 29 U.S.C. 655(b) (authorizing promulgation, modification or revocation of standards pursuant to notice and comment), and 29 U.S.C. 655(b)(7) (authorizing OSHA to include among a standard's requirements labeling, monitoring, medical testing, and other information-transmittal provisions)). An occupational safety and health standard is “. . . a standard which requires conditions, or the adoption or use of one or more practices, means, methods, operations, or processes, reasonably necessary or appropriate to provide safe or healthful employment and places of employment” (29 U.S.C. 652(8)). The Secretary may also issue regulations requiring employers to keep records regarding their activities relating to the Act, as well as records of work-related deaths, injuries, and illnesses (29 U.S.C. 657(c)(1)-(2)). Before OSHA may promulgate a health or safety standard, it must find that a standard is reasonably necessary or appropriate within the meaning of section 652(8) of the OSH Act, which OSHA did here in 1974 when it published the first Carcinogens standard (39 FR 3756). The Supreme Court, in its decision on OSHA's benzene standard, interpreted OSHA's obligation under section 652(8) as requiring it to evaluate “whether significant risks are present and can be eliminated or lessened by a change in practices” ( <E T="03">Indus. Union Dep't, AFL-CIO</E> v. <E T="03">Am. Petroleum Inst.,</E> 448 U.S. 607, 642 (1980) (plurality opinion)). OSHA originally published this standard as an emergency temporary standard (ETS) and found that these carcinogens posed a grave danger, which is a higher threshold than significant risk (38 FR 10929). When, as here, OSHA has previously determined that its standard substantially reduces a significant risk, it is unnecessary for the agency to make additional findings on risk for every provision of that standard ( <E T="03">see, e.g., Pub. Citizen Health Research Grp.</E> v. <E T="03">Tyson,</E> 796 F.2d 1479, 1502 n.16 (D.C. Cir. 1986) (rejecting the argument that OSHA must “find that each and every aspect of its standard eliminates a significant risk”)). Rather, once OSHA makes a general significant risk finding in support of a standard, the next question is whether a particular requirement is reasonably related to the purpose of the standard as a whole ( <E T="03">see Asbestos Info. Ass'n/N. Am.</E> v. <E T="03">Reich,</E> 117 F.3d 891, 894 (5th Cir. 1997); <E T="03">Forging Indus. Ass'n</E> v. <E T="03">Sec'y of Labor,</E> 773 F.2d 1436, 1447 (4th Cir. 1985); <E T="03">United Steelworkers of Am., AFL-CIO-CLC</E> v. <E T="03">Marshall,</E> 647 F.2d 1189, 1237-38 (D.C. Cir. 1980) (“ <E T="03">Lead I”</E> )). Therefore, while OSHA is not making a preliminary finding of significant risk for this proposed rule, the agency has made a preliminary determination that the proposed changes are reasonably related to the purpose of the 13 Carcinogens standard as a whole. A standard is technologically feasible if the protective ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 34k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━