Formaldehyde

DEPARTMENT OF LABOR <SUBAGY>Occupational Safety and Health Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>29 CFR Parts 1910, 1915, 1917, 1918, and 1926</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. OSHA-2025-0026]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1218-AD64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Formaldehyde</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 OSHA's Formaldehyde standard to eliminate duplicative respiratory protection requirements and better align 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-2025-0026, 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-2025-0026). When uploading multiple attachments to <E T="03">https://www.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">https://www.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-2025-0026) 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 clarify the policies and procedures employers must follow when implementing a respiratory protection program in conjunction with OSHA's Formaldehyde standard (29 CFR 1910.1048). OSHA is proposing to remove provisions that are duplicative with the requirements of the Respiratory Protection standard, which is 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. <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 1987 when it published the Formaldehyde standard (52 FR 46168-01) and again in 1992 when the Agency reconsidered the record on remand from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals (57 FR 22290-01). 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 adopted a consensus standard to regulate formaldehyde in 1971 and revised the standard in 1987 because even at the initial permissible exposure limit there was significant risk to employees (52 FR 46168-01). 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 Formaldehyde standard as a whole. A standard is technologically feasible if the protective measures it requires already exist, can be brought into existence with available technology, or can be created with technology that is reasonably expected to be developed ( <E T="03">see Am. Iron and Steel Inst.</E> v. <E T="03">OSHA,</E> 939 F.2d 975, 980 (D.C. Cir. 1991)). Courts have also interpreted technological feasibility to mean that a typical firm in each affected industry or application group will reasonably be able to implement the requirements of the standard in most operations most of the time ( <E T="03 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 31k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━