How EPA's Request for Information on Legacy Asbestos Fits Into the Regulatory and Workers' Compensation Picture
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has taken its next step in the long-running effort to regulate legacy asbestos, and it is not the risk management rule that workers, unions, and public health advocates have been waiting for. Instead, on June 27, 2026, EPA published a Request for Information, EPA-HQ-OPPT-2025-0036, seeking public data before it drafts a proposed rule under Section 6(a) of the Toxic Substances Control Act to address the unreasonable risk from legacy uses of asbestos identified in its December 2024 Asbestos Part 2 Final Risk Evaluation.
The RFI does not weaken or reverse EPA's underlying finding that legacy asbestos, the asbestos embedded in floor and ceiling tiles, pipe wrap, insulation, gaskets, textiles, and countless other older products, presents an unreasonable risk of injury to human health. What it does is extend the timeline for turning that finding into an enforceable rule, and it does so by asking the regulated community and the public to fill in data gaps that EPA says it needs before it can complete the required economic analysis.
What the RFI Actually Asks
The RFI is organized around five topic areas, each tied to a specific gap in EPA's current understanding of who is exposed to legacy asbestos, how, and how often:
● Demolitions and renovations that disturb asbestos-containing material but fall below the size thresholds that trigger EPA's asbestos NESHAP rule, 40 CFR Part 61, Subpart M, or that involve small residential buildings exempt from it.
● Self-employed individuals and other workers not covered by the OSHA asbestos construction standard, 29 CFR 1926.1101, particularly in construction and specialty trade contracting, NAICS codes 236 and 238.
● Legacy chrysotile asbestos sheet gaskets are still installed in industrial facilities after the May 27, 2026, compliance date for EPA's chrysotile asbestos rule, 40 CFR Part 751, Subpart F.
● Other legacy asbestos-containing products still in service include electrical and mechanical components, industrial machinery parts, textiles, and household items such as iron rests, burner mats, and potholders.
● Air sampling and laboratory testing capacity, particularly whether the industry can reliably use phase contrast microscopy or must shift to the more expensive and slower transmission electron microscopy if EPA sets an existing chemical exposure limit below OSHA's current permissible exposure limit of 0.1 fibers per cubic centimeter.
EPA's Rationale for Seeking More Information Before Proposing a Rule
EPA's stated rationale rests on TSCA Section 6(c)(2)(A), which requires that any proposed Section 6(a) rule include a statement of effects addressing the health and environmental effects of the substance, the magnitude of human exposure, the benefits of the substance for its various uses, and the reasonably ascertainable economic consequences of the rule, including its effects on the national economy, small business, technological innovation, and public health. EPA must also weigh the costs, benefits, and cost-effectiveness of the proposed action against at least one alternative regulatory approach.
According to the RFI, EPA reviewed the reasonably available information from its Part 2 risk evaluation and concluded that it is not yet sufficient to support that statement of effects for a rule that would most effectively address the unreasonable risk. In plain terms, EPA says it does not yet know with confidence how many self-employed contractors disturb asbestos in a given year, how many legacy gaskets and other products remain installed across which industries, or whether the nation's testing laboratories have the equipment and staffing to support a stricter exposure limit. The agency is using the RFI to build the record it says it needs before economic analysis, and ultimately rulemaking, can proceed.
It is worth noting what the RFI does not change. EPA's own risk evaluation already calculated a risk-only occupational exposure value of 0.004 fibers per cubic centimeter for chronic occupational exposure, a figure well below OSHA's current 0.1 f/cc permissible exposure limit. The RFI's questions about laboratory detection limits and testing capacity make clear that EPA is contemplating an exposure limit closer to that risk-based number, but has not yet decided how cost, feasibility, and available alternatives will shape the final regulatory standard.
Why Workers' Compensation Is Part of the Analysis
This RFI matters to the workers' compensation system for reasons that go well beyond environmental policy. Legacy asbestos exposure today occurs almost entirely through incidental disturbance, not manufacturing, since domestic manufacturing of new asbestos products has largely ended. The workers most likely to be exposed are precisely the tradespeople the RFI identifies by name: drywall and insulation contractors, flooring contractors, renovators, roofing and siding contractors, and other specialty trade workers who encounter asbestos-containing material during repair, renovation, and demolition of older buildings. These are exactly the occupational categories that generate asbestos-related occupational disease claims in state workers' compensation systems.
More significantly, the RFI exposes a coverage gap that workers' compensation practitioners will recognize immediately. EPA specifically asks about self-employed individuals who fall outside the OSHA asbestos construction standard because OSHA's jurisdiction does not extend to the self-employed. In many states, self-employed individuals and sole proprietors are also excluded from mandatory workers' compensation coverage, or can elect out of it. That means the same worker EPA identifies as unprotected by federal safety regulations may also be unprotected by the compensation system meant to provide a remedy if that worker later develops mesothelioma, lung cancer, or asbestosis. The RFI's own questions, asking how often self-employed contractors disturb asbestos, what training they have, and what protective equipment they use, describe a population operating with neither a regulatory floor nor a compensation backstop.
The RFI's questions on air sampling and laboratory capacity also speak directly to the evidentiary core of contested occupational disease claims. Workers' compensation cases involving asbestos related disease are won or lost on proof of exposure and causation, often decades after the exposure occurred. If EPA ultimately sets an existing chemical exposure limit that requires transmission electron microscopy testing that most job sites and laboratories cannot currently perform, the resulting exposure records, or the absence of them, will shape the evidence available to workers and their counsel in future compensation claims.
The Impact on Benefits for Workers
For workers exposed to legacy asbestos today, this RFI has an immediate practical effect, delay. EPA already missed its own mandatory deadline under TSCA Section 6(c)(1)(A), which required a proposed risk management rule within one year of the December 3, 2024 Part 2 risk evaluation, no later than December 3, 2025. That missed deadline is the subject of a pending federal lawsuit, Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization v. Zeldin, Case No. 1:26-cv-01350, filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, seeking to compel the EPA to propose the required rule. The RFI does not resolve that litigation, and it pushes the ultimate regulatory timeline further out.
Because asbestos-related diseases have latency periods that can extend beyond forty years, every year of continued exposure without a tightened federal standard adds to a pipeline of future occupational disease claims that will not surface for decades. Workers' compensation remains the primary compensation mechanism available to most exposed workers, since exclusivity provisions generally foreclose direct tort claims against employers, leaving comp claims and, where available, asbestos bankruptcy trust claims as the principal remedies. A stronger federal exposure limit, if and when EPA finalizes one, could reduce future exposure and future claims. In the interim, it does nothing for workers already exposed or for the uncovered self-employed workers this RFI itself identifies.
There is a longer-term upside worth noting. If the data EPA collects through this RFI leads to better exposure recordkeeping, clearer identification of which legacy products still contain asbestos, and improved laboratory testing standards, that same information could eventually strengthen the evidentiary record available to injured workers pursuing occupational disease claims. Better documentation of exposure has historically been one of the most difficult hurdles in asbestos-related workers' compensation litigation, and a more rigorous federal data record could help close that gap, even as the regulatory rule itself remains pending.
The Bottom Line
EPA's Request for Information confirms that legacy asbestos remains an unresolved regulatory and occupational health problem, more than a year after EPA's own risk evaluation found it presents an unreasonable risk of injury to human health. Until a final risk management rule is in place, the burden of legacy asbestos exposure continues to fall on the tradespeople, self-employed contractors, and building maintenance workers who encounter it, and on the workers' compensation systems that will be adjudicating the resulting occupational disease claims for decades to come.
Sources
● U.S. EPA, Asbestos Part 2, Supplemental Evaluation Including Legacy Uses and Associated Disposals, Final Risk Evaluation Under TSCA, 89 Fed. Reg. 95777 (Dec. 3, 2024).
● Toxic Substances Control Act, 15 U.S.C. Section 2605(c), Section 6.
● 40 CFR Part 61, Subpart M, National Emission Standard for Asbestos (asbestos NESHAP).
● 29 CFR 1926.1101, OSHA Asbestos Construction Standard.
● 40 CFR Part 751, Subpart F, Chrysotile Asbestos, TSCA Section 6 Regulation.
About the Author
Jon L. Gelman of Wayne, NJ is the author of NJ Workers' Compensation Law (West-Thomson-Reuters) and co-author of Modern Workers' Compensation Law (West-Thomson-Reuters).
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