EU and U.S. Take Different Paths on Hazardous Workplace Exposure

A tightening European framework and a $3.52 million U.S. enforcement case show why multinational employers need exposure programs that find weak controls before workers become ill or incidents reach regulators.

In late June 2026, the European Union (EU) and the United States (U.S.) offered two sharply different visions of how hazardous workplace exposure should be controlled.

On June 23, 2026, the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament (EP) reached a provisional agreement on the sixth revision of the Carcinogens, Mutagens and Reprotoxic Substances Directive (CMRD). The deal would strengthen existing limits and obligations with the aim of preventing more disease. The council expects the revision will prevent 1,700 lung cancer cases and 19,000 illnesses over the next 40 years. Three days later, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced $3,520,703 in proposed penalties against three companies that OSHA said had failed to protect workers during a sulfuric acid spill cleanup in Channelview, Texas.

“Their joint failure to protect workers was not an oversight, it was a choice that resulted in preventable employee injuries and environmental impacts,” said Assistant Secretary for Occupational Health and Safety David Keeling. “We will not hesitate to hold employers accountable when they ignore federal laws that are in place to protect workers’ safety and health.”

These two announcements neatly illustrate the different approaches. The EU is systematically lowering or adding exposure limits and tying them to risk assessment, substitution, health surveillance, training, and control verification. In the U.S., some of the strongest business pressure often arrives after an incident, through citations, abatement obligations, litigation, and the financial consequences of a failure already visible.

EU Goes Upstream

The EU agreement remains subject to endorsement and formal adoption, but it would establish occupational exposure limits (OELs) for cobalt and its inorganic compounds, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, 1,4-dioxane, and isoprene; add welding fumes to Annex I; require regular breaks for workers wearing personal protective equipment (PPE); and add a recital acknowledging that OELs do not eliminate all risk. The measures sit within a framework that already pushes employers to apply the hierarchy of controls and revisit risk assessments as science and limit values change.

“For companies operating in Europe, the most immediate practical implication of tighter occupational exposure limits and hazardous-substance rules is the need to review their entire occupational health and safety program rather than simply update a numerical exposure limit,” said Emilia Vassileva, senior regulatory specialist at 3E.

That review can reach engineering controls, exposure monitoring, respiratory protection, training, medical surveillance, and records. It also changes how companies should interpret a result below a binding limit.

Tiina Santonen, an occupational toxicologist at the University of Helsinki, told 3E the EU's latest update is noteworthy because of the substances it covers. “The latest EU CMRD update (sixth amendment) is in my opinion primarily a technical update, but it includes some quite significant substances: cobalt and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons,” she said.

The broader trend, she observed, is toward lower limits as regulators accept less residual risk.

Gaps in Contractor Protection

OSHA’s Channelview case began with a December 27, 2025, spill at a BWC Terminals facility. According to the agency, fresh and spent sulfuric acid were mixed, a tank was over-pressurized, and a supply line ruptured, releasing 1 million gallons of the highly corrosive acid and causing multiple injuries. BWC retained Coastal Environmental Solutions for the hazardous waste cleanup, and Coastal hired One Way Environmental Services to supply laborers.

After three inspections, OSHA proposed $3,045,452 against One Way for 18 willful egregious and five serious violations, $392,501 against Coastal for two willful and five serious violations, and $82,750 against BWC for six serious violations. The alleged deficiencies included inadequate training, missing respirator fit tests, missing or deficient safety and health programs and emergency response plans, and insufficient protection from chemical burns.

Companies have 15 business days from receipt of the citations to contest them before the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission. To date, only BWC Terminals has publicly announced it will appeal OSHA's citations, while neither Coastal Environmental Solutions nor One Way Environmental Services has disclosed whether it will contest the agency's findings.

Stephanie Angkadjaja, counsel at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, told 3E: “A common failure is traced back to implementation of a written procedure: delay in implementation, misinterpretation of a step, not implementing it at all, or not having a written procedure in the first place.”

The contractor chain is not incidental. Cleanup, maintenance, shutdown, and troubleshooting crews often encounter the least routine conditions and the weakest handoffs between site owners and employers.

“Protection should follow the exposure, not the employment contract,” Lode Godderis, head of the Occupational and Environmental Hygiene division at KU Leuven, told 3E.

Angkadjaja also warned that a penalty is not the end of the matter. Employers must abate violations, and a failure to do so can leave companies open to further enforcement and litigation, as well as additional fines if further inspections reveal previously cited hazards have not been abated or that similar hazards exist at other jobsites where the companies are operating.

U.S. Prevention Exists, But It Is Fragmented

The Channelview citations were, however, brought under rules that are preventive by design. OSHA's Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response (HAZWOPER) standard requires covered employers to plan for hazards, train workers, select suitable PPE, provide medical surveillance in specified circumstances, and prepare for emergencies. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), meanwhile, has used Workplace Chemical Protection Program (WCPP) requirements in rules under the amended Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Those requirements can include chemical-specific exposure limits, action levels, monitoring, dermal controls, respirators, exposure-control plans, recordkeeping, and downstream notification.

At the same time, OSHA acknowledges that many of its permissible exposure limits are outdated and inadequate, with most issued soon after the Occupational Safety and Health Act was adopted in 1970.

Michal Freedhoff, senior policy advisor at Holland & Knight and a former assistant administrator in EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, told 3E: “Since many of OSHA's chemical-specific standards are more than 50 years old, I would expect to continue to see EPA's use of updated science result in more stringent limits at times.”

That overlap can be viewed as both a way to fill preventive gaps and a source of compliance complexity. In a letter dated July 20, 2026, and released on July 22, 2026, the American Chemistry Council and a coalition of 75 organizations asked the EPA, OSHA, and the Office of Management and Budget to use TSCA Section 9 to create a single federal framework for worker chemical safety. The coalition argued that the EPA's WCPP and OSHA requirements can create duplicative or conflicting obligations. The request is an industry position, not a change in law.

The EPA says Section 9 calls for coordination with other agencies while minimizing duplicative requirements, and the EPA and OSHA formalized coordination on existing chemicals in a December 2024 memorandum of understanding. Whether that produces clearer roles, a single standard, or continued dual oversight remains unsettled two years later. For employers, waiting for the jurisdictional question to resolve itself is not an exposure-control strategy.

Multinational Question

Multinationals face a design choice: one global exposure standard or separate programs by jurisdiction. Pure uniformity can overlook local rules; pure localization can create inconsistency at the site level.

“I see most companies manage compliance separately by jurisdiction. Larger companies may have company/corporatewide safety standards, but they attempt to incorporate jurisdictional differences,” said Angkadjaja.

One practical model is a protective global baseline covering substance inventories, task-based risk assessment, the hierarchy of controls, monitoring, medical surveillance, contractor governance, training, incident learning, and corrective action, with jurisdiction-specific legal overlays. The baseline should be triggered by hazard and exposure, not only by which regulator has set the enforceable number.

“Regulatory changes rarely come as a surprise. They are typically preceded by lengthy consultation and legislative processes, giving companies time to prepare. The most effective strategy is straightforward: stay informed, prepare early, and implement efficiently,” advised István Murányi, EU senior regulatory advisor at 3E.

An integrated exposure-management program starts with a reliable chemical inventory and a task-based risk assessment that covers routine and nonroutine work, dermal and ingestion routes, maintenance, cleaning, shutdowns, and contractors. It then applies the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health hierarchy of controls: elimination, substitution, engineering controls, administrative controls, and PPE.

Monitoring should verify that those controls work. Air sampling can characterize conditions at the source and in a worker’s breathing zone. Direct-reading or real-time instruments can identify short peaks and changing conditions. Biomonitoring can add information about what has entered the body across routes and tasks, while medical surveillance can identify early warning signals when a standard or risk profile calls for it.

“The key principle is that monitoring should not be an end in itself. Measurements should drive prevention,” said Godderis.

Santonen echoed that sentiment, highlighting the need for different monitoring types to be integrated with each other. In a 2026 article, Santonen described human biomonitoring as a complement to air and surface measurements that integrates exposure from all routes and sources. It can help evaluate controls, investigate possible overexposures, and support medical surveillance. Biomonitoring is not available or appropriate for every substance, but the research demonstrates why monitoring disciplines should be connected rather than treated as separate compliance functions.

For real-time monitoring, that means defining in advance what an alarm will do: stop work, trigger an investigation, correct the failed control, or confirm effectiveness through follow-up measurement. Monitoring without a decision pathway can document exposure without reducing it.

Adele Abrams, senior counsel at Littler Mendelson P.C., told 3E that legal compliance should be seen as the floor to build from. “Don’t benchmark your program to OSHA rules because you’re going to have a lousy program. You’ve got to be proactive,” she warned.

The EU’s changing rules and the U.S. enforcement case point to the same operational question: Can an employer see weak controls before the problem shows up in an emergency room or is documented by an inspector? Companies that integrate industrial hygiene, monitoring, medical surveillance, contractor governance, training, and corrective action are better positioned under either model.