Text For Citation: 02 Item/Group: 001C Hazard:

29 CFR 1910.1052(d)(2): The employer did not perform initial monitoring to determine each employee's exposure to methylene chloride: Prep Lab: On or about February 28, 2022, the employer did not make an initial determination of employee exposure to dichloromethane (DCM or methylene chloride) that was released, stored, handled, and used in the areas of the Prep Lab where employees performed analytical procedures that exposed them to the chemical. Employees performed extractions in the New Prep Area, Old Prep Area, Tumbler Room, and Soxhlet Area, and at times, would perform a method in more than one of the four sections in the Prep Lab depending on available space. During OSHA's monitoring assessment on April 14, 2022, it was confirmed that employees in the Prep Lab were overexposed to DCM. At that time, it was discovered that employees were exposed to DCM at approximately thirty-nine and seventy-nine parts of DCM per million parts of air (39.4 ppm and 79.3 ppm) as an eight-hour time-weighted average (8-hr TWA), which was in excess of OSHA's 25 ppm permissible exposure limit (PEL) over an 8-hr TWA.