The American auto industry employs roughly two million workers. The ongoing move toward electric vehicles (EVs) is supported with U. S. Government subsidies that could total $220 billion by 2031. Subsidies should carry conditions related to health and safety, environmental justice, and workers’ rights.

Lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles consist typically of electrochemical cells, each containing a positive and negative electrode separated by a micro-porous membrane, immersed in an organic electrolyte solution containing lithium salts dissolved in organic carbonate solvents.

Many of the chemicals used in EV batteries are regulated under the Toxic Substances Control Act, which gives EPA authority to regulate chemicals presenting unreasonable risks to workers, who are named as a “potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulation.”

New chemicals are regulated under consent orders between EPA and individual companies. It is difficult to know whether a particular employer is covered by a consent order because the submitter’s name can be withheld as confidential business information. This means that a union, trying to protect its members may not know:

• That one or more the chemicals to which the members are exposed are covered by consent order under TSCA.
• The name and CAS# of those chemicals, which can be withheld as confidential business information (CBI)
• The contents of consent orders specifying how workers are to be protected from the chemical can also be protected as CBI.

Workers can be working with a chemical that has a legally binding consent order specifying health and safety procedures, but neither they nor their representatives know that the order exists or what is in it.

The content of the order is negotiated between EPA and the submitter with no input from any other stakeholders including workers, their representatives or fence line communities.

This deficiency needs to be corrected by regulation or legislation.