Occupational safety and health - legal aspect - Assignment Example

The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) is federal law enacted in 1976 and it gives the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) the powers to control solid wastes considered hazardous. The controlling authority over hazardous waste ranges from generation, treatment, transportation, storage to disposal. RCRA does not only involve management of hazardous waste but also nonhazardous solid waste (http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/resource_conservation_and_recovery_act_rcra). Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) is a federal law enacted in 1980 to assist in controlling releases of specific hazardous wastes.

CERCLA is also known as the Superfund. This law empowers the EPA to respond to releases or threatened releases of hazardous substances that may pose a danger on the environment, welfare and public health. CERCLA also empowers the EPA to compel parties responsible for contaminating the environment to remove the hazardous substance, or reimburse CERCLA for response and or EPA’s remediation expenditure (http://www.epa.gov/agriculture/lcla.html). The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) is a Federal law whose objective is control pesticide distribution, sale and usage.

The law requires that all pesticides used in the United States to be registered (Licensed) by EPA (http://www.epa.gov/oecaagct/lfra.html). S. 1166 Protecting America’s Workers Act-Amends the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (OSHA-1970) to expand its coverage to federal, state, and local government employees (“S. 1166—112th ”, 2011). The Act gives the Secretary of Labour under specified conditions to cede OSHA-1970 power to another federal agency in accordance with certain occupational standards for such agency’s employees.

The Act also increases protection for