Elizabeth Warren and others joined by unions and industry experts in warning against the weakening of regulations

The senator Elizabeth Warren, the congresswoman Ilhan Omar and several other Democratic lawmakers are calling on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to abandon a rollback of respirator mask regulations, a change the lawmakers say would weaken worker protections against hazardous substances.

Under the proposed rules, employers would face fewer requirements to provide workers with respirators masks when working with substances including “lead, asbestos, formaldehyde and inorganic arsenic, among other chemicals”, the lawmakers wrote in a letter to the Osha assistant secretary, David Keeling, a former UPS and Amazon executive.

The agency is also trying to end a requirement for employers to provide medical evaluations to employees who wear specific types of respirators in their work, the letter noted.