According to an agency official, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may be revising its March 1999 risk assessment of the proposed shop towel rule, which could further delay the rule from being finalized. The EPA official believes the agency’s effort to finalize the rule is “on track,” but that funding problems may be responsible for delaying action until 2006. Critics of the rule say it fails to address exposure from sludge disposal in landfills and from shop towels transported in anything other than closed containers. In recent months, a lot of political pressure and economic concern about the rule has ...