Some Senate Democrats are pushing the Biden administration to ban kids younger than 16 from working in tobacco fields, citing risks of harmful nicotine exposure to minors not even old enough to legally buy the product.

Five Democratic lawmakers, led by Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.), sent a letter to the US Labor Department Wednesday urging the agency to update its Hazardous Occupation Orders for child workers to include new limits for minors working on tobacco farms.

“We believe a new rulemaking effort that bans child labor on tobacco farms and enhances protections in existing Hazardous Occupations Orders is critical,” the letter says.

DOL’s Wage and Hour Division enforces limits on the types of job duties that minors can perform—like prohibitions on the use of certain farm machinery or meat slicers—through its Hazardous Occupation Orders. Those orders, which include a partial or total ban on the occupations or industries they cover, haven’t been updated since the 1970s.

The letter is the latest effort to pressure the DOL to update the orders, after the chief of the wage division said in a recent interview with Bloomberg Law that the agency didn’t have a planned rulemaking to revisit the orders.

Worker advocacy groups have also met with the Biden DOL at least four times in recent weeks urging the agency to beef up protections for children working...

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