Wastewater from data centers may pose risks to treatment workers and trigger OSHA obligations, especially for facilities following EPA’s voluntary treatment standards for industrial water reuse, OSHA observers and wastewater officials are warning.
September 16, 2026
The 5th Circuit has overturned OSHA’s workplace mental illness reporting rule and voided a citation against ExxonMobil issued after an industrial accident left an employee with PTSD, arguing that the agency lacks statutory authority because mental conditions were not considered “illnesses” when the OSH Act was passed in 1970.
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The Labor Department’s Office of Administrative Law Judges (OALJ) reopened on Nov. 13 after the 43-day government shutdown ended, allowing pending cases to resume and requiring some proceedings to be rescheduled following the weeks-long closure.
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Environmentalists and industry groups are raising concerns about how EPA estimated risk to workers from phthalates in technical documents that will support a novel cumulative risk assessment of the chemicals, alleging that methodological deficiencies resulted in assessments that either understated or overstated risk.
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David Keeling, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead OSHA, is suggesting the Trump administration may be able to fill data gaps as a result of its plans to slash the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) by using data from “private entities” and “professional groups,” though he acknowledged that it may not be easy to do so.
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Environmentalists are warning that the second Trump EPA’s expected rollback of the Biden-era Risk Management Program (RMP) rule may be vulnerable to a new round of litigation, much as it was in the president’s first term, because the administration is again “quite likely” to conduct a predetermined rulemaking process.
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A coalition of environmental groups is again petitioning EPA to ban the use of hydrogen fluoride (HF) in refineries under TSCA, the latest in a series of so-far unsuccessful calls from environmentalists and federal investigators for EPA and OSHA to clamp down on the highly toxic substance that is used at dozens of facilities across the United States.
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An industry coalition is urging EPA to rescind key provisions of the Biden EPA’s “misguided,” “illegal” and “unnecessary” Risk Management Program (RMP) rule, calling for officials to take immediate steps to block its implementation while launching a new rulemaking that will permanently end the “regulatory whiplash” that has characterized the policy over the last decade.
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For the first time, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) has publicly released detailed results of its recent investigations into 26 serious chemical incidents at major industrial facilities, a move that one industry law firm says “creates significantly increased legal and operational risks that require immediate strategic attention.”
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Russell Vought, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to again head the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), is defending his plans for a dramatic overhaul of key federal budget, regulatory and workforce practices at OSHA and other agencies.
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