Officials with the American Chemistry Council (ACC) say EPA failed to fully consider either less-burdensome alternatives to its proposed rule aimed at protecting workers from the toxic solvent methylene chloride or the true economic costs of a widespread phaseout, including the range of employers that could be forced to under a total ban.
November 15, 2026
A federal district court has approved a consent decree in a quiet, years-long trademark dispute between OSHA and an Illinois training and consulting company called “Global Occupational Health and Safety Academy,” or Global OSHA -- barring the firm from using what the agency alleged is a deceptively similar name to its own.
Date:
OSHA is asking a federal district court to dismiss South Carolina’s latest challenge to the agency’s yet-unenforced requirement for states to raise their maximum penalties for workplace health and safety violations to match federal levels, saying the case was filed too late and fails to show any harm from the policy, among other flaws.
Date:
OSHA is rejecting construction-sector criticism of its National Emphasis Program (NEP) on heat-related illness that said the initiative risks creating unclear mandates worker protection, with the agency arguing that its initiative merely seeks to enforce the OSH Act’s general duty clause (GDC) and vowing to continue providing compliance assistance to employers.
Date:
Public-health groups are renewing litigation seeking to revive OSHA’s Obama-era electronic reporting rule even as a final rule expected to reinstate many or all of its requirements is awaiting White House approval, arguing that a federal court should scrap the 2018 rollback of those mandates immediately as their absence is causing ongoing harm.
Date:
OSHA is seeking stakeholder feedback on “leading indicators” that can help workers and regulatory identify potential hazards before an injury or other incident, such as low workplace training rates or infrequent equipment maintenance, as it prepares to develop a resource for tracking those factors.
Date:
Industry attorneys are questioning OSHA’s plan to soon issue an interim final rule (IFR) that the agency says will provide “clarity” on its use of subpoenas but which one attorney says may include major changes to the process without a notice and comment period.
Date:
OSHA is urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to uphold a trench-safety citation over violations that a Texas contracting firm claims were the result of “unpreventable employee misconduct,” arguing that the employer has failed to show it uses effective safety monitoring or enforcement and thus should be barred from invoking that defense.
Date:
An employer-focused attorney says OSHA’s recent enforcement action against Amazon over a failure to provide “adequate medical treatment” to warehouse workers signals that the agency could more broadly use medical management of workplace injuries as a way around its lack of a formal standard on workplace ergonomics.
Date:
EPA has submitted its proposed TSCA carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) rule to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), teeing up renewed battles over industry groups’ bids to exempt “critical uses” of the solvent from restrictions, as well as arguments that the Trump-era risk evaluation used a deeply flawed approach to model workplace exposures.
Date: