Daily News

Oregon's Occupational Safety and Health Administration will follow two different approaches as it updates permissible exposure limits in 2016, the state's administrator says in a new agency newsletter.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has submitted to the Office of Management and Budget a proposal to research on proactive health and safety decision-making in the mining industry.

According to a Jan. 13 Federal Register notice, the study would examine the “interplay of personal, organizational, and cultural influences on risk-taking and proactive decision-making behaviors among mine workers.”

The Centers for Disease Control's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has announced a proposal to study the effectiveness of workplace wellness programs and the impact on traditional occupational safety and health programs.

The Department of Labor is seeking public input on a research and evaluation plan for 2016 that would assess and collect data on certain OSHA initiatives.

According to a Jan. 8 Federal Register notice, the 2016 evaluation plan would explore through statistical analyses and agency administrative data, surveys, and databases OSHA's labor enforcement programs.

Meeting OSHA recordkeeping requirements, hazardous waste worker safety and health, and maritime occupational safety are topics of discussion this week.

Lancaster Safety Consulting, Inc. hosts on Wednesday at 3 p.m. an advanced session webinar on OSHA recordkeeping requirements. The webinar will focus on answering “confusing” recordkeeping questions and explain why certain incidents are or are not recordable under OSHA requirements.

A new study from the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health confirms the need for an existing OSHA requirement for respirator fit testing annually and whenever physical changes have occurred.

The study from NIOSH, a department in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, concludes that respirator users who have lost more than 20 pounds should be re-tested to ensure proper size and fit.

OSHA has withdrawn a rule to help prevent slips, trips, and fall hazards in the workplace after undergoing a 26-year-long rulemaking and review process.

The Walking Working Surfaces and Personal Fall Protection Systems rule -- dubbed the “slips, trips, and fall prevention” rule -- was withdrawn by the agency on Dec. 21, according to the Office of Management and Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which had been reviewing the regulation.

OSHA is planning to release complete reporting numbers and a full analysis of injury reporting for the past year following implementation of new requirements one year ago mandating that any severe on-the-job injury be reported within 24 hours.

OSHA stated in an announcement that it received about 12,000 reports of severe on-the-job injuries, defined as an amputation, hospitalization, or loss of an eye on a work site. Prior to the 2015 rules, only worker fatalities had to be reported to OSHA within eight hours. No specific date for the report's release has been set.

The U.S. EPA has extended for a second time its deadline for public input on the agency's proposed rule strengthening protections for applicators of restricted use pesticides, granting a request from state regulators who have argued the rule would cause some states to overhaul programs and that more time is needed to review changes.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration will hold an informal public hearing on Feb. 29 on its proposed rule amending existing occupational exposure limits to beryllium and beryllium compounds.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is planning to strengthen its industrial facility accident prevention program with new requirements for facilities to face independent audits, conduct hazard analysis, and share information with emergency planners and the public, though industry representatives are urging the agency to limit costly new revisions, saying the current program is working.

Three Pacific Northwestern states are working with EPA on advancing “green chemistry” efforts to reduce use of hazardous substances absent enactment of a pending Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) bill that could boost green chemistry programs, though the states also say that any TSCA law should fund efforts to develop safer chemicals.

Supporters of pending legislation to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) appear to be eyeing informal discussions on how to reconcile a House TSCA measure with a Senate version approved Dec. 17, which could help lead to streamlined conference negotiations resulting in a final bill that Congress could vote on early next year.

The Senate has unanimously approved its bipartisan bill reforming the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), clearing the way for a conference negotiation with House representatives over the lower chamber's much narrower bill, which won approval with wide support last June. The legislation is being watched by worker safety stakeholders because the Environmental Protection Agency and OSHA coordinate under section 9 of the law on protecting workers

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is transferring responsibility for prosecuting many workplace safety violations to its environmental division and instructing prosecutors in those cases to enforce environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act, noting that labor statutes provide for less stringent penalties than federal air, waste and toxics laws.

OSHA came out better than some health and safety advocates had expected in a House GOP funding deal unveiled early Wednesday that freezes the agency's funding at its current level and scraps a Republican plan to block issuance of a workplace silica standard. But lawmakers admonished OSHA for its use of guidance documents and letters of interpretation in lieu of rulemaking, in the omnibus $1.1 trillion federal government spending package, of which roughly $553 million goes to OSHA.

OSHA is asking stakeholders whether the agency's draft revised Safety and Health Program Management Guidelines are friendly to small- and medium-sized businesses, an issue the agency raised along with others at a public meeting last week and on which it hopes to gather feedback as comments trickle in through the Feb. 14 deadline.

OSHA recently reached a corporate-wide settlement with Dollar Tree Stores Inc. that calls for the company to pay $825,000 in penalties from 13 different inspections and institute a comprehensive safety and health program, the latter a condition that agency chief David Micheals signaled last week may increasingly be part of future settlement agreements. The agreement with Dollar Tree comes as OSHA seeks stakeholder feedback on revised safety and health program guidelines that also focus on corporate-wide safety efforts (see related story).

The director of the Environmental Protection Agency's influential risk analysis program is promising stakeholders once again that they will see certain improvements in the program in the coming year although the agency has yet to make good on pledges to produce more assessments, release a multi-year prioritized schedule of chemicals under assessment, remove outdated pesticide assessments from the program's database and make other changes.

The Environmental Protection Agency and environmentalists are objecting to petitions before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that would significantly weaken protective exposure levels to radiation by discarding the long-standing model correlating increasing radiation doses with increasing cancer risks and replacing it with one that would deem certain levels of radiation harmless and even helpful.