Daily News

OSHA internally is bandying about numerous initiatives aimed at reducing the impact on workers from toxic chemicals -- including creating a control banding system to categorize substances by risk level, and tightening enforcement in situations when employers should know exposures are too high -- as the agency explores how to tackle what it considers antiquated permissible exposure limits (PELs), expert sources say.

A Democratic House member is decrying the process by which OSHA issues new rules, saying the procedures and associated length of time taken to promulgate standards “unacceptable,” as she calls on OSHA chief David Michaels to re-assess how nail salon workers can be better protected from a range of potential chemical hazards.

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) has walked back a controversial policy devised early this year to significantly increase the agency chair's authority, and has proposed a regulatory change to require votes within 90 days on “calendared” items and at least four public meetings a year -- moves aimed at responding to congressional and inspector general concerns about the board's transparency.

A key organization of industrial hygienists has added to stakeholder calls, mostly among worker health activists and their Democratic allies on Capitol Hill, for the Obama administration to release for public review OSHA's stalled regulatory proposal to reduce occupational exposure to beryllium, but the White House remains reticent on the timing of the rule's potential publication.

Organized labor points to newly culled data on occupational fatalities among Latino workers in the United States as particularly alarming given their contrast to much lower rates in the general worker population, exacerbating worries that Latinos are lagging behind in safety and health protections as well as in knowing about worker rights. OSHA and NIOSH have worked under the Obama administration to increase communication and training with Hispanic populations.

Industry advocates are voicing strong support for a measure put forth by Rep. Vickly Hartzler (R-MO) to alter OSHA enforcement by letting employers sidestep citations for non-serious regulatory violations as long as the alleged hazards are abated during a “grace period,” but there is also concern that the bill if enacted might discourage employers from contesting citations they believe are flawed.

A cluster of congressional Democrats is urging the White House to disclose the administration's estimated time frame for allowing publication of OSHA's draft proposed rule tackling beryllium health hazards -- as the planned regulations, which had been expected out last year, remain stuck in the review process at the Office of Management and Budget.

OSHA has quietly issued a policy directive that clarifies investigative standards for the agency's Whistleblower Protection Program (WPP) to reflect OSHA's legal position that reasonable cause, as opposed to preponderance of evidence, is the only threshold to issue a merit finding that calls for further probes into a whistleblower claim.

Democrats on Capitol Hill, strongly backed by organized labor leaders, are pushing to restart debate over legislative efforts to make sweeping changes to the OSH Act with the aim of making it more effective, but face renewed backlash from industry over the proposed revisions and a GOP majority in both houses largely hostile to exploring the issue.

OSHA says regulators have taken into account numerous new technologies available to building industries as it rolls out a rule adding a subpart to its construction standards to tackle confined space hazards much like the general industry regulations designed to ensure protections for workers in enclosed areas, but the rule differs in significant ways from the existing standards.

A major nurses group has floated wide-ranging recommendations for health care employers to prevent incidence of “incivility” and “bullying” in the workplace, alongside measures to stop workplace violence, perhaps breaking new ground in a policy debate over the extent to which OSHA can exercise its enforcement authority to prevent occupational injuries stemming from such problems.

OSHA continues to hone its enforcement and regulatory emphasis on fatalities and severe injuries in communication tower building and maintenance, with Deputy Assistant Secretary Jordan Barab on Tuesday saying the agency has observed “an alarming increase” in fatalities in the fast-growing industry and assuring safety advocates that OSHA has become deeply engaged in the issue.

OSHA will “very soon” publish in the Federal Register a final rule tackling confined spaces in construction, a senior agency official tells Inside OSHA Online, signaling that the long-sought regulatory action to align general industry confined spaces standards with requirements in building activities is on the verge of being completed.

A Republican congresswoman, acting upon what she says are numerous complaints from constituents that OSHA is going into work sites and citing up to the maximum possible penalties for “very minor” alleged regulatory violations, has filed a bill that effectively would bar OSHA from issuing such penalties before employers have a chance to fix problems identified by compliance officers.

A House Democrat from the Houston area has re-introduced legislation mandating that OSHA require logs of workplace injuries across the entirety of multi-employer work sites, regardless of whether a contractor or other type of temporary staffing company directly employs the workers as opposed to the site-controlling employer.

A national umbrella group of worker advocacy organizations on Thursday (April 23) urged federal and state law enforcement officials -- including the Justice Department working in concert with OSHA officials -- to increase the number of criminal prosecutions brought in severe safety and health cases, particularly ones involving fatalities and alleged willful violations of the OSH Act.

NIOSH's recent Health Hazard Evaluation (HHE) of a poultry plant in Maryland found “significant problems” related to musculoskeletal disorders, according to OSHA, which lauds the research agency's evaluation program in general and indicates that results of its probes would broadly benefit stakeholders, though without saying whether such findings could be used specifically for enforcement or rulemaking activity.

OSHA's recent citations against a New York supplier of plastic balls used in hydraulic fracturing, alleging process safety management (PSM) violations and other hazards, appears to underscore the agency's heightened attention to safety in the large-scale use of chemicals, with one OSHA official lodging concern about the storage or use of more than 1,000 pounds of formaldehyde. The citations also allege combustible dust dangers, a key issue OSHA has tried to regulate.

The Environmental Protection Agency is seeking public input on whether sufficient scientific evidence exists to back its proposal to add 1-bromopropane -- a chemical that occupational health advocates have long urged OSHA to regulate in the workplace through exposure limits -- to the EPA's Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) for reporting of chemical releases, a move EPA is justifying based on research suggesting the substance is a carcinogen worthy of tracking on TRI.

OSHA is pushing ahead with an effort to refocus scarce investigative resources toward priority areas through a data-driven system the agency calls “inspection weighting,” which uses historical data to allocate “enforcement units” for carrying out labor-intensive inspections -- an approach some in industry consider a creative approach to ensuring the agency sets aside resources for complex probes instead of simply racking up inspection numbers.