Daily News

A bill recently introduced in the Maryland legislature, and drawing sharp criticism from safety and health activists, would require the state's OSHA inspectors to give notice to many employers of inspections about to be initiated, unless the visits are based on concern about an imminent danger -- but the proposal appears stalled for the immediate future.

The Environmental Protection Agency is weighing use of existing Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) authority to restrict uses of the controversial solvent trichloroethylene (TCE), including a novel TSCA section 6 rule to limit its use -- a process that would require consultation with OSHA on whether less burdensome requirements could be used to mitigate unreasonable risks. The move comes in the face of objections from the chemical sector, which claims that EPA is overstating health concerns from the solvent.

NIOSH officials are calling on local fire departments around the country to adopt comprehensive safety and health plans, including adoption of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 1500 Standard detailing how to manage such programs, and also require the incident commander on the scene to conduct a hazard risk assessment before operations begin.

A furniture manufacturer and OSHA are in bitter conflict regarding the agency's rigorous policy under the Obama administration of so-called “regulation by shaming,” which is how the agency describes efforts to widely publicize major enforcement actions against alleged bad actors, as the feds accuse the sprawling Wisconsin-based manufacturer of more than 1,000 work-related injuries in three years and hits the company with $1.76 million in proposed fines.

Arizona repealed a contentious state law that put in place residential fall protection requirements that differed from federal OSHA policy, caving on an issue that had embroiled the agencies for several years, and only after OSHA published a “rejection” of the state law and threatened to pull the state plan if the concern was not remedied.

OSHA is pressuring lawmakers to hike statutory civil penalties for workplace safety and health violations by pinpointing the issue in the president's fiscal 2016 budget request to Congress -- in a move Washington sources say appears to be more of an advocacy push than a specific legislative proposal -- and contrasting the current OSHA penalty structure to the Environmental Protection Agency's much larger fines.

Federal OSHA will formally reject a controversial Arizona state law that differs from federal requirements on fall protection but that proponents say is actually more effective in residential construction, according to a Federal Register filing set to be published Friday (Feb. 6) -- rekindling a longtime dispute not only over the fall protection policy, but the standards for gauging effectiveness of state plans.

Industry representatives, particularly from small business, have told OSHA they believe existing data on work-related infections among health care workers (HCW) is inadequate to justify an expansive potential rule tackling infectious diseases in hospitals and other patient care facilities.

The House is poised to approve new packages of sweeping reforms to the federal regulatory process -- all of which could to some degree affect OSHA rulemaking -- closely on the heels of passing the comprehensive Regulatory Accountability Act (HR 185), but whether any of the Republican-authored measures can gain serious traction in the Senate and eventually land on President Obama's desk is by no means certain.

Administration officials are seeking a major funding increase for OSHA's whistleblower protection program (WPP) next fiscal year, requesting $22.6 million or an increase of almost 29 percent over the program's current level, as the agency makes strides in addressing a backlog of complaints under the OSH Act and numerous other federal laws with anti-retaliation provisions.

The Obama administration has again put NIOSH Education and Research Centers (ERCs) and the agency's Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing Programs (AFF) on the chopping block in the next fiscal year's proposed budget -- reductions that would save millions of dollars in NIOSH discretionary funding, but that are fiercely opposed by numerous occupational safety and health stakeholders.

President Obama wants Congress to approve an increase for OSHA of nearly $40 million over current levels in the next fiscal year, with substantial new investment in federal enforcement and whistleblower protection programs -- likely teeing up a debate this year among appropriators at least at the subcommittee level over beefing up federal safety and heath programs and helping pay for those activities in the states.

States are chafing against a quietly issued federal OSHA mandate that has the effect of precluding some small work sites from participating in the agency's small business on-site consultation program -- and the temporary exemptions from programmed inspections that go along with it -- if they employ more than 250 people, or fall under that cap but are owned by larger companies that meet or exceed 500 people in total employment.

A large national coalition of worker advocacy groups is calling on the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) to revise its procedures to allow interested parties including so-called “affected” employees to participate in cases before OSHRC even if they do not work directly for an employer contesting citations -- a move that would effectively expand the scope of cases stemming from multi-employer job sites.

Federal chemical safety investigators are set to release on Wednesday a final report and accompanying recommendations calling for tighter industry standards following their probe of the August 2012 crude unit fire at the Chevron refinery in Richmond, CA, an investigation that has been subject to controversy due to both the length of the probe and an ongoing debate over whether regulators should adopt a European-style “safety case” approach to head off such disasters.

Industry attorneys are raising concerns following a new lawsuit filed by an environmental health legal group that aims to force California regulators to require Proposition 65 chemical warning labels on any product that exposes the public to any amount of lead – with the suit arguing that state officials used OSHA’s threshold limit as a flawed basis for exempting products that have exposures at or under 0.5 ug/day.

Nearly four-fifths of emergency responders to a hazardous chemical spill following a 2012 train wreck in New Jersey failed to use recommended respiratory protection during the incident, a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report finds -- underscoring concerns among worker advocates about lack of responder preparedness, an issue that OSHA is attempting to tackle at the federal level.

OSHA recently clarified new requirements on worker amputations and eye loss under a stricter incident reporting rule that took effect this month, delineating the circumstances under which such events are reportable, with industry sources saying the interpretation is useful in some ways -- particularly whether blindness versus removal of an eye falls under the mandate. The agency also says an amputation does not require bone loss.

OSHA alerts employers in a new publication to a variety of safety and health concerns -- none tied directly to silica exposures -- arising at hydraulic fracturing sites around the country, where the primary issue emphasized until now has been the potential for workers to develop silicosis or other diseases linked to inhalation of silica dust.

The document includes a strong recommendation that fracking employers implement illness and injury prevention programs, a concept long pushed by OSHA.

Federal chemical safety investigators have pinpointed “hydraulic shock” as the root cause of an accident several years ago in Alabama that resulted in a disastrous release of anhydrous ammonia -- findings that come as OSHA and other regulatory agencies collaborate on a sweeping initiative to mitigate chemical plant safety hazards.