Daily News

A top House Democrat is pushing legislation that would give the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) power to force chemical facilities to use controversial inherently safer technology (IST) measures to reduce the consequences of a terrorist attack, a move that comes as federal agencies including OSHA and the Environmental Protection Agency come under increasing pressure to consider IST mandates.

OSHA should go back and start from scratch on its efforts to draft a new federal rule to reduce the risks of health care workers contracting infectious diseases, small business representatives say, calling for a more piecemeal regulatory approach that possibly exempts some segments of the industry and holds employers in compliance as long as they follow official guidance materials issued by federal agencies.

OSHA is voicing concern to employers, especially in sectors where federal officials have raised red flags over ergonomics, about in-house licensed nurses potentially downplaying musculoskeletal and other worker injuries by treating them as first aid-type incidents that never show up on the companies' OSHA recordkeeping logs. OSHA worries that a lack of data exacerbates the reported hazards on top of exposing the same workers to risk of repeated injury and long-term musculoskeletal disorders (MSD).

OSHA stakeholders and expert observers predict the agency will at least come close this year to finishing a new rule to protect construction workers against confined space hazards -- along with making strides on other rules including reductions in silica exposure limits, changes to OSHA recordkeeping procedures and a proposed rule tamping down on potential hazards from beryllium. The agency is also seen as pursuing aggressive enforcement that likely continues a trend in the Obama administration of highly publicizing OSHA's legal actions against alleged bad actors.

House Republican leaders blocked an attempt by the labor committee's top Democrat to shield an OSHA rulemaking on infectious diseases in health care from the procedural requirements in a newly passed bill that adds new layers of review to the federal regulatory process. The bill without the OSHA-related amendment passed the House on Tuesday afternoon with overwhelming GOP support and heads to the Senate, but President Obama signaled he would veto the measure.

Advocates say the Environmental Protection Agency's finding of risks to workers in a recent draft human health risk assessment of the commonly used pesticide chlorpyrifos bolsters their push for the agency to strengthen proposed revisions to its worker protection standards (WPS), due out this year, though advocates argue banning the pesticide is the surest way to reduce risks.

An OSHA action trying to force one of the country's largest medical transport providers to reinstate a pilot who refused to fly a helicopter the employee deemed unsafe is again putting into the spotlight OSHA's increasing efforts to enforce a host of federal whistleblower statutes on top of its substantial OSH Act 11(c) caseload.

Public interest advocate Ralph Nader worries that OSHA has increasingly been denied the authority it needs to carry out its mission to craft workplace safety and health rules and effectively enforce them across U.S industry sectors, with the White House under both parties gradually sapping the agency of the power to take forceful policy action, the activist and onetime presidential contender tells Inside OSHA Online.

OSHA and NIOSH are urging health care employers to craft “fatigue risk management plans” to head off risks to workers responding to Ebola situations where officials are concerned that health responders have been put in danger by protracted stress-filled work shifts. Their recommendation follows a planning, training and action model of reducing hazards and emphasizes a comprehensive, systematic approach.

Lawmakers are all but demanding that OSHA start providing 10 days' notice to Congress of any looming special emphasis enforcement programs, whether at the state, regional or local level, a move that appeared to take stakeholders by surprise but that Washington sources tell Inside OSHA Online could be a result of recent highly controversial programs like OSHA's investigation of recordkeeping compliance at work sites across the country.

OSHA has launched a publicity effort to inform employers about their new obligations under an injury reporting rule that went into effect Jan. 1, on top of widely disseminated information from worker advocacy groups to remind companies of the new OSHA requirements, which change mandates regarding worker hospitalizations, amputations and eye losses. Stakeholders said this week that while it was too early to tell if the rule's implementation had gone smoothly only a week in, there were no widely publicized reports of sweeping enforcement actions.

The Environmental Protection Agency has finalized rules further restricting the uses of three groups of largely phased-out chemicals, including a controversial rule that revokes the agency's usual exemption on a chemical's presence in “articles” or finished products for nine benzidine-based dyes, rejecting opponents' arguments that the EPA rule could overstep the authorities of OSHA and consumer safety officials. EPA also downplays industry fears that the rule will lead to greater regulation of chemicals in articles.

Congressional appropriators sent a clear signal to OSHA that it needs to weigh “all currently available technology” when it crafts an envisioned final rule tackling crystalline silica hazards in the workplace -- echoing technical feasibility concerns voiced in the employer community.

Federal chemical toxicity experts are anticipated to release soon their initial findings from studies regarding effects of human exposures to the substance involved in last year's disastrous spill and ensuing environmental disaster in West Virginia's Elk River, a chemical that worker health advocates are concerned poses a danger to workers if they come into contact with it during any similar future events. The studies come as OSHA performs a long-term sweeping review of chemical exposure safety policies and regulations.

Safety and health advocates are decrying that the Obama administration in nearly six years has failed to move toward finalization major OSHA rules such as one requiring injury and illness prevention programs. The narrowing gap between President Obama's last term and the next president's has them even more nervous about rules they fully expected to be published, which also include regulations reducing exposure levels and putting in protective measures for silica (see related coverage).

The Environmental Pro0tection Agency is stepping up inspections for violations of pesticide rules as part of a broad effort to protect agricultural workers and to prepare the agency's regional inspectors for implementation of controversial revisions to the agency's decades-old worker protection standards (WPS), due out in the first half of 2015, according to agency officials.

The Environmental Protection Agency has released a long-awaited peer review of its analysis of a selenium toxicity study conducted for industry, which appears to generally support the agency's findings and is expected to inform the agency's effort to revise its decades-old water quality criteria for the pollutant, possibly allowing some states to move ahead with site-specific standards. The move comes as OSHA weighs new strategies to update its decades-old chemical permissible exposure limits, including greater reliance on EPA standards.

OSHA has lodged a whistleblower claim against a New England commuter railroad, legal action that comes as the agency attempts to increase enforcement under several federal statutes and elevate its levels of enforcement under whistleblower laws not only as part of the OSH Act but other laws including the Federal Railroad Safety Act (FRSA).

Federal spending on OSHA activities will remain even for the rest of fiscal 2015 at almost $553 million -- though that is less than President Obama sought in his proposed budget earlier this year -- as Congress in recent days passed a massive and heatedly negotiated funding package to keep most federal agencies running.

Senate Democrats are urging environmental regulators to accelerate plans for potentially stricter rules to improve security at industrial facilities such as chemical plants in order to meet President Obama's executive order seeking more-stringent rules, though GOP senators counter that the Environmental Protection Agency is moving too quickly without fully weighing industry input. A pair of GOP lawmakers says OSHA is taking a more “deliberative” approach to plant safety (see related document).