Daily News

Democratic-backed language that would allow OSHA to inspect small work sites -- those defined as 10 or fewer employees -- for purposes of identifying process safety management (PSM) hazards did not make it into Congress' final budget deal for fiscal 2015, with a Capitol Hill source telling Inside OSHA Online that House lawmakers blocked the provision when drafting the spending bill.

A top OSHA official says the agency's regulatory initiatives to reduce exposures to crystalline silica, tackle hazards from confined spaces in construction, put in place an online injury recordkeeping system, and help prevent slips, trips and falls on working surfaces are among the major rules that OSHA is most intent on trying to finish in the waning years of the Obama administration.

Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell on Tuesday invoked a rarely used power to offer liability protection for the manufacturing, testing, development, distribution and administration of three experimental Ebola vaccines. The liability protection is part of an emergency plan to develop and make experimental Ebola vaccines widely available, a move that could help in assuaging deep concerns in the U.S. health care worker community that the federal government is moving too slowly to address the threat of infection in hospitals and other medical facilities.

An upcoming Labor Department system for collecting data on injury and illness data among federal workers will help safety and heath professionals who are crunching the data compare the numbers with private sector figures, allowing them to glean informed conclusions about differences that may exist, OSHA's top official suggested recently.

Energy industry officials are questioning whether the Environmental Protection Agency will ever issue a potential Toxics Substances Control Act (TSCA) policy to obtain health and safety data on chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing, after EPA moved the rule to the long-term actions section of its latest unified agenda of pending rules and says it is weighing "next steps" on how to proceed -- an issue that arises as other agencies including OSHA and NIOSH study the health effects of fracking on workers (see related story).

NIOSH has issued a new guidance document for grocery employers to head off worker ergonomic injuries by providing a host of illustrated protective measures -- an effort that comes as OSHA increasingly sets its sights on preventing hazards in retail environments, though NIOSH chief John Howard tells Inside OSHA Online the purpose behind drafting the guidelines was not to support OSHA enforcement actions.

Newly released government data on occupational injuries and illnesses reported last year show what OSHA chief David Michaels calls an “extraordinarily high” number that is cause for concern, but he also says the data confirm a slow, steady decline in overall rates, crediting that to rigorous efforts in recent years in the safety and health field. The numbers show that in 2013 about 3 million private sector workers suffered a serious job-related incident.

OSHA is preparing to extend to the construction sector standards similar to those it tells general industry employers to take into account to protect workers from injury and death in “confined spaces,” moving forward a rule that in several iterations has been under study for decades. The original OSHA standards to prevent accidents started as primarily regulations in manufacturing and similar operations.

The U.S. government has selected 35 hospitals nationwide to serve as central hubs to treat suspected cases of the Ebola virus, a move that could partially placate health workers' concerns that hospitals generally are not ready in case of an outbreak -- a concern on which OSHA has increasingly focused in recent months.

The Food and Drug Administration on Monday warned device makers that “latex-free” or “does not contain latex” labels on medical devices could lead to a false sense of security for those allergic to natural rubber because some products could come into contact with natural rubber in the manufacturing process.

Serious concerns about latex allergens, and how employers should deal with the issue, have come up frequently in the health care worker community (see related story).

The Obama administration's decision to delay by more than a year and also shelf as a leading priority OSHA's efforts to put together a highly complex rule aimed at reducing the risk of catastrophic combustible dust accidents in workplaces has occupational safety advocates livid, with some labor organizers saying fiscal policymakers should have set aside more resources to ensure the politically dicey new regulations would get done before Obama leaves office.

OSHA is moving quickly with plans to advance a long-attempted proposed rule that would sharply reduce allowed worker exposure levels to beryllium in general industry and possibly in construction-sector activities, with a formal draft coming out as soon as early next year and perhaps even ahead of the new Republican-controlled Congress. OSHA in a new regulatory agenda pegs January as a target date for the proposed rule.

Science advisors appear to be backing key aspects of the Environmental Protection Agency's efforts to assess the human health risks of exposure to ethylene oxide (EtO) -- following epidemiology studies of exposed medical sterilization workers that raised new concerns -- with some panelists pressing the agency to finalize the long-running assessment, while also casting aside several industry complaints about the latest draft assessment.

The length of time it could still take for OSHA regulators to pore over the massive trove of documents related to their long-proposed rule to reduce exposures to crystalline silica dust in general industry and construction – with an analysis not wrapping up until at least next spring, they say – means it could be nearly impossible for the agency to finish the rule before President Obama leaves office, considering the Republican takeover of Congress, Washington insiders say.

The government's lead agency in regulating how thousands of clinical laboratories reliably conduct testing on human specimens is urging state health officials to ensure that labs follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines in specimen collection to stop the potential spread of Ebola – and hew to safety mandates and guidelines including those issued by OSHA as part of infection control.

The House Republican conference has again selected Rep. John Kline as chair of the work force committee, which oversees OSHA, with the Minnesota congressman pledging Wednesday (Nov. 19) to bring more “certainty” to workplaces – which fits with Kline's longtime approach to OSHA that the agency should craft policies that he deems more flexible and cooperative with the business community.

Kline has since taking the committee gavel after the 2010 elections tried to rein in OSHA policy on several fronts, particularly its rulemaking agenda (see related story).

OSHA's enforcement arm is gearing up to look for any possible violations of what the agency describes as large retailers' obligations under the OSH Act to prevent injuries to workers during the upcoming crush of holiday shoppers, re-emphasizing an issue that falls under its broad general-duty authority to address known hazards.

The Chemical Safety Board (CSB) is reiterating its 2002 call for the Environmental Protection Agency to add ammonium nitrate to its facility safety program, saying regulation of the substance under the Risk Management Plan (RMP) rule could have prevented or mitigated the April 2013 explosion in West, TX, that killed 15 people and prompted a federal review of plant safety. OSHA has also faced calls to beef up safety controls on ammonium nitrate (see related story).

A key safety equipment trade group is endorsing a set of new international specifications for choosing personal protective equipment (PPE) for stopping the spread of Ebola among health care workers and patients, saying selection of PPE should be tied to established performance standards and not “panic buys” stemming from Ebola-related crises.

The new World Health Organization specifications -- devised by a global panel of disease control experts -- provide that equipment selection to protect workers should be based on industry-tested technical standards.

Federal chemical safety officials launched an investigation Saturday into a chemical release incident that took four workers' lives at the La Porte DuPont Plant near Houston, potentially bringing new attention to the substance involved, which is frequently used to odorize natural gas.