Daily News

OSHA has hit a cell tower contractor with two “willful” and four “serious” safety violations following the deadly collapse of a tower that was being dismantled early this year in Kansas -- an incident that prompted OSHA also to add the employer to its controversial Severe Violator Enforcement Program (SVEP) -- demonstrating the agency's willingness to wield rigorous enforcement as a key part of its recent push to improve communication tower safety.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in a 2-1 ruling has backed a lower court decision giving the Chemical Safety & Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) authority to investigate the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, expanding CSB's jurisdiction from traditional land-based releases to also include releases from offshore facilities. The dissenting judge argues that the affected crew are specialized workers covered by OSHA and not subject to CSB's “general public” coverage.

OSHA is again putting a laser focus on worker fall protection, tackling the trend of increasing numbers of fatalities, particularly with recent growth in the construction sector, by teaming with a major national safety group to address the hazard. The move -- which also includes a strong focus on emergency responder safety and other issues -- occurs as OSHA simultaneously beefs up enforcement efforts on fall prevention. It also builds on OSHA's longtime emphasis in the Obama administration on injury and illness prevention programs (I2P2), which OSHA has striven to issue as a rule.

Union officials have filed suit against the Department of Transportation (DOT) over truck driver safety, saying a federal appeals court should order DOT to issue what the complainants characterized as a “long-overdue rule” outlining training standards for entry-level drivers.

Safety advocates noted Thursday (Sept. 18) that Congress initially told the agency to finish a rulemaking process on driver training by 1993, but the agency still has not done so.

Members of the Senate health and appropriations panels raised concerns about the lack of clear coordination among the slew of federal health agencies working to address the African Ebola outbreak, while backing the Obama administration's request for an additional $88 million to bolster U.S. efforts to tamp down the public health problem. OSHA has made data available on Ebola but its current role is unclear on how the issue may be addressed in health care settings.

The White House is reviewing a planned OSHA rule that would lower by 90 percent the allowed limit on worker exposures to beryllium to .2 mg/u3 TWA -- in line with both union and industry requests -- and put in place medical surveillance requirements to detect sensitization to the metal, a knowledgeable source tells Inside OSHA Online. A proposed rule could come within a few months.

OSHA's fall protection standards are once again the most-cited regulations stemming from OSHA inspections over the last fiscal year, show data newly released from the agency and compiled by a safety organization's journal. Among the most-cited standards are also commonly invoked federal regulations in areas such as hazard communication, scaffolds and respiratory protection.

OSHA has sent to White House regulatory analysts a draft proposed rule aimed at reducing worker exposures to beryllium, taking a key step forward on a standard long sought by worker health experts but that has a narrower impact on industry than other pending rules on far more ubiquitous substances such as crystalline silica.

OSHA is using nearly $11 million in appropriated funds from Congress to bolster occupational safety and health programs conducted by groups around the country -- particularly by local advocacy committees that use money filtered down from their national organization -- to accomplish what the agency characterizes as “capacity building” efforts as OSHA puts a focus on compliance assistance activities. Some of the grant money, announced last week, will go to organizations already receiving a fiscal year's worth of funding through the program.

The Health and Human Services Department has issued wide-ranging guidance on ways to protect U.S. health care workers from potential Ebola exposure that suggests using respirators in certain situations -- a document that worker advocates generally praise for its intense focus on correct use of personal protective equipment (PPE).

OSHA rolled out final injury reporting regulations Thursday that give the agency broader reach in collecting workplace injury data -- including one option for employers to file electronic reports -- with new requirements on notifying OSHA of amputations, hospital stays of one or more employees, and loss of a worker's eye, along with a sweeping update to work site classification codes for injury logs.

Some of the reporting changes have generated concern in industry, but worker safety advocates lauded the final rule as a key step forward in OSHA's data-gathering efforts.

OSHA is expected to unveil shortly a final rule that, based on an earlier proposal, likely will change injury and illness reporting requirements by putting in place stringent and controversial new mandates for employers to let authorities know when workers suffer amputations or hospitalizations on the job – on top of a long-anticipated roll-out of the new North American classification system for work sites that are required to report incidents to OSHA.

NIOSH has added more oral drugs to a list of what it classifies as hazardous drugs used in health care settings, the latest step in a decade-old project to inform stakeholders about patient drugs believed to put millions of U.S. health workers at risk of cancer and organ damage. The added drugs are increasingly in use and the revised list, which also removes 12 drugs no longer classified as hazardous by NIOSH, is aimed at helping employers protect employees from risky drug exposures, a NIOSH official says.

OSHA regulatory experts who are closely watching the agency's gradual progress on a complex new rule to tamp down on worker exposures to crystalline silica think it could take nine months to a year or even longer for OSHA to finish drafting and send to the White House budget office a final rule -- and the effort could stretch even to the last days of President Obama's term, informed sources tell Inside OSHA Online.

The Environmental Protection Agency is boosting its procedures for how to inspect chemical facilities to ensure they are complying with security rules, as well as sharing data and coordinating inspections with OSHA, as steps in meeting President Obama's executive order (EO) to bolster plant security, according to an EPA-devised plan. The environmental agency is also weighing guidance on alerting communities to high-hazard plants.

High-level staff changes are underway at OSHA with agency veteran Bill Perry being named director of the standards division and a White House aide recently taking the helm as OSHA's new chief of staff. Perry's appointment to the career post as top OSHA regulator comes as the division faces intense pressure to produce a string of long-sought but sometimes contentious rules before President Obama's tenure ends.

NIOSH is again making a strong push nationally for employers to embrace workers' use of N95 or greater NIOSH-certified respirators in environments containing possible airborne hazards -- with a particular emphasis on the health care sector, where concern has been heightened recently about air-transmissible diseases such as influenza and even the appearance in some spots in the United States of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).

Safe patient handling regulations to address worker and patient advocates' concerns about ergonomic hazards in the health care sector are seen as a rapidly growing trend in the states, even as federal OSHA grapples independently with the issue but lacks both a specific standard and enforcement resources to fully deal with the subject, experts including the head of a major nurses' organization tell Inside OSHA Online.

Federal OSHA has come out with a highly critical annual report on California's closely watched state OSHA plan that complains the program lacks adequate field resources to address the range of concerns in the state's workplaces and raises issues with the lapse time between inspections and citations -- again raising the specter of a dispute between the agencies over what constitutes an “at least as effective” state plan.

The Environmental Protection Agency is pushing ahead with using existing Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) authority to develop chemical policies including new use rules and risk assessments for various substances – an effort taking place as OSHA also explores how to modernize worker chemical exposure limits based on up-to-date science.

EPA is working on the new policies even as it renews a call for Congress to act on legislation to overhaul TSCA that industry and Republicans say is unlikely to advance this year.