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More than a dozen chemical, petroleum and other industry groups are urging President Obama and other officials to drop consideration of a federal mandate requiring use of inherently safer technologies (IST), such as benign chemicals, in any upcoming proposal on facility security, saying it will create an impossible burden and derail the president's effort to improve safety at the nation's industrial plants.

Environmentalists and some labor unions are seeking to re-engage in the "BlueGreen" alliance amid acrimony between the two camps over coal plant closures and the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline, ahead of a "green jobs" conference in Washington, D.C., Feb. 10 and 11. The move comes as OSHA focuses on new workplace hazards associated with green jobs, and as Department of Justice officials in recent years have alarmed industry by seeking to piggyback occupational safety and health cases onto environmental cases to leverage environmental statutes' higher penalties.

Attorneys for industry groups are opposing a proposal by the California health hazard office to potentially add more chemicals to the Proposition 65 list through a newly created administrative route under the state Labor Code, arguing the health hazard office overreaches in its interpretation of federal health and safety regulations, sources say. Although the office has not yet finalized the plan and is scheduled to hold a public hearing to discuss it next month, industry attorneys indicate they would sue if the plan is adopted as currently drafted.

Farmworker advocates are urging White House officials to ensure the Environmental Protection Agency's proposed worker protection standards (WPS) include stronger training requirements so workers can protect themselves from pesticide exposures after stricter measures, such as medical monitoring, appear unlikely to be included in the draft rule expected in the spring.

Editor's note: The following letter was submitted by Mark Ellis, president of the National Industrial Sand Association, with respect to OSHA's proposed rule addressing crystalline silica. Inside OSHA Online welcomes readers to submit their feedback. Please send comments to: ccole@iwpnews.com

To the editor:

Chemicals, petroleum and other industry groups are urging President Obama and other officials to drop consideration of a federal mandate requiring use of inherently safer technologies (IST), such as benign chemicals, in any upcoming proposal on facility security, saying it will create an impossible burden and derail the president's effort to improve safety at the nation's industrial plants.

OSHA is enforcing its process safety management standard (PSM) in several cases that sources say indicate a strong emphasis on chemical safety compliance, especially where the agency believes it can prove serious or willful violations of the standard -- actions which possibly could be used to buttress arguments by OSHA that a rulemaking is needed to strengthen plant safety regulations.

OSHA made it official Thursday (Jan. 30) that Dorothy Dougherty has been named the agency's deputy assistant secretary, a capacity in which she has effectively served for several months, having been selected for the post during a high-level shakeup after last year's retirement of Richard Fairfax.

Supporters of broad-based legislation to strengthen OSHA will lose a major ally when longtime Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) retires at the end of this year. Waxman has long been a cosponsor of the Protecting America's Workers Act, which would bring in a raft of changes to the agency's enforcement powers and penalty structures.

Waxman, a 20-term progressive known for his staunch support of environmental oversight and a key player on health care reform, said Thursday (Jan. 30) he would not seek re-election this year.

Public and consumer interest groups urging stronger safety, health and environmental protections lauded the shots President Obama took across House Republicans' bow Tuesday (Jan. 28) in promising to press ahead with his agenda through any executive actions possible when faced with GOP attempts to block administration priorities.

An industry with perhaps the most obvious of all possible stakes in OSHA's rulemaking to tackle crystalline silica hazards -- the brick-making business -- has started expressing serious apprehensions with the agency's regulatory approach, saying there are many unanswered questions about the technical feasibility of the rule, on top of concerns about its potential economic impact on companies that manufacture the building materials. Some stakeholders go as far as to suggest brick making should be carved out of the rule's new exposure limit mandate.

The operator of a Louisiana petrochemical plant where a deadly explosion occurred last year will contest a group of OSHA citations that officials issued after a lengthy probe into the blast, potentially setting up a legal battle over an incident that highlighted national concerns about chemical safety and became a focal point of the issue on Capitol Hill.

OSHA's proposed silica rule, even if eventually finalized, would be opened up to substantial legal challenges if the agency continues to refute a need for separate, formal avenues by the small business community to review and offer criticism of the proposal, a pair of GOP lawmakers suggested in a recent letter to OSHA chief David Michaels.

OSHA has pushed until Feb. 11 the deadline for submitting comments on its proposed crystalline silica rule -- in what amounts to a 15-day extension -- due to an apparent posting error on the web-based regulations portal that Republicans say could have led some affected stakeholders to believe the window had already closed on putting comments in the record.

Chemical industry representatives strongly back a relatively obscure change made recently to OSHA's right-to-know regulations that switches to a “weight of evidence” approach for determining whether an agent must be labeled as a known or possible carcinogen, responding to newly voiced worries among worker advocates that the policy shift gives too much latitude to industry's own assessments of chemical risk factors.

OSHA reportedly is working on an internal directive to deal with an apparent gap in the agency's new hazard communication rule that could let employers dispute whether a chemical is proven to cause cancer, even if the chemical appears as either a known or possible carcinogen by the National Toxicology Program (NTP) or the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a source familiar with the issue tells Inside OSHA Online.

Several Republican senators are pushing legislation that would consolidate the Labor and Commerce departments, a move that would lump OSHA into one large umbrella agency responsible for the government's efforts in both promoting business and labor protections. The proposal has drawn criticism from worker advocates and would likely have a hard time moving in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

OSHA's new push to urge hospitals across the country to develop safety and health “management systems” -- with safe patient handling as the centerpiece of the initiative -- mirrors a broader OSHA emphasis on injury and illness prevention programs that is also borne out on the rulemaking front, with the agency seeking to impose all-encompassing hazard identification programs on employers.

Progressive groups are urging President Obama to implement "fundamental reform" to boost transparency and end delays in White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) reviews of OSHA and other agencies' rules, changes they say would help expedite regulations that improve public safety and health.

The concerns aired about OMB delays come just months after the White House released OSHA's long-awaited proposed silica rule after two and a half years of review at the regulatory office, a time period frequently held up as a case in point for safety and health activists.

OSHA continues to work on a planned rule to tackle infectious disease hazards in health care settings, OSHA chief David Michaels told Inside OSHA Online, but he declined to provide details on how far the agency is in the process. The subject came up as Michaels discussed OSHA's effort to encourage hospitals to adopt safety and health management systems, in which the agency places some emphasis on preventing infectious disease transmission.