A Republican congresswoman, acting upon what she says are numerous complaints from constituents that OSHA is going into work sites and citing up to the maximum possible penalties for “very minor” alleged regulatory violations, has filed a bill that effectively would bar OSHA from issuing such penalties before employers have a chance to fix problems identified by compliance officers.
September 17, 2026
A House Democrat from the Houston area has re-introduced legislation mandating that OSHA require logs of workplace injuries across the entirety of multi-employer work sites, regardless of whether a contractor or other type of temporary staffing company directly employs the workers as opposed to the site-controlling employer.
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A national umbrella group of worker advocacy organizations on Thursday (April 23) urged federal and state law enforcement officials -- including the Justice Department working in concert with OSHA officials -- to increase the number of criminal prosecutions brought in severe safety and health cases, particularly ones involving fatalities and alleged willful violations of the OSH Act.
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NIOSH's recent Health Hazard Evaluation (HHE) of a poultry plant in Maryland found “significant problems” related to musculoskeletal disorders, according to OSHA, which lauds the research agency's evaluation program in general and indicates that results of its probes would broadly benefit stakeholders, though without saying whether such findings could be used specifically for enforcement or rulemaking activity.
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OSHA's recent citations against a New York supplier of plastic balls used in hydraulic fracturing, alleging process safety management (PSM) violations and other hazards, appears to underscore the agency's heightened attention to safety in the large-scale use of chemicals, with one OSHA official lodging concern about the storage or use of more than 1,000 pounds of formaldehyde.
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The Environmental Protection Agency is seeking public input on whether sufficient scientific evidence exists to back its proposal to add 1-bromopropane -- a chemical that occupational health advocates have long urged OSHA to regulate in the workplace through exposure limits -- to the EPA's Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) for reporting of chemical releases, a move EPA is justifying based on research suggesting the substance is a carcinogen worthy of tracking on TRI.
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OSHA is pushing ahead with an effort to refocus scarce investigative resources toward priority areas through a data-driven system the agency calls “inspection weighting,” which uses historical data to allocate “enforcement units” for carrying out labor-intensive inspections -- an approach some in industry consider a creative approach to ensuring the agency sets aside resources for complex probes instead of simply racking up inspection numbers.
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OSHA and NIOSH are working jointly to address the potential for nicotine poisoning among tobacco workers, in another sign the agencies are ramping up their collaboration to tackle health effects in the workplace from exposures both to green tobacco and cigarette smoke and vapor, including concern about as-yet-unclear impacts from the emissions of electronic cigarettes.
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OSHA is moving forward on the next steps toward a possible eventual rule that would address high rates of injuries and fatalities in the fast-growing communication tower industry, with the agency pointing to data showing 13 communication tower worker deaths in 2013, the deadliest year for tower workers since 2006.
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OSHA's recent assertion in a published report that workplace injuries and illnesses, along with deficiencies in the workers' compensation system, are closely tied to U.S. income inequality has opened a new policy debate, with industry sharply criticizing the agency for not offering new recommendations to help remedy the economic costs of workplace accidents and for wading into state worker compensation issues that fall outside OSHA's jurisdiction.
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House lawmakers are floating draft bipartisan legislation to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) that significantly scales back preemption of state chemicals programs compared to an alternative pending Senate bill, opening a gap between the two chambers over the issue of preemption that has long hindered approval of a bill.
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NIOSH is pushing for a complete smoking ban across all U.S. workplaces, agency administrator John Howard tells Inside OSHA Online, citing recent data on the persistent prevalence of tobacco use in occupational settings and potential effects on workers.
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OSHA has gotten the green light from the White House to publish a new final rule aligning the general industry regulations that address confined spaces with the construction sector, moving the agency closer to attaining a long-sought goal to extend the rule's coverage to building activities.
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OSHA has put the health care and social service sectors on notice that it intends to enforce against workplace violence risks through potential use of the OSH Act general duty clause, telling the industries in an updated guidance that they can stay in legal compliance by proactively addressing what the agency says are “serious” concerns about violent incidents.
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A review of Cal/OSHA's oversight of oil refinery safety, called for by state lawmakers following work site accidents, finds that facilities generally are complying with six out of seven new elements of the Department of Industrial Relations' evolving process safety management (PSM) requirements.
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OSHA, citing resource shortages for state-level cooperative programs, has partly rescinded a policy issued just last fall that would have enforced employment limits for participation in the small-business compliance program known as Safety and Health Achievement Recognition Program (SHARP), with last year's policy move prompting area program directors to begin removing work sites that did not fit a 250-employee on-site or 500-worker corporate-wide limit.
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Public interest groups are raising alarm about the global safety, health and environmental enforcement implications of a developing trade agreement and whether a controversial section of the accord could put the public at risk by allowing investors to skirt regulatory mandates in countries participating in the deal.
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Northeastern states are urging the Environmental Protection Agency to grant petitions requesting that the agency add the replacement dry cleaning chemical n-propyl bromide (nPB) to its list of hazardous air pollutants (HAP) subject to Clean Air Act limits, with Rhode Island noting it has regulated nPB since 2008 due to concerns about human health that have also been addressed by OSHA and NIOSH.
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OSHA has issued a new policy that adds oil and gas production sites to its Severe Violator Enforcement Program (SVEP), in what sources say is the first time the agency has used an industry classification code as an enforcement mechanism under the program, but that OSHA says should be used to address anomalous high rates of injuries and illnesses that are several times greater than suffered in general industry.
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Construction stakeholders are applying new pressure on OSHA to take into account the long-term economic impact of the agency's proposed crystalline silica rule, sending new data to regulators that the sector argues show much deeper ripple effects than earlier estimated from the rule based on passed-along price increases for building materials.
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