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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
OSHA has produced new broad-based guidance for the health care sector in the event of a worldwide infectious disease outbreak that strongly suggests respirator use is superior to surgical masks in an airborne outbreak situation, but cautions that respirators must be properly fitted and meet N95 or better filter standards as well as NIOSH certification to be effective in OSHA's view.
A technical report from federal chemical safety investigators into February's Tesoro Refinery sulfuric acid spill that injured two workers in California concludes in part that many of the nation's chemical facilities need to beef up their process safety management (PSM) activities to avert such accidents, a recommendation aligned with their push for more federal regulation and OSHA oversight on the issue.
OSHA and NIOSH have jointly issued a “recommended practices” document on temporary worker safety and health that strongly emphasizes what the agencies view as the shared responsibilities of host employers and staffing agencies for ensuring regulatory compliance -- echoing a previously stated OSHA position that legal sources say could bolster the enforcement agency's inclination to cite both employers after an inspection in such situations.
OSHA is touting its recent successful exercise of the OSH Act general duty clause in the highly publicized action against SeaWorld after the mauling death of a killer whale trainer, after the company said in a statement to the investor community that it would not further attempt to appeal the citations in court.