Federal chemical toxicity experts are anticipated to release soon their initial findings from studies regarding effects of human exposures to the substance involved in last year's disastrous spill and ensuing environmental disaster in West Virginia's Elk River, a chemical that worker health advocates are concerned poses a danger to workers if they come into contact with it during any similar future events.
September 17, 2026
Safety and health advocates are decrying that the Obama administration in nearly six years has failed to move toward finalization major OSHA rules such as one requiring injury and illness prevention programs. The narrowing gap between President Obama's last term and the next president's has them even more nervous about rules they fully expected to be published, which also include regulations reducing exposure levels and putting in protective measures for silica see related coverage.
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The Environmental Pro0tection Agency is stepping up inspections for violations of pesticide rules as part of a broad effort to protect agricultural workers and to prepare the agency's regional inspectors for implementation of controversial revisions to the agency's decades-old worker protection standards (WPS), due out in the first half of 2015, according to agency officials.
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The Environmental Protection Agency has released a long-awaited peer review of its analysis of a selenium toxicity study conducted for industry, which appears to generally support the agency's findings and is expected to inform the agency's effort to revise its decades-old water quality criteria for the pollutant, possibly allowing some states to move ahead with site-specific standards. The move comes as OSHA weighs new strategies to update its decades-old chemical permissible exposure limits, including greater reliance on EPA standards.
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OSHA has lodged a whistleblower claim against a New England commuter railroad, legal action that comes as the agency attempts to increase enforcement under several federal statutes and elevate its levels of enforcement under whistleblower laws not only as part of the OSH Act but other laws including the Federal Railroad Safety Act (FRSA).
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Federal spending on OSHA activities will remain even for the rest of fiscal 2015 at almost $553 million -- though that is less than President Obama sought in his proposed budget earlier this year -- as Congress in recent days passed a massive and heatedly negotiated funding package to keep most federal agencies running.
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Senate Democrats are urging environmental regulators to accelerate plans for potentially stricter rules to improve security at industrial facilities such as chemical plants in order to meet President Obama's executive order seeking more-stringent rules, though GOP senators counter that the Environmental Protection Agency is moving too quickly without fully weighing industry input.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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