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.
September 17, 2026
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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) -- which under the Obama administration has often stirred controversy for taking policy positions that many in the employer community and the GOP regard as strongly biased in favor of union activism -- has launched a new initiative that directs field agents as they review allegations of unfair labor practices to consider referring complainants' safety and health concerns to OSHA, arguing that relaying such complaints is in line with helping enforce a broad range of federal labor laws.
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The Environmental Protection Agency is moving ahead with plans to gather data on potential risks to workers and the public from lead paint during renovation and maintenance of public and commercial buildings (P&CBs) -- despite industry arguments that such action is unnecessary and duplicates OSHA rules -- and is asking the White House to approve an Information Collection Request (ICR) that could support a decision to regulate such activities.
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NIOSH wants community health centers to collect occupational injury and illness data in their electronic medical records so the agency can use that data for research, a NIOSH official tells Inside OSHA Online.
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A major construction industry trade group is gearing up to sue the Obama administration over a contentious presidential executive order that constrains federal agencies from hiring contractors with Labor Department enforcement histories, including alleged OSHA violations, a top official with the group tells Inside OSHA Online.
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OSHA regulators are envisioning a potential program-based approach to any eventual new regulations they attempt to promulgate in beefing up safety and health protections for emergency responders, which would mean a broad approach involving intensive planning and training – similar in some respects to the model the agency favors for broadly requiring injury and illness prevention programs across industry sectors.
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NIOSH is asking the public for feedback on a draft document providing volumes of data on the worker health consequences of environmental tobacco smoke – a third iteration of the research agency's efforts to urge employers to clamp down on smoking in the workplace and which explores the implications of companies enforcing stringent policies regarding the issue. NIOSH plans to recommend that employers put strict tobacco-free requirements in place.
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A key Washington advocacy group for stronger safety and health protections is holding up OSHA's proposed rule tackling crystalline silica exposures as one of 10 key federal rulemakings that the Obama administration should complete as the rules would purportedly not only save lives but carry greater net benefits than costs.
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OSHA is looking at revising its controversial electronic recordkeeping proposed rule to make it even tougher on employers by potentially mandating employer notifications to workers and strengthening whistleblower protections in response to some stakeholders' concerns that the proposed electronic posting of information might lead employers to retaliate against employees who report injuries and illnesses.
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The West African Ebola virus outbreak and subsequent worries over transatlantic travel and spread of the disease could result in stepped-up calls on OSHA and state regulators to toughen their oversight of health sector workers' use of personal protective equipment (PPE), just as the SARS and H1N1 scares of recent years amplified calls for more stringent health care worker and patient protections.
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