NIOSH is expressing concern based on research about rates of obesity keyed to occupations in Washington state, raising broader questions about whether employers need to address such personal worker issues by attempting to improve “poor health behaviors,” with agency officials saying it “likely is in the employer’s best interest to do so.”
Federal officials engaged in probing chemical disasters pressured OSHA chief David Michaels and other Obama administration officials in a White House meeting after the West, TX, fertilizer plant explosion to embrace the use of inherently safer technologies (IST) where possible and to revisit a range of longstanding OSHA process safety management (PSM) requirements, and continue to push for tougher regulatory policies, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board chairman told Inside OSHA Online in an interview Tuesday.
The industry coalition American Chemistry Council (ACC) is challenging New Jersey's model chemical facility safety program, arguing in comments to the Environmental Protection Agency that the state incorrectly labels facilities' routine safety upgrades as shifts to inherently safer technologies (IST) and fails to account for changes that shift risks to other parts of production processes -- a dispute that occurs as OSHA comes under increasing pressure to embrace IST.
A group of worker health activists issued a scathing report Thursday (April 17) sharply critical in some respects of how OSHA under the Bush administration handled its response to worker hazards in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York, calling for several policy changes to beef up enforcement and training in such a future event.
OSHA is making the case for a much stricter standard on respirable crystalline silica by forming an alliance with several groups of occupational health experts in the Atlanta region -- a partnership designed to provide construction employers and workers with guidance and training to prevent overexposure to the toxic dust generated in some building activities.
OSHA is seeking clearance from the White House budget office to publish a formal information request designed to gather stakeholder input on the problematic issue of how to update a host of chemical exposure caps in the workplace, pushing ahead on a subject that has stymied worker health advocates for decades.
OSHA won a closely monitored appellate court review of citations the agency issued in what critics blasted as an overzealous exercise of the OSH Act general duty clause following the much-publicized mauling death of a SeaWorld orca trainer in 2010.
U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) investigators are set to release preliminary findings from their probe into last year's disastrous explosion of a fertilizer processing plant in West, TX, potentially teeing up recommendations to OSHA on how safety regulators could tighten up federal rules covering such facilities.
The Obama Administration's pressure on Congress to beef up OSHA's whistleblower law enforcement division could help the agency clear up a persistent backlog in cases including OSH Act 11(c) complaints.
GOP lawmakers Wednesday (April 9) quashed any lingering hopes of worker safety and health advocates that Congress could be willing to consider sweeping mine safety legislation pushed in the aftermath of the Upper Big Branch disaster in West Virginia, also spelling defeat for prospects that OSHA reforms could be tied to any such measure – the only recent legislative vehicle to show promise for OSH Act changes.
House Republicans will try to block OSHA's controversial policy issued last year interpreting federal law as allowing union and other third-party worker representatives to accompany compliance officers in walkaround inspections, the chair of the House panel that oversees OSHA tells Inside OSHA Online.
OSHA officials are looking into unspecified regulatory “alternatives” that would apply to the construction sector as they explore a rulemaking to tackle worker exposures to the toxic metal beryllium, in an effort that a source familiar with the issue says could make it increasingly difficult to get a new standard issued, though worker advocates consider it vital to take into account hazards to workers who use beryllium-containing abrasive blasting agents in construction activities.
Government chemical safety experts are pressuring OSHA to get rid of key exemptions applying to the oil and gas sector in the agency's process safety management (PSM) standard in response to what they call high rates of injuries and fatalities throughout the industry, after an earlier dispute over covering those work sites ended in industry's favor.
Safety and health activists, in pressing for a new OSHA rule cutting down on worker exposures to crystalline silica dust across the spectrum of both large and small U.S. businesses, have tapped into a long-simmering source of grievance with the federal regulatory process: that agencies often rely heavily on the Small Business Administration's (SBA) expansive view of what constitutes a small entity and as a result over-estimate rules' impact on small businesses.
Industry groups appear split on the role local emergency planning committees (LEPCs) should play in federal efforts to improve the safety and security of industrial plants, with some industry advocates arguing the groups authorized under the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) should play a key role and others seeking to largely bypass them – discourse that comes as OSHA seeks to update plant safety policies as a central part of a broad federal push by President Obama on the issue.
NIOSH officials say a multi-stakeholder partnership involving industry, union and government experts on respirable crystalline silica has evaluated a range of engineering controls in field studies that are effective at keeping exposures to the toxic dust during road milling below the research agency's 50-microgram recommended exposure limit (REL) for silica dust – a level mirroring the compulsory exposure cap in OSHA's planned silica rule – and suggest use of the developed controls could obviate a need for respirator use over full shifts in road milling operations.
Arizona's two Republican senators led by John McCain are demanding that federal OSHA back off a threat to take jurisdiction of construction standards enforcement from the state's OSHA plan, after a new state law kicked in that replaces federally issued mandates on residential fall protection with less stringent requirements, particularly over the contentious issue of how best to guard workers from building falls between 6 and 15 feet.
A Republican lawmaker from Alabama has launched a full-bore assault on OSHA over an agency inspection program targeted at auto parts plants in OSHA's Southeast region, telling the Obama administration the enforcement activity has the appearance of a pro-union bias and at least looks like an attempt to help labor organize workers in southern states -- especially when coupled with an earlier controversial enforcement memo saying union representatives are authorized to participate in OSHA walkarounds.
OSHA issued a final rule Tuesday aimed at improving worker safety in electric power generation, transmission and distribution, bringing to a close what one union official entrenched in the issue calls a lengthy regulatory process in producing a “very comprehensive” rule.
A plastics industry group charges OSHA's proposed rule to mandate electronic filing of injury and illness records quarterly at large firms -- information that would later be disseminated on the Internet -- fails to qualify for an exemption from Privacy Act provisions that bar agencies from publicly distributing data concerning individuals.