Daily News

NIOSH chief John Howard says the research agency is ramping up its collaborative efforts with OSHA, partly by helping to provide safety and heath information to employers. Howard tells Inside OSHA Online in an exclusive interview that the partnership has advanced through such efforts as co-branded documents and hazard alerts, beginning with a joint document on nail gun safety.

OSHA and BP Products North America have settled all but 30 out of hundreds of citations issued against the petroleum company arising out of inspections that followed the deadly March 2005 blast at BP's Texas City, TX, refinery. A top agency official said Thursday (July 12) that the company had agreed to an “unprecedented” level of oversight in abatement of hazards and characterized the deal, which includes $13 million in penalties, as groundbreaking in terms of enforcement.

The Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to conduct case-specific ecological and human health risk assessments, including for occupational exposures, of nanosilver ingredients in several pesticides, suggesting a new approach to addressing the substances after struggling to craft a regulation requiring registrants to disclose the presence of the materials as a first step in possible regulation. The move comes as OSHA stakeholders continue exploring the potential need for regulatory efforts to oversee nanomaterials.

A tort reform group is mounting a legal challenge to OSHA's final hazard communication (hazcom) standard issued earlier this year, asking an appeals court to look into whether the agency violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) by limiting the scope of federal OSHA preemption to exclude state tort law claims. A worker advocate, however, says the agency is merely reiterating a legal stance that it has held for decades that it does not preempt state tort law.

Several industry groups are suing OSHA over its inclusion of combustible dust as a hazard category in the agency's new hazard communication (hazcom) standard, questioning whether the agency's move violates administrative procedure rules. The legal challenge -- reviving issues that cropped up during the final stretch of the rulemaking -- also challenges OSHA's inclusion of a category identified as “Hazards Not Otherwise Classified” (HNOC).

A key public interest group is decrying OSHA’s recent denial of a petition that called for the agency to work on a long-term heat exposure rule as well as issue an emergency temporary standard (ETS) to tackle the issue immediately – an agency decision that highlights OSHA’s legal stance regarding when it can pursue such temporary regulations. The agency suggests its hands are tied by case law on the legal threshold to issue an ETS, but still expresses concern about heat hazards and pledges to enforce the general duty clause when it can in heat illness cases.

Experts reviewing the Environmental Protection Agency's draft assessment setting first-time inhalation risks for 1,4-dioxane are split on whether the agency had enough evidence to back up its already final decision to set the chemical's listing to “likely human carcinogen.” OSHA has a permissible exposure limit (PEL) for dioxane of 100 ppm, 8-hour TWA, with a skin notation, and the chemical has come up in recent stakeholder discussions about updating OSHA's PELs.

As the Environmental Protection Agency moves closer to completing a long-stalled rule to ease waste-handling requirements for reusable and disposable industrial towels, the group that represents the reusable wipes sector is touting a study that suggests that laundered reusable shop towels pose little to no health risk to workers relative to risk values set by EPA.

The standards arm of Cal/OSHA has taken the controversial step of calling for an advisory panel to explore ergonomics issues with respect to hotel room housekeeping, reversing the earlier decision of a differently composed board about a month ago not to form such a group. The deliberations have been closely watched by some at the national level because of the potentially wider implications for setting OSH standards related to the contested issue, since federal OSHA lacks a specific standard for ergo hazards.

A top OSHA official on Thursday (June 28) told House lawmakers that OSHA is fully committed to voluntary protection programs (VPP) but also acknowledged there are “serious issues with VPP” that the agency continues to address. Employers question OSHA's commitment to VPP, voicing concern to lawmakers that President Obama's fiscal 2013 budget cuts back funding for overall federal compliance assistance and OSHA is not expanding the VPP program fast enough to meet employer demand.

NIOSH chief John Howard says the agency has been working to bring together officials from both workers’ compensation and safety and health programs, with a second workshop held last week, in an effort “to try to figure out how the data that both collect can be used for mutual benefit.”

Howard, speaking to participants in the National Occupational Research Agenda in Washington, said the purpose is assist workers by determining what injury protection, injury prevention and injury compensation have in common. He called it a “really good meeting” of about 100 people over three days.

A key safety group is urging OSHA to ensure that Arizona's state OSHA plan rolls out the new federal policy tightening conventional fall protection requirements in residential construction over 6 feet, despite a new state law directing Arizona Division of Occupational Safety and Health (ADOSH) to enforce a standard at 15 feet. The law's passage could set up jurisdictional issues and a dispute over whether the Arizona program meets the test of “at least as effective” as federal OSHA at a time when stakeholders are debating how to define that standard generally.

Worker safety and health advocates are asking OSHA to take into account a wide range of factors involving worker rights as agency officials craft new measures to help define whether state plans are “at least as effective” as federal OSHA. Industry officials remain concerned about disparate performance measures across states and say consistent measures are needed to help employers comply with safety and health programs.

OSHA and NIOSH have issued a hazard alert to employers in the hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) industry warning them about worker exposures to silica, a move that closely follows calls by organized labor and worker safety advocates for the agencies to take action in light of new NIOSH data on silica exposures. OSHA says the hazard alert was developed in consultation with stakeholders, including industry.

Top OSHA officials said that the small business review process for the agency’s planned injury and illness prevention program (I2P2) rule will not begin until at least this Labor Day, with one official saying the agency is still putting together alternative “options” to present to employer representatives. Worker safety advocates blame election-year politics for protracted delays in moving the controversial initiative forward and suggest the Obama administration has missed a key opportunity to promulgate the rule.

State plan and worker advocacy sources say OSHA's 15 new draft performance measures, written in cooperation with the association of state plans to evaluate the effectiveness of state programs, cover many of the areas the federal agency often takes into account, but tread little new ground in other areas, such as measuring the real-world impact of regulations. A former state plan official closely following the issue suggests that the agency, while producing some legitimate measures, is still largely “missing the point” with respect to gauging effectiveness.

OSHA has come out with 15 draft performance measures that the agency and state plan officials agreed should be considered for future evaluations of state OSHA plan effectiveness. The agency breaks the proposed measures down into seven categories: inspections; complaints; hazard identification and violation classification; discrimination (safety and health whistleblower cases); penalties; responsiveness; and abatement.

A key standards body in California plans to weigh a controversial plea for Cal/OSHA to form an advisory panel to study whether the agency should issue new regulations aimed at curbing what organized labor says are ergonomic hazards faced by hotel room housekeepers. The vote comes as unions continue pushing for federal OSHA to address the ergo issue in hotel work environments.

The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to strengthen its publicly released 2006 draft toxicity value for ethylene oxide (EtO), a chemical intermediate and medical sterilizer, according to a 2011 working draft Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) assessment, worrying industry officials who fear the upcoming final version will adopt a limit at least as strict as proposed in 2006. OSHA has a permissible exposure limit (PEL) of 1 ppm, 8-hour TWA for EtO, which has come up in stakeholder discussions about top chemicals of concern for tightening PEL standards.

A key public interest group is pressing OSHA, NIOSH and the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) to tackle crystalline silica hazards in the hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) industry through several measures: a hazard alert that warns the industry of hazards and makes exposure control recommendations; an assessment of mine workers' exposures; and issuance of a new OSHA silica standard which has been delayed at the White House since last year.