A company that is challenging the reach of the Environmental Protection Agency's Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) reporting rules is seeking to push back against agency claims that chemical producers have a broad duty to disclose results of health and safety studies and is alleging the claims are at odds with EPA guidance on the issue, with worker risks from exposure to hexavalent chromium at the center of the dispute.
President Obama's regulatory czar said Monday he feels no “particular pressure” to put an eventual final OSHA silica rule on a fast track for completion before the swiftly approaching end of the administration, and does not take that view toward any other rule despite a generally recognized 90-day window for the White House budget office to review agency standards -- a period often extended for lengthy stretches to the ire of pro-regulation groups.
The national paving industry, with key union backing, is urging OSHA officials to reexamine a mandate for respirator use under some exposure conditions that the agency included in a proposed new standard for silica control measures in construction activities, saying a requirement triggered by more than four hours of possible exposure actually creates new and greater hazards for road workers.
Construction industry trade groups are mounting an informal challenge to OSHA's crystalline silica rulemaking that hinges on an argument that agency officials did not adequately consult with their construction advisory panel on details of the planned regulations as required by OSHA procedures before issuing the proposal last year.
A national group of occupational hygiene experts wants OSHA to craft a formal regulatory definition of “recognized and generally accepted good engineering practices” (RAGAGEP) as it explores a range of options for potential revisions to its process safety management (PSM) standard designed to protect workers from chemical disasters, urging OSHA to help clarify an issue that has become the subject of enforcement disputes.
Organized labor has launched an assault backed by economic expertise against the business community's assertion OSHA's planned rule on respirable silica would cost countless U.S. jobs, with unions arguing the regulatory scheme would actually yield more economic benefits and result in less costs than even OSHA estimates.
Administration officials working to implement President Obama's executive order on improving safety and security at industrial plants are considering strengthening local emergency planning committees (LEPCs) overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency but are not addressing calls to require controversial new safety requirements at facilities.
Labor Department lawyers are fighting back against industry complaints that OSHA set aside too short a time at its public hearings on silica to respond to stakeholder questions about the rule, citing procedures that govern the hearings and declaring that while OSHA will accept written queries as suggested by an administrative law judge (ALJ), the agency has not agreed to respond to any of them.
Congressional investigators are urging OSHA to work more closely with the Transportation Department (DOT) to enforce anti-retaliation laws designed to protect auto industry workers. OSHA's top official responded that the agency believes it has adhered to so-called “key practices” in whistleblower agreements with the transportation agency, but GAO says in a report released Wednesday (March 19) that it still thinks such inter-agency deals can be strengthened.
Worker health activists want to know why OSHA proposes that employers offer medical surveillance to workers when silica exposure levels reach the permissible exposure limit of 50 micrograms per cubic meter, TWA, rather than triggering such surveillance when exposures reach the action level, which is half the PEL's level.
Employer-side groups are in an uproar that OSHA allotted only two and a half hours for stakeholders to question agency officials at the opening of a roughly three-week series of hearings on agency's hotly contested crystalline silica rulemaking before moving on to testimony from various stakeholders, saying they had several more hours' worth of inquiries for regulators and pleading for a whole day to be set aside to interrogate OSHA.
OSHA has released a new advisory document on temporary worker injury and illness recordkeeping that some OSHA experts say could implicitly suggest an obligation for staffing providers to communicate more thoroughly with host employers, though one staffing industry group generally lauded the guidance and OSHA makes clear that the recordkeeping requirements apply to the host employer in most situations.
Business advocates intend to make the privacy of employees and OSHA's logistical ability to scrub employer injury and illness reports of any worker-identifying information part of the backbone of their vigorous effort to thwart OSHA's planned rulemaking to mandate electronic submission of records which would then be disseminated on the Internet.
The Senate confirmed an industry-side attorney on Wednesday (March 12) to serve on the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) -- filling out the body with an Obama nominee who would not likely generate controversy with Republicans, and making it easier, sources say, for the review board to move ahead to clear its increasingly clogged docket.
An OSHA letter of interpretation might be enough to assuage worker advocates' concerns over industry use of a “weight of evidence” standard in the classification and labeling of potentially cancer-causing agents under OSHA's 2012 hazard communication rule, and sidestep a contentious rulemaking, some experts following the issue tell Inside OSHA Online.
OSHA's proposal to mandate electronic submission and online posting of injury and illness data has ignited a dispute among worker and industry advocates over the precedence of federal agencies collecting data in that manner and over OSHA's statutory authority to issue the planned regulations, sources told Inside OSHA Online as comments flowed into the regulatory docket to meet a Monday (March 10) deadline for feedback on the contentious rule proposed last fall.
A key steelworkers union is putting rigorous pressure on OSHA to send to the White House for review a rule that would tighten controls on worker exposures to the toxic metal beryllium, long after the union teamed with the only U.S. producer of pure beryllium to propose the agency cut the permissible exposure limit (PEL) for the metal by 90 percent.
Environmental Protection Agency waste chief Mathy Stanislaus declined at a March 6 Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW) hearing to commit the agency to mandating the use of inherently safer technologies (IST) to prevent or reduce the consequences of accidents or attacks at industrial facilities, despite strong urging from several Democratic senators.
Senate environment committee Chair Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has agreed to a GOP request to postpone a planned markup on legislation creating a new Environmental Protection Agency program governing chemical releases from above-ground storage tanks, a delay that senators hope will allow them time to resolve concerns from states and others as they respond to the recent West Virginia chemical spill.
The petrochemical corporation that the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) earlier accused of obstructing its probe into a sulfuric acid leak at a California refinery that reportedly injured two workers is now starting to cooperate with the investigative agency, a CSB source tells Inside OSHA Online.