OSHA has pushed until Feb. 11 the deadline for submitting comments on its proposed crystalline silica rule -- in what amounts to a 15-day extension -- due to an apparent posting error on the web-based regulations portal that Republicans say could have led some affected stakeholders to believe the window had already closed on putting comments in the record.
September 17, 2026
Chemical industry representatives strongly back a relatively obscure change made recently to OSHA's right-to-know regulations that switches to a “weight of evidence” approach for determining whether an agent must be labeled as a known or possible carcinogen, responding to newly voiced worries among worker advocates that the policy shift gives too much latitude to industry's own assessments of chemical risk factors.
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OSHA reportedly is working on an internal directive to deal with an apparent gap in the agency's new hazard communication rule that could let employers dispute whether a chemical is proven to cause cancer, even if the chemical appears as either a known or possible carcinogen by the National Toxicology Program (NTP) or the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a source familiar with the issue tells Inside OSHA Online.
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Several Republican senators are pushing legislation that would consolidate the Labor and Commerce departments, a move that would lump OSHA into one large umbrella agency responsible for the government's efforts in both promoting business and labor protections.
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OSHA's new push to urge hospitals across the country to develop safety and health “management systems” -- with safe patient handling as the centerpiece of the initiative -- mirrors a broader OSHA emphasis on injury and illness prevention programs that is also borne out on the rulemaking front, with the agency seeking to impose all-encompassing hazard identification programs on employers.
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Progressive groups are urging President Obama to implement "fundamental reform" to boost transparency and end delays in White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) reviews of OSHA and other agencies' rules, changes they say would help expedite regulations that improve public safety and health.
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OSHA continues to work on a planned rule to tackle infectious disease hazards in health care settings, OSHA chief David Michaels told Inside OSHA Online, but he declined to provide details on how far the agency is in the process.
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OSHA is about to unveil comprehensive new guidance materials for hospitals to tackle a range of worker hazards, with a strong focus on safe patient handling, that in part offers a self-assessment tool for health care employers to learn more about where they stand on addressing the issue, sources familiar with the plan tell Inside OSHA Online.
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A GOP senator who contends that OSHA is violating congressional intent through an enforcement policy aimed at preventing grain bin accidents on small farming operations has attached a rider to the newly crafted omnibus spending bill for fiscal 2014 that effectively tells the Labor Department to scrap the controversial policy.
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OSHA would receive a $17 million funding increase over the course of fiscal year 2014, including more funds targeted to whistleblower enforcement, under an omnibus spending bill agreed to by House and Senate negotiators.
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The retirement later this year of Rep. George Miller, a veteran California Democrat who took office just four years after OSHA was created and who has fought vigorously for worker rights reforms over four decades in Congress, will leave nothing short of an institutional vacuum on issues keyed to worker safety and health, congressional observers say.
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Some employers could try to suppress the number of injuries and illness reports that formally show up on their OSHA logs, resulting in incomplete and less useful overall data, under a proposed new system requiring large employers to submit the records electronically every quarter, say experts on both sides of a rapidly escalating debate over OSHA's planned rule.
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A federal working group of OSHA and other agencies is floating a broad set of policy options to improve chemical facility safety, including controversial measures such as first-time rules requiring the use of "safer" technologies, prompting concern from industry groups over the sweeping range of new mandates that the group is considering.
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OSHA has prevailed in a tort reform group's legal challenge of the preemption position OSHA took when issuing a final rule nearly two years ago to align the country's hazard communication standards with the Globally Harmonized System (GHS) of classifying and labeling chemicals, with a federal judge tossing out an appeal that said OSHA's rule should not have included language shielding state-level failure to warn suits from the rule.
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White House regulatory officials have given the go-ahead for OSHA to publish a final rule revising employer requirements for safety in electrical transmission and distribution activities, a rule that has been in the making for more than a decade and which has been through several regulatory quagmires over the years.
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A bipartisan group of more than 40 senators say OSHA exercised too much latitude when translating into enforcement policy a congressional rider dating to the 1970s that exempts small family farms from OSHA jurisdiction, raising larger questions about how much leeway the agency has in interpreting its governing statutes and also sparking a public relations fiasco for OSHA.
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OSHA has extended by 30 days the public comment period on a contentious planned rule unveiled last fall that would require quarterly electronic reporting of OSHA logs by large companies, to March 8, 2014 -- bowing to calls from industry for more time to review and prepare feedback on the proposed regulations, which eventually would result in injury and illness data logged by employers being put on the web.
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Studies have shown the evidence of lung cancer risks from prolonged exposures to crystalline silica dust to be “strong and consistent” and OSHA is taking “appropriate” steps in trying to reduce the health hazard through a regulatory effort, two cancer researchers say in a new American Cancer Society journal article.
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OSHA chief David Michaels made a point of addressing two major issues, crystalline silica exposures and temporary worker hazards, as central priorities as the agency marks its 43rd birthday.
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A key Senate Democrat on labor issues is calling on the Labor Department to create a searchable database system containing records of OSHA and other labor law violations that would help agencies weed out employers with dismal compliance records from being considered for federal contracts.
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