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OSHA is floating a wide range of ways to tighten its decades-old lead exposure standards, including stricter medical removal requirements or even strengthening the permissible exposure limit (PEL) that forms the basis for many of the rule’s provisions, and is also asking stakeholders to weigh in on using state-level proposals in California and Washington as models.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), ranking member on the Senate’s environment committee, used a June 22 hearing to warn EPA’s chemicals chief that her office is “drifting” into territory better regulated by OSHA, arguing that it should stay away from addressing personal protective equipment (PPE) and other worker protection measures.

Correction Appended

OSHA intends to issue its long-term healthcare industry standard for preventing COVID-19 infections in September, according to the agency’s newly updated unified agenda of future regulatory actions, while other key rulemakings are being delayed by months or more from their previously announced targets.

Environmentalists are pushing EPA to tighten its new draft risk assessment of formaldehyde by setting a cancer estimate based at least in part on the ubiquitous chemical’s links to leukemia, rejecting agency arguments that while such a link exists, the studies establishing it are too uncertain to use in an Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) review.

Correction Appended

California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) has released a draft long-term COVID-19 rule that is already drawing employer concerns for its stricter definition of “close contact,” but the same stakeholders are welcoming plans to end the controversial “exclusion pay” requirement that mandates compensation for workers removed from their duties under the standard.

Industry groups are calling for EPA to rework its draft formaldehyde risk assessment to address what they say is a long list of scientific faults, ranging from the agency’s handling of a controversial workplace-exposure study to a failure to “harmonize” its approach to evaluating the chemical’s cancer risks with 2005 guidelines.

OSHA’s long-delayed call for public input on possible updates to the decades-old lead exposure standard has cleared White House review, teeing up the first step of a rulemaking process the agency says will at least aim to tighten the blood lead levels (BLLs) that trigger medical removal of workers but could be much broader.

EPA plans to “learn from” OSHA’s enforcement of workplace chemical-exposure limits as it prepares for the demands of enforcing new TSCA risk management rules, a spokesperson says, while an industry attorney sees a formal memorandum of understanding (MOU) or other partnership between the two agencies as an option to aid those efforts.

Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) Chair Katherine Lemos has resigned with three years left in her term, reportedly citing “eroded confidence” in the body’s mission and priorities, months after the Senate confirmed two new CSB members and just days after the announcement of President Joe Biden’s latest nominee.

A spokesperson for the board confirmed to Inside OSHA that Lemos had submitted her resignation to the White House on June 10, and will formally step down on July 22, rather than serving through the expiration of her five-year term in 2025.

EPA is refusing an array of requests from industry and members of Congress to extend the June 13 comment deadline on its latest draft Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) assessment of formaldehyde, arguing that criticism of its development process is unfounded and that there will be more chances for the public to weigh in during peer review.

A top Republican on the Senate environment committee is strongly opposing Democrats’ latest bill to ban asbestos uses, arguing during a June 9 hearing that OSHA and EPA should address the material’s risks through rulemaking instead of legislation, in a sign the measure faces an uphill battle to win bipartisan support needed to break any filibuster.

California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) has released a long-delayed new draft of its proposed workplace violence prevention standard that would govern “all industries” as a supplement to its existing, healthcare-specific rule, but the revisions are drawing early push-back from employer attorneys over its definitions and broad applicability.

EPA has quietly released workplace exposure limits for five chemicals that will be subject to upcoming TSCA rules, appearing to lay the groundwork not just for those proposals but also a potential reversal on trichloroethylene (TCE), where the agency has prepared two limits -- one based on the Trump-era risk determination and a stricter second option using research the prior administration rejected.

A federal appeals court has rejected meat producers’ bid to revive litigation over Trump-era line-speed waivers for pork plants, holding that the employers should have tried to intervene in the case while it was still active instead of waiting until the Biden administration decided not to appeal a decision scrapping the program over worker-safety concerns.

The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission has taken the rare step of announcing that its current members are deadlocked on a pending petition, unveiling a pair of opinions where the two members are at odds on whether claiming a violation occurred “on or about” a particular day gives OSHA leeway to file a citation more than six months later.

National Nurses United (NNU) is pointing to the June 1 shootings of three employees and a patient’s spouse at a Tulsa clinic as further proof of the need for an OSHA workplace violence standard, and is urging the Senate to advance a bill that would mandate a final rule in just a year, cutting short what supporters say is the agency’s unacceptably long rulemaking process.

Unions, environmentalists and a slew of academics and former OSHA officials are urging EPA to stand behind its reversals of Trump-era TSCA policies governing evaluation of workplace chemical exposures, arguing that an industry call to unwind the new stances is based on “myths” about existing worker-safety rules and voluntary protections.

Agriculture groups are raising new claims that EPA’s draft hazard assessment of formaldehyde downplayed or even ignored the ubiquitous chemical’s use in “animal industries,” and failed to gather input from the Agriculture Department (USDA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the two agencies most familiar with those sectors.

OSHA says it has secured a settlement agreement with several subsidiaries of the food-processing giant JBS Foods that will mandate infection-control plans at seven plants across six states, after COVID-19 outbreaks at two of the facilities in 2020 led to seven worker deaths and hundreds of confirmed infections.

A new study from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) warns that there are major data gaps on risks posed by indoor exposures to a variety of chemicals and mixtures in part because even well-studied contaminants can behave differently in indoor environments, potentially boosting recent calls for OSHA to develop indoor air safety standards.