September 17, 2026

Daily News

South Carolina is seeking to stay its latest challenge to OSHA’s mandate for states to match annual increases to federal minimum and maximum OSH Act penalties, citing a pending Supreme Court case that it says could loosen the six-year statute of limitations for suing over federal agency action that OSHA has argued is fatal to the current suit.

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Employer attorneys are urging California companies to begin crafting documents and developing training procedures to comply with the state’s newly enacted law requiring general industry employers to implement workplace violence-prevention plans -- measures that must be fully in place by next summer.

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Two environmental groups are renewing their push for EPA to strengthen its upcoming Risk Management Program (RMP) update, citing data on chemical-facility accidents as recent as Oct. 15, as supporters of a strict policy continue to raise public concerns that the agency’s upcoming final rule will fall short of their goals in several key areas.

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The Office of Management & Budget (OMB) has finalized the first major update to its cost-benefit review guide in two decades, including changes that aim to put new emphasis on the distributional effects of regulations on disadvantaged populations.

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The National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (COSH) is pressing the Department of Labor to take new steps to protect workers from a wide range of hazards, in particular through “system-wide actions” like training and enforcement boosts, after the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) found a 7.5 percent annual increase in workplace injuries and illnesses for 2022.

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National Nurses United (NNU) is attacking the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for its recent move advancing a draft infection control guidance for healthcare settings with just days of public input, charging that the agency is sidestepping public input while weakening protections for medical workers and others.

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EPA has sent its proposed TSCA rule governing the solvent n-methylpyrrolidone (NMP) to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), likely teeing up renewed battles over the Trump-era risk evaluation and any workplace exposure limit based on it, after industry groups asked the agency to rewrite the review over alleged scientific errors.

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OSHA has signed a new memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that aims to deepen information-sharing and cooperative enforcement efforts between the two agencies, with a particular focus on whistleblower protections.

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In an early sign of how EPA will defend its TSCA proposal phasing out uses of trichloroethylene (TCE), the agency is arguing in supporting documents that less-stringent alternatives backed by industry groups would be impractical -- including a statement that the rule’s short-term worker protections are not “feasible” over the long term.

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Environmentalists are pushing to toughen EPA’s final risk management program (RMP) rule in a series of Office of Management and Budget (OMB) meetings while warning that the agency is working too closely with industry on the policy, including one source who says it has shown trade associations the regulation, but not citizen groups.

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OSHA has sent a long-promised proposal to update its safety standards for emergency responders for White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) review -- a move that means the plan will likely miss its November target but could see release by the end of the year or in early 2024, more than 16 years after it was first announced.

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The Labor Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) plans to launch a discretionary audit in fiscal year 2024 to determine whether OSHA has remedied what the watchdog office said were deep flaws in its pandemic-era enforcement program in a report issued less than a year ago.

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The Department of Justice is touting new jury convictions and guilty pleas under both the OSH Act and Clean Air Act in its years-long prosecution of a Wisconsin milling company and several of the employer’s current and former officials over a 2017 explosion that killed five workers.

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In a case that threatens long-time practices at OSHA and other agencies, Republican state attorneys general (AG) and industry groups are urging the Supreme Court to uphold the appellate ruling that found that Congress’ creation of administrative law judges (ALJs) for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) violates key constitutional provisions.

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Newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is setting a quick timeline for the House to mark up individual appropriations bills, forcing lawmakers to vote on a bill that seeks to slash funding for OSHA and other agencies in fiscal year 2024 while prompting new warnings from Democrats over a possible government shutdown next month.

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The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) is accepting a slew of recommendations from the Labor Department's Office of Inspector General (OIG) based on an audit faulting many areas of its inspection and enforcement work, agreeing to increase reporting transparency, update mine status criteria and inspection tools and improve system controls.

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EPA’s proposed TSCA rule for trichloroethylene (TCE) avoids taking a definitive stance on the long-simmering debate over contested research linking it to fetal heart defects, proposing a worker exposure limit based on that effect but also a less-stringent alternative that uses other effects, though even that option is much tougher than OSHA’s limits.

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California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) officials are defending their proposal to strengthen worker-safety rules for lead exposure in the construction and general industry sectors from ongoing attacks by employer and industry groups, touting the science behind stringent new health-risk thresholds and arguing that industry has overstated their likely compliance costs.

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Employer attorneys are raising concerns that OSHA’s upcoming revisions to the Hazard Communication Standard, or HazCom, will impose an array of new and unpredictable burdens for the chemical industry on an international scale, most prominently a mandate to gather data on “any hazards” substances may cause.

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The American Chemistry Council (ACC) is asking a federal court to formally bar EPA from using the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s (NASEM) contested peer review of the agency’s draft formaldehyde risk assessment in any of a litany of applications, including as support for strict workplace exposure limits under TSCA.

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