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Over the objections of labor unions and other groups, a federal appellate court has granted Biden administration requests to remand Trump-era evaluations of the flame retardant cluster known as HBCD as well as the solvent 1,4-dioxane, clearing the way for officials to redo the analyses without necessarily addressing petitioners’ legal claims.

The sudden death of AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka leaves the country’s largest labor group at a potential crossroads just as it is in position to help shape OSHA policymaking and other Labor Department actions in the Biden administration, as well as to make a renewed push for congressional passage of several longstanding worker-safety bills.

According to the group, which includes 12.5 million members among 56 affiliated labor unions, Trumka died of a heart attack on Aug. 5, after serving as its president since 2009.

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a think tank that aims to bolster protections for “low- and middle-income workers,” is urging Congress to step up fiscal year 2022 funding for OSHA as part of a broader push to boost resources for “worker protection agencies,” just as the Senate is ramping up debate on its FY22 appropriations bills.

A top official at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) says the sheer number of engineered nanomaterials in use has made targeted toxicity testing impractical despite a reporting mandate forcing agencies to focus on identifying analogues they can use as the basis for risk assessments.

“There are hundreds of thousands of engineered nanomaterials that exist or are going to be formulated in the near future. You can’t test all of them,” Chuck Geraci, NIOSH’s associate director for emerging technologies, told Inside OSHA in a recent interview.

Employers’ attorneys say the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) new move to tighten its COVID-19 guidance following a wave of infections by the “Delta” virus variant has created fresh uncertainty on whether vaccinated workers should be required to wear face coverings, and are pushing OSHA to provide an answer.

OSHA’s Midwest Region V is tightening enforcement of a host of standards for workers who clean mobile storage tanks used in rail and truck shipping, saying 97 safety incidents and 23 deaths suffered by workers in the sector since 2016 are enough to justify a formal regional emphasis program (REP).

An alliance of worker groups, environmentalists and others is petitioning OSHA to craft an emergency temporary standard (ETS) for heat illness even though the agency has begun to craft a permanent rule on the subject, arguing that the years-long regulatory process is too slow to protect workers from heat waves driven by climate change.

The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) has struck down OSHA’s citation against a New Jersey construction company for a 2017 accident that the agency claimed violated lockout/tagout requirements in its construction safety standard, taking a narrow view of the “maintenance” work that triggers those provisions.

Amazon and workers suing the online retailer over COVID-19 infection dangers are sparring in appellate court over whether regulators’ withdrawals of pandemic orders and workplace safety guidance based on the success of vaccinations have rendered moot pending litigation over employers’ alleged failure to comply with those mandates.

The House has passed, largely along party lines, a sweeping fiscal year 2022 spending bill that includes a $100 million budget increase for OSHA, setting the stage for Democrats to seek common ground with Senate Republicans on a bill that can clear the filibuster before current funding levels expire at the end of September.

Republican senators at a July 29 hearing suggested President Joe Biden’s three nominees to the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) appear to lack the qualifications to investigate chemical industrial accidents, echoing industry concerns that they have no specific experience in the field and potentially foreshadowing a confirmation battle.

OSHA is asking stakeholders to weigh in on a host of issues it says will inform the first-ever update to its 1971 safety standard for mechanical power presses, including whether to expand the rule to cover currently-excluded hydraulic and pneumatic presses, and whether to use an industry consensus standard as a basis for the revision.

The waste management industry is cautioning EPA on its plans to make environmental justice (EJ) a key focus in expected revisions to a Trump-era chemical facility safety rule, warning that if the agency expands the rule to incorporate EJ considerations, then it must find a balance to ease burdens on businesses.

Labor unions intend to ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to order OSHA to expand its healthcare-specific COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) to either all employers or specifically to the meatpacking and food-processing sectors, according to a new court filing.

Incoming OSHA chief Doug Parker could seek to tighten the agency’s COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) following his expected confirmation, an employer attorney said during a July 22 webinar, based on his record of strict regulation as California’s top safety official and the spike in infections due to the virus’s “Delta” variant.

OSHA has broadened the liquefied natural gas (LNG) sector’s waiver from the agency’s process safety management (PSM) standard, holding that the rule does not apply to facilities subject to Transportation Department (DOT) pipeline safety rules while also revoking a narrower Clinton-era policy that exempted only “fire and explosion” dangers.

White House officials have completed their review of OSHA’s long-delayed request for information designed to shape its first-ever update to the safety standard for mechanical power presses -- a rule that dates to 1971, and which the agency sought unsuccessfully to rework during the George W. Bush administration.

An environmental group is urging EPA to tighten worker protections in a slate of proposed rules governing “significant” new uses of 32 chemicals, claiming they fall short of Trump-era enforcement orders and must be reworked to follow the hierarchy of controls (HOC) rather than focusing on protective gear.

OSHA is extending the deadline for public comments on its COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) from July 21 to Aug. 20, giving stakeholders more time to craft comments that could inform both potential changes to the short-term standard and any permanent rulemaking the agency chooses to craft based on it.

Environmental, labor and other groups are pushing to overhaul the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) by rebuilding its investigative capacity to better protect workers and by making reform of OSHA’s process safety rule and EPA chemical facility regulations its “top advocacy priority,” among other measures.