OSHA is formally asking representatives of small businesses and government entities to weigh in on its development of a long-awaited nationwide standard for heat danger, through a Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act (SBREFA) process it plans to hold in the coming months -- a major step toward release of a formal proposal.
September 17, 2026
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is urging OSHA to craft a safety standard for meat and poultry workers that would cover infectious disease in a new report that says the agency’s “continuing challenges” in the sector have been deepened by the COVID-19 pandemic, and that it “missed opportunities” to collaborate with other authorities to address them.
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Stakeholders on both sides are raising doubts on worker safeguards in EPA’s newly proposed TSCA rule for perchloroethylene (PCE), with one environmentalist querying its focus on protective gear over engineering controls while trade groups say the agency has not shown a need for an exposure limit much stricter than OSHA’s existing level.
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The top executive of the California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) standards board told a June 15 meeting that the agency’s lack of resources is delaying its rules and in turn leading interest groups and state lawmakers to introduce bills that bypass the administrative process and dictate standards directly, such as recent measures on workplace violence, heat and more.
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OSHA is seeking to release by the end of this month long-awaited final rules on both electronic recordkeeping mandates and COVID-19 infection controls in healthcare facilities, alongside several proposed policies, while delaying other rulemakings from their previous timelines -- some by over a year, according to its latest Unified Agenda of rulemaking actions.
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Trade association officials, attorneys and individual business owners are warning EPA of “massive” complications from its proposal to phase out methylene chloride or mandate strict worker protections for its use, saying that many firms or entire sectors see no ready substitute for the solvent, and others have no way to separate uses subject to the rule from exempt ones.
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A bipartisan group of House lawmakers is questioning the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on implementation of the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program, including a long-discussed overhaul of its governing rules, as they weigh reauthorizing CFATS before it expires on July 27.
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South Carolina is defending its latest challenge to OSHA’s mandate for states to match annual increases to federal minimum and maximum OSH Act penalties, arguing courts should not force it to “bet the farm” by provoking an enforcement action before suing over the policy, and that time spent on a prior case should not count against the statute of limitations.
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The Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) has issued a new rule governing its internal operations that curtails the power an individual board member can exercise as the only Senate-confirmed member of the panel, in an apparent effort to avoid a repeat of the period in 2020-21 when a single appointee operated as a “quorum of one.”
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EPA is proposing new workplace exposure limits for the solvent perchloroethylene (PCE) in several sectors that would be over 100 times stricter than OSHA’s current standard, but would allow employers in some sectors to continue using it indefinitely, including those who use the chemical to manufacture alternatives to climate-warming refrigerants.
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OSHA is asking employers, workers and their advocates to weigh in on how it can help cement workplace safety and health as a “core value” at businesses nationwide, in what agency standards and guidance chief Andrew Levinson says will be a major focus over the coming years.
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A federal appeals court has rejected an Ohio construction company’s claims that OSHA unfairly cited it for safety and training violations after a 2018 incident where a crane arm fell and struck a worker, holding that the agency’s allegations were supported by “substantial evidence” and that the employer had “fair notice” of the claims against it.
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EPA is poised to propose its TSCA rule governing the solvent perchloroethylene (PCE or perc) after a draft version cleared White House review on June 1, an action that comes less than two months after the agency released its methylene chloride plan and could show how broadly it intends to apply that rule’s strict approach to worker protections.
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The California state Senate has passed a controversial bill to require employers to include workplace violence-prevention measures in their existing employee-safety plans -- an effort driven by dissatisfaction with the pace of California OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) rulemaking to establish a first-time workplace violence prevention standard for sectors outside healthcare.
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Andy Levinson, head of OSHA’s directorate of standards and guidance, told a May 31 National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health (NACOSH) meeting that the agency is “on the cusp” of initiating a Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act (SBREFA) consultation for its nationwide heat standard, just hours before the panel approved its own recommendations on the rulemaking.
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California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) officials are facing pressure from labor unions, worker-safety advocates and some of the agency’s standards board members to tighten proposed first-time employee-safety rules for heat illness prevention at indoor worksites, primarily by lowering the temperature thresholds that trigger several worker-protection requirements.
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Officials with the American Chemistry Council (ACC) say EPA failed to fully consider either less-burdensome alternatives to its proposed rule aimed at protecting workers from the toxic solvent methylene chloride or the true economic costs of a widespread phaseout, including the range of employers that could be forced to under a total ban.
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A federal district court has approved a consent decree in a quiet, years-long trademark dispute between OSHA and an Illinois training and consulting company called “Global Occupational Health and Safety Academy,” or Global OSHA -- barring the firm from using what the agency alleged is a deceptively similar name to its own.
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OSHA is asking a federal district court to dismiss South Carolina’s latest challenge to the agency’s yet-unenforced requirement for states to raise their maximum penalties for workplace health and safety violations to match federal levels, saying the case was filed too late and fails to show any harm from the policy, among other flaws.
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OSHA is rejecting construction-sector criticism of its National Emphasis Program (NEP) on heat-related illness that said the initiative risks creating unclear mandates worker protection, with the agency arguing that its initiative merely seeks to enforce the OSH Act’s general duty clause (GDC) and vowing to continue providing compliance assistance to employers.
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