A federal investigative agency is ramping up calls for the Biden administration to strengthen a proposed safety rule aimed at preventing chemical-facility incidents, though in recently filed comments the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) backs some provisions that safety advocates oppose or takes a different approach to strengthening other provisions.
September 17, 2026
Environmentalists are touting new allegations that chlor-alkali industry workers face severe asbestos exposures despite safety guidelines, saying the claims bolster not only the agency’s proposed TSCA ban on the substance but also its overall decision to stop assuming workers will use protective gear in chemical risk evaluations.
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OSHA is again attacking South Carolina’s lawsuit targeting the requirement for OSH Act state plans to match the federal agency’s maximum penalty amounts, arguing ahead of a Nov. 16 hearing that the state’s arguments against that mandate are untethered from the “four corners” of its case and thus should be summarily rejected.
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California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) officials are providing more explanation for their insistence that “exclusion pay” be omitted from the agency’s long-term COVID-19 worker-safety standard -- in part by telling Inside OSHA that adding it would unacceptably delay adoption of the rule -- amid a fiery backlash from unions and members of the agency’s standards board.
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EPA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG)’s annual report on management challenges facing the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) says vacancies at top staff positions as well as in three of the panel’s five seats remain threats to its work, especially after rule changes that bar the board from functioning with a single member.
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EPA has denied industry requests to extend comments on its proposed overhaul of the risk management plan (RMP) rule mandating safeguards against spills and releases of hazardous substance at many facilities, rejecting claims by several trade associations that 60 days is not enough time to fully analyze the “complex” proposal.
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California OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) standards board is demanding that agency staff add “exclusion pay” requirements into a pending final long-term COVID-19 worker-protection standard, further escalating the controversy over the decision by top officials in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) administration to cut those mandates over unions’ objection.
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The non-profit outlet ProPublica is reporting chlor-alkali firms have long exposed workers to high chrysotile asbestos levels, including violations of OSHA’s permissible exposure limit (PEL), potentially undercutting the industry’s argument that it should be exempt from a proposed EPA rule banning use of the notorious carcinogen.
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California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) has released its potential final COVID-19 worker-protection rules, including revisions to the prior draft’s controversial definition of “close contact” but maintaining the removal of mandatory “exclusion pay” for employees -- a move already drawing fire from labor unions that urged officials to reinstate the provision.
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A federal appeals court has overturned a district judge’s ruling that invoked OSHA’s “primary jurisdiction” over workplace protections from COVID-19 to preempt Amazon warehouse workers’ suit accusing the retailer of violating New York pandemic safeguards, setting a narrow precedent for using that doctrine to limit suits over state policies.
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California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) officials are advancing stringent new lead-exposure safety rules for the construction and general industry sectors, including a dramatically stricter exposure “action level” that triggers a suite of required actions by employers to protect workers, just as federal OSHA is eyeing the state rule as a possible model, sources say.
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Labor groups and employers used a recent hearing on OSHA’s plans for a long-promised update to the process safety management (PSM) standard to set out competing demands for the rulemaking, while officials from the agency itself vowed to ensure the new policy will still be “compatible” with EPA’s pending revisions to its own facility safety rule.
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EPA is asking the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for advice on whether and how to incorporate controversial analyses linking formaldehyde exposure to leukemia into its risk assessment of the ubiquitous chemical -- a decision one agency scientist said could increase the draft cancer estimate by a factor of four, prompting far stricter worker protections.
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The Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) is renewing its calls for EPA to strengthen its oversight of refiners’ use of hydrofluoric acid (HF), in a report on a 2019 refinery incident that urges officials to prioritize HF for risk evaluation under TSCA and to require a safer-alternatives review under the risk management plan (RMP) program.
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OSHA is ordering ExxonMobil to reinstate two former employees who the agency says were illegally fired in retaliation for potentially leaking information to the press, and to pay them over $800,000 in back wages, compensatory damages and interest, in its second high-profile whistleblower enforcement action of recent months.
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A Texas construction firm is asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to narrow OSHA’s reading of its safety standard for assembling or disassembling cranes and other large equipment, arguing in a new brief that the agency was wrong to cite it under that rule for an accident involving preparatory steps before the disassembly process.
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South Carolina is defending its lawsuit seeking to block OSHA’s mandate that state plans match federal maximum penalties for OSH Act violations, saying that the agency has shown scant justification for the requirement in either statutory text or its own rules and offered “no response” to arguments that the law explicitly gives states “flexibility” on penalties.
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A federal appeals court has overturned a 2020 Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) decision that took a narrow reading of OSHA’s safety standard for goods “stored in tiers,” holding that Walmart violated the rule in a 2017 accident even though the items in question were held in shelves rather than stacked directly atop one another.
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A coalition of chemical firms is warning EPA that its novel “whole chemical” approach to TSCA risk determinations could “functionally disable” the law’s restrictions on using workplace risks from chemical exposures to justify rules limiting manufacture, import or use of finished articles, just as officials are preparing to step up their use of that power.
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has signed legislation to strengthen California OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) worker-safety standards for heat and wildfire smoke, despite strong opposition by a coalition of employer and industry groups that argued the bill improperly sidesteps the normal rulemaking process.
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