Daily News

EPA’s science advisors are raising concerns over the narrow scope of the agency’s draft evaluation of asbestos, prompting changes to the charge questions they will consider when they assess the draft during a peer review meeting later this month so they can formally discuss their concerns.

The Obama-era head of OSHA is calling for the agency to quickly issue an emergency infectious disease standard and cite employers who “egregiously” ignore Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance on airborne diseases in order to protect health and other works from the coronavirus.

The Supreme Court’s June 2019 decision curtailing judicial deference to agencies’ regulatory interpretations could make OSHA efforts to reverse prior policies through new guidance vulnerable to court challenges because judges interpret it as bolstering limits on imposing an “unfair surprise” to stakeholders, attorneys say.

A key House Democrat and an asbestos awareness group are stepping up efforts to advance stalled bipartisan legislation seeking to ban asbestos, arguing EPA’s recently released draft evaluation of the minerals under the revised toxics law is too narrowly focused and ignores multiple aspects of asbestos risk as well an appellate court ruling.

A federal district judge says in a new order that the Department of Agriculture (USDA) appears to have “engaged in arbitrary decision-making” by not addressing worker safety concerns in its rule revising swine slaughterhouse line speeds, allowing worker advocates to proceed with their challenge to the policy.

EPA is urging a federal appeals court to reject environmentalists’ request to stay litigation challenging its rollback of Obama-era chemical disaster safety mandates as the agency weighs their reconsideration petitions, arguing a stay runs counter to the Clean Air Act (CAA) even if petitions for rule reconsideration are pending.

As they seek to stall legal challenges, critics of EPA’s rule rolling back Obama-era chemical disaster safety mandates are urging the agency to reconsider the measure, arguing in administrative petitions that officials “cherry pick[ed]” new data, ignored significant continuing chemical accidents and relied on new rationales.

In separate petitions filed last month, they say the agency should stay the rule while it reconsiders the regulation, arguing they have met the legal standard required for EPA to reconsider such a rule.

EPA is moving ahead with a planned scientific review of its just-released draft evaluation of asbestos, which found the substance poses unreasonable risk to workers, consumers and others, despite calls from science advisors and other critics who had urged the agency to delay the review until after the coronavirus pandemic.

Top House Democrats say they will include a mandate that OSHA issue an emergency temporary infectious disease standard to address risks from the coronavirus to healthcare employees and expand protections in other industries in their next bill to address the pandemic after they were forced to drop the mandate from prior measures.

Although Congress is currently in recess, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said on a March 30 conference call with reporters that lawmakers will work remotely over the coming weeks on developing the legislation.

Construction and contracting firms are urging OSHA to soften its guidance on how the sector should record workplace absences due to COVID-19 during the current pandemic, warning that the current requirement to determine if an infection is “work-related” will put employers “in an almost impossible position.”

EPA’s draft evaluation of trichloroethylene (TCE) is driving new calls from its science advisors and a top former OSHA official to strengthen its analyses of occupational exposures to chemicals in the first 10 evaluations, suggesting the agency more fully address protections beyond personal protective equipment (PPE).

But during a March 24-27 meeting of EPA’s Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals (SACC), members of the panel struggled to come up with an acceptable way to improve the agency’s method, leaving it unclear how or whether the agency will change its current approach.

The Senate’s massive $2 trillion emergency bill to address fallout from the coronavirus pandemic provides billions of dollars to increase supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers, but does not mandate an OSHA emergency standard for the workers that House Democrats are seeking.

The move is prompting significant criticism from labor advocates and their congressional supporters.

State attorneys general (AGs) and employment lawyers are opposing the White House Office of Management & Budget’s (OMB) call for input on potentially tightening due process protections in civil enforcement actions at OSHA and elsewhere, arguing that there is no rational or legal basis for any such reforms.

OSHA has reworked weeks-old guidance for waste companies where workers could handle material contaminated by COVID-19 to say that the virus “does not require special precautions” other than those usually needed for waste handling, reinforcing claims by waste firms that their workers are already protected.

Two top House Democrats are urging Vice President Mike Pence to protect health care workers from coronavirus risks by immediately appointing a senior Trump administration official to coordinate the supply and distribution of personal protective equipment (PPE) to the workers who are at high risk of exposure.

Senators are looking to a third coronavirus relief bill to attach a three-month extension of the Department of Homeland Security’s facility safety program that is set to expire April 18, aiming to buy more negotiating time on separate legislation that would reauthorize the program but potentially also make substantive changes to it.

EPA has issued its updated Chemical Data Reporting (CDR) rule for data collection that is set to begin this June, with a number of changes from the prior version intended to ease reporting for companies and better align data with changes in EPA’s toxics program following Congress’ 2016 reform of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

The March 17 rule also includes two new exemptions for byproducts, measures the agency was forced to craft after a negotiated rulemaking on the issue collapsed in 2017.

OSHA has issued temporary guidance for discretionary enforcement of its respiratory protection standard that eases some requirements in order to boost access to adequate filtering facepiece respirators for healthcare workers during the coronavirus pandemic, but the guide falls short of Democrats’ calls for an emergency healthcare standard.

The House early on March 14 approved by unanimous consent a bill to reauthorize the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) facility security program for 18 months, moving the measure to the Senate where some members favor replacing the CFATS program with a voluntary program similar to a plan suggested by the Trump administration.

The lower chamber’s bill, H.R. 6160, would reauthorize DHS’ Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program for another 18 months past its looming April 18 expiration.

The Trump administration has blocked language in Democrats’ proposed coronavirus response bill that would force OSHA to set a temporary “emergency” standard to supply healthcare workers with protective gear, and the hospital industry is warning that the gear is not available in the quantities an OSHA rule would require.