Daily News

The United Steelworkers (USW) is joining an environmental coalition in challenging EPA’s rollback of the Obama-era chemical facility safety rule, contending the agency “capitulated to industry demands” by eliminating key provisions in the rule that would prevent foreseeable catastrophic accidents.

Correction Appended

As it awaits a ruling on the legality of OSHA’s rule rolling back Obama-era recordkeeping and reporting mandates, consumer group Public Citizen is defending its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking data OSHA collected in 2017 under the retained portion of the rule.

Senators by unanimous consent on Jan. 9 approved the nominations of Cynthia Atwood and Amanda Laihow as members of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC), clearing the path for the panel to resume its long-stalled work on reviewing a host of contested OSHA workplace citations and penalties.

By voice vote, senators confirmed Attwood, a Democrat who previously served on the commission, to rejoin the panel for a term that ends on April 27, 2025, and Laihow, a Republican who has served as OSHRC chief counsel, for a term that ends on April 27, 2023.

The Senate has confirmed along party lines Paul Ray, the Trump administration’s nominee to lead the White House Office of Information & Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) and currently its acting head, permanently installing him as the top rule reviewer over the objections of worker safety advocacy groups, environmentalists, and others.

Citing recent OSHA advice, a management-side attorney is urging employers to assess whether their workers face potential hazards from the widespread use of headphones to listen to music even though there is no OSHA standard prohibiting it.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has rejected the Center for Biological Diversity’s (CBD) long-running challenge aiming to limit or overturn the Congressional Review Act (CWA), finding Congress has broad discretion to scrap OSHA and other agencies’ rules with a streamlined voting process that limits judicial review.

EPA has released its updated “working approach” for determining whether new chemical applications meet the Toxic Substances Control Act’s (TSCA) “unreasonable risk” standard, retaining controversial provisions over its use of interim enforcement orders and worker protections even as it sought to provide explanations absent from an earlier version.

The National Employment Law Project (NELP), which advocates for stronger worker safety measures, says that OSHA’s new weighting system for measuring enforcement inaccurately inflates inspection data by allowing the agency to count “quick” inspections and not resource-intensive investigations that might better protect workers.

A federal judge has again denied EPA’s effort to end a potentially precedent-setting suit challenging the agency’s denial of a Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) citizen petition seeking to ban drinking water fluoridation, though the judge also rejected plaintiffs’ competing summary judgment motion that sought a quick ruling in their favor.

Congress’ year-end budget deal gives OSHA just under $582 million in funding through the remainder of fiscal year 2020, a $24 million increase above both the FY19 enacted level and President Donald Trump’s budget request and the highest level ever for the agency, with the new funds largely allocated to enforcement and state plans.

Cal/OSHA officials are determining whether to bolster workplace safety enforcement and education efforts to address rising workplace-related fatalities, especially for “high-hazard work” and Latino employees, after recently reporting that 422 Californians died on the job in 2018, an increase over prior years.

OSHA is updating its guidance on implementing a National Emphasis Program (NEP) priority focus on identifying and reducing amputation hazards in manufacturing industries, revising several instructions on inspection requirements, data reporting, and various other changes in a bid to better guard against such accidents occurring.

In a Dec. 10 OSHA Instruction, the agency’s Directorate of Enforcement Programs says that regional offices must launch 90-day outreach efforts on the changes.

A federal district judge has rejected a long-pending suit over President Donald Trump’s 2017 executive order (EO) commanding agencies to balance out each new regulation they issue by identifying two existing rules for repeal, holding that the plaintiffs never identified a specific rule that was delayed or dropped because of the EO.

Complying with statutory mandates, EPA has formally listed the next 20 existing chemicals it will review for possible regulation under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), even as the agency continues to struggle to meet the law’s deadlines for reviewing the first 10 substances.

A coalition of environmentalists has filed suit against EPA’s rollback of an Obama-era regulation tightening facility safety mandates on the same day the measure was promulgated, arguing the Trump administration has removed nearly all disaster-prevention measures and weakened many of the other protections that were in the 2017 rule.

A new ad hoc coalition of companies is preparing to challenge the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board’s (CSB) recent plan requiring industrial facilities to quickly report certain accidental chemicals releases, charging, among other things, that the proposal is burdensome, duplicative and overly broad.

EPA is facing likely challenges over its rule rolling back Obama-era chemical facility safety requirements, with early signs pointing to the parties battling over the adequacy of the agency’s legal justifications, including its claim that the original rule failed to sufficiently weigh an arson finding at a key industrial incident and its cost-benefit analysis.

In addition, sources say the legal battle will also likely weigh the relevance of earlier litigation that vacated a Trump administration measure that sought to delay compliance deadlines with the Obama-era requirements.

Acting OSHA chief Loren Sweatt is touting the agency’s efforts to ramp up inspections while also pursuing “innovative” outreach efforts to employers to inform them about compliance with agency rules, saying that overall enforcement at the agency is “headed in the right direction.”

Sweatt’s remarks, at a Dec. 12 OSHA National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health (NACOSH) meeting in Washington, D.C., counter some critics’ concerns about fewer inspections under the Trump administration than the previous administration.

Top EPA officials Dec. 10 sought to detail a long-awaited, updated approach to reviewing new chemicals under the agency’s revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) authorities but officials offered few, if any, new details and drew renewed criticisms from industry, environmentalists and other stakeholders.

A top OSHA official says companies’ efforts to exceed compliance with EPA regulations and pursue sustainability as a core business concept provide a model for how OSHA wants firms to “race to the top” on strengthening worker safety protections, asking an agency advisory panel for advice on how to improve safety and health management.