House Democrats used an Oct. 23 hearing to bolster pending legislation that they say would enhance safety protections for so-called “gig” workers, who are currently identified as independent contractors and not covered by OSHA safety requirements and other federal labor protections that apply to employees.
September 17, 2026
President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders (EOs) curtailing OSHA and other agencies’ use of guidance and other policy memos ramp up scrutiny of OSHA’s contentious approach to guidance, which has long drawn criticism, including from the agency’s inspector general (IG).
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OSHA plans to hold a stakeholder meeting next month to hear input from companies on leading indicators used to preemptively address workplace health and safety, planning to use the information it receives to develop additional tools that might assist employers with taking more preventative and predictive steps to protect worker safety.
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Environmentalists are urging EPA to quickly use authority under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to address acute human health risks that exposure to the solvent chemical 1-bromopropane (1-BP) presents to workers and the very young, even before the agency finalizes its TSCA risk assessment of the substance.
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President Donald Trump intends to nominate former OSHA Occupational Safety & Health Review Commission (OSHRC) member Cynthia Attwood to rejoin the panel that decides challenges to citations or penalties resulting from agency inspections of workplaces, a position that she has first held starting in February 2010.
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A hazardous waste facility is urging EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) to scrap an agency-crafted Resource Conservation & Recovery Act (RCRA) permit that includes OSHA worker safety requirements, arguing that EPA cannot force permittees to follow OSHA rules in RCRA permits.
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Industry officials are optimistic that the White House will approve a pending final EPA rule to repeal Obama-era Risk Management Plan (RMP) facility safety requirements, and an environmentalist opposed to the effort says the agency “seems intent” on finalizing the delayed rollback.
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EPA is renewing its bid to end environmental and public health groups’ efforts to obtain a court ruling on the merits of their petition asking EPA to ban drinking water fluoridation because of human health risks, in a case testing a little-used section of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) shortly after the court denied EPA’s appeal to delay a trial.
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President Donald Trump has announced his intent to nominate Amanda Laihow, chief counsel of OSHA’s Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC), to become a member of the review panel through April 2023, touting her long-running work on labor issues related to health, safety and anti-discrimination laws.
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A staffing firm executive told House lawmakers at a recent hearing that the trend toward greater use of robots and artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace could bolster worker safety through a combination of new data-driven safeguards and shifting repetitive or weight-bearing tasks away from humans.
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OSHA is floating a proposal to revise Obama-era standards for occupational exposure to beryllium and beryllium compounds in the construction and shipyards industries, saying the changes will better tailor the standards for the two sectors’ unique exposures and also improve the agency’s overall enforcement of beryllium limits.
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EPA appears to be advancing a new argument to dismiss part of environmentalists’ suit over the agency’s denial of their petition to require more reporting about the uses of asbestos in the United States that could also provide a defense against a new trial in a second, nearly identical petition case from states.
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OSHA in a new final rule is certifying two “quantitative fit” tests for ensuring respiratory equipment complies with its respiratory protection standard, giving employers new options that the agency says can be completed more than twice as quickly as prior methods and potentially enabling major time savings for firms with large workforces that use masks.
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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in a ruling on the government’s liver transplant policy has avoided weighing in applying the Supreme Court’s test for when to defer to OSHA and other agencies in interpreting their regulatory authority, but does embrace the high court’s instruction to first look for a clear answer in the law.
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A federal judge has once again handed a blow to EPA in its effort to defend its denial of public health advocates’ petition urging the agency to ban drinking water fluoridation, in this instance denying EPA’s request to delay the trial schedule by 65 days to extend limited expert discovery, a request the judge considered unnecessary and prejudicial to the plaintiffs.
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A House Energy and Commerce Committee panel has advanced on a primarily partisan basis a bill to ban all uses of asbestos and a package of 13 bills to deal with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), although the asbestos legislation could ultimately drive chlorine producers to use PFAS as a replacement to asbestos.
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OSHA has issued a final rule reversing course on a prior proposal that would have revoked Obama-era occupational exposure standards for construction and shipyards, saying that undoing the standards would be at odds with the agency’s statutory mandate to protect workers from proven significant health risks of exposure to beryllium.
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Senators in a 53-44 vote on Sept. 26 confirmed President Donald Trump’s nominee Eugene Scalia to head the Department of Labor (DOL), clearing the path for him to be sworn in and pursue an agenda that Democrats fear will advance the administration’s deregulatory agenda at OSHA with rule rollbacks that increase risks to worker safety.
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The Senate environment panel has approved President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Chemical Safety Board (CSB), clearing the path for her Senate confirmation, though a key GOP senator continues to urge the White House to fill other current and pending vacancies to ensure CSB can continue its incident investigation and other functions.
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The White House has approved two OSHA measures aimed at revising portions of the Obama administration’s final beryllium rules for the construction and shipyard sectors but without repealing them, a move that is likely to spark heated opposition and resumed litigation from key industry groups.
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