OSHA's clear signal that it hopes to finish a landmark new rule tackling worker exposures to crystalline silica dust by early next year -- the agency's new regulatory agenda pegs February as the target -- means the almost-inevitable legal and political battles over the rule's specifics could play out during the Obama administration, likely easing the path for OSHA to ensure it gets fully implemented.
September 17, 2026
A recently released NIOSH study indicates that health care workers continue to be exposed to hazardous “surgical smoke” -- a byproduct of thermal destruction of tissue during operations -- despite the existence of evidence-based practices and recommended controls available to protect them, the research agency said.
Date:
California's bellwether OSHA program is working to roll out new regulations to tackle workplace violence in the health care sector that worker safety advocates say are groundbreaking and could add to pressure on federal OSHA to consider working on national standards and also heighten general-duty enforcement against violence in health care.
Date:
An advisory group to the Environmental Protection Agency is stressing the need for educational outreach to inform family farms of pesticides' risks, arguing an exemption in newly finalized standards intended to protect farm workers from pesticide exposures fails to protect the children of family farmers.
Date:
About two-thirds of participants in a survey of people exposed to 9/11 dust and fumes still suffer from treatable asthma symptoms, perhaps underscoring a need for targeted efforts to prevent long-term effects, according to a recently published NIOSH-funded study by New York health officials.
Date:
New York worker advocates say city officials are approaching building project safety from a misguided angle by arresting construction workers for fake OSHA training cards, and want authorities to use more discretion before taking enforcement actions that could make workers afraid to cooperate on safety concerns.
Date:
A new draft OSHA policy paper describing how employers can prevent infringement on whistlebower rights contains a section specifically targeting safety incentive programs that could be used in a retaliatory manner against workers raising OSHA concerns -- language the agency proposes just as it prepares to finalize an injury reporting rule taking aim at adversarial uses of such programs.
Date:
OSHA has issued a controversial interpretation of its recordkeeping mandate effectively telling host employers that if they are responsible for assigning day-to-day tasks to temporary workers, they and not the staffing firm have the duty to keep records of work site injuries and illnesses.
Date:
Safety activists worry the Environmental Protection Agency will deny their long-running request to include in an upcoming revised rule a mandate for using inherently safer technologies (IST) to reduce risks of disasters at chemical plants, an issue on which OSHA has also faced pressure as part of interagency talks on safety.
Date:
OSHA's final rule issued Monday setting new parameters for whistleblower protection in the transportation and rail sectors comes amid increasing attention to the agency's anti-retaliation programs, with concern reportedly growing among field staff about resource constraints and the program's overall effectiveness in enforcing the OSH Act and numerous other federal laws.
Date:
Federal chemical safety officials are on the defensive again over their handling of deployment decisions following fires and explosions, with critics questioning the extent of their involvement after a chemistry lab fire at a northern Virginia high school injured several students and asking why they did not send investigators to the scene.
Date:
GOP lawmakers on the House workforce panel passed a bill along largely partisan lines Wednesday (Oct. 28) that would peel back a highly contentious decision by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that expands the meaning of “joint employer” and pins a share of responsibility for workplace conditions on franchise corporations.
Date:
House and Senate lawmakers passed a little-noticed measure that will effectively let OSHA hike maximum penalties by roughly 81 percent, in order to catch up with inflation since 1990, as part of their final budget compromise last week.
Date:
OSHA health experts are pressing employers, particularly in the health care sector, to ensure stringent protections are in place to keep seasonal influenza from spreading, and also point to the potential spread of influenza A (H3N2) variant virus, a concern that been the subject of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) monitoring efforts.
Date:
The pesticide producers’ group CropLife America is raising concern about the Environmental Protection Agency's use of epidemiological studies to retain a stringent safety factor in draft risk reviews of seven organophosphate pesticides, including chemicals such as chlorpyrifos, which OSHA has been pressured to more tightly regulate.
Date:
New launches of U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) disaster investigations have ground to a halt while top career staff who have been locked out of their regular duties during a probe of agency infighting remain on administrative leave, an advocacy group charged Thursday (Oct. 29), a day after the officials' leave was extended to mid-November.
Date:
Industry advocates want OSHA to carefully scrutinize the myriad of legal challenges the agency faces in trying to either update workplace chemical exposure limits or otherwise pressure employers into adopting lower caps than regulations currently require.
Date:
A late-hour deal among congressional leaders and the White House to raise the nation's debt ceiling and peel back budget constraints on agencies caused by sequestration effectively kills a plan by conservative House Republicans to freeze new regulations by the Obama administration and head off “midnight rules” in the lame-duck period after next year's election.
Date:
OSHA has lost a case in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals over an interpretation that led to inspectors citing an employer for allegedly violating machine guarding standards, but the court reinforced in principle the longstanding doctrine deferring to agencies' understanding of their own regulations.
Date:
Several state OSHA plans are reportedly looking into revising state safety regulations to lower the trigger height for general fall protection in building activities to six feet, in line with federal requirements, with Oregon poised to formally make the change as soon as next year.
Date: