Chemical Safety Board Chairman Rafael Moure-Eraso resigned Thursday (March 26) at the direction of President Obama, cutting short a rocky, nearly five-year term just shy of its completion and clearing the way for his designated replacement who currently serves as the top lawyer at the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.
September 17, 2026
President Obama will ask Rafael Moure-Eraso, the beleaguered head of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, to resign, Washington sources confirmed Thursday, with less than three months left in the agency chair's term and a week after a bipartisan call in Congress for the agency chair to be ousted in the wake of allegations that he mismanaged the board, shut out differing views from other board members and retaliated against career staff at the agency.
Date:
A worldwide consensus standard well under development by safety experts would set out parameters for voluntary adoption of occupational health and safety (OHS) management systems, in what experts hope is the start of a policy dialogue on protecting workers across global supply chains and heading off safety risks such as those borne out by garment factory disasters in Bangladesh, where U.S. retail brands were found amid the rubble.
Date:
The Environmental Protection Agency's National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC) is calling for the agency to strengthen proposed revisions to its worker protection standards (WPS) to better protect farmworkers, especially pesticide handlers, urging stronger requirements and backing advocates' claim that farmworkers face disproportionate chemical risks -- pressure on the Obama administration that comes amid a broad review at OSHA of chemical exposure risk policies.
Date:
OSHA has rejected a petition from a large group of worker advocacy organizations for the agency to begin crafting a new rule to address hazards associated with line speeds in meatpacking and poultry plants, but is strongly signaling that it could ramp up enforcement on alleged ergonomic dangers by exercising the OSH Act general duty clause.
Date:
House and Senate Democrats are circulating letters urging lawmakers to support increased OSHA funding and to shield NIOSH from the Obama administration's long-contemplated elimination of two research and education programs, with the advocacy effort driven by several safety and health professional organizations.
Date:
OSHA has won a key victory for policy favoring expansive use of the OSH Act general duty clause, with Walmart Stores Inc. on Wednesday (March 18) pulling its longstanding legal challenge of a $7,000 OSHA citation arising from the trampling death of a store employee during a Black Friday sales event in 2008, and the agency lauding the move.
Date:
At least six key projects under way and some near completion -- including reports on the West, TX, fertilizer plant disaster and the Deepwater Horizon oil platform explosion -- are central factors in Chemical Safety Board (CSB) Chair Rafael Moure-Eraso's decision not to quit office early, an agency source says, even in the face of a blunt, bipartisan call by House lawmakers Wednesday (March 18) for President Obama to fire him and two senior CSB officials over recent controversies involving Moure-Eraso's use of his position and management of the investigative board.
Date:
OSHA has formally extended by six months the deadline for stakeholders to submit information pertinent to the agency's exploration of ways to lower permissible exposure limits (PELs), agreeing to both industry and union calls for more time to submit data on the closely watched effort but also likely delaying any regulatory update of exposure levels under the Obama administration.
Date:
OSHA has proposed a rule that would update eye and face protection standards by incorporating newer voluntary and industry consensus standards that have far outpaced OSHA regulations, in a move sources say signals agency interest in updating rules based on widely embraced industry practices.
Date:
OSHA is offering some enforcement leeway for companies that show good-faith efforts to meet an upcoming June 1 deadline for updating safety data sheets (SDS) and labeling mixtures of chemicals with known hazards under a 2012 worker right-to-know standard, though some in industry believe the agency's new compliance directive demonstrates that industry should have challenged the rule as infeasible when it came out three years ago.
Date:
Two key Senate Republicans on safety and environmental issues are demanding President Obama immediately call for the resignation of Rafael Moure-Eraso, the chair of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) who has been roiled with controversy on Capitol Hill and in interactions with the agency’s inspector general (IG) over allegations of mismanagement, power abuse and whistleblower retaliation.
Date:
Senate Democrats and Republicans are floating a revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) reform bill that they say addresses a host of controversial issues that have led to a stalemate on moving reform legislation, with a section in the bill defining worker populations emerging as a key concern for how the bill would affect occupational health law.
Date:
A bipartisan group of senators has banded together to form a “Whistleblower Protection Caucus” in the upper chamber, elevating to a degree of congressional prominence numerous issues related to enforcement of anti-retaliation statutes that OSHA has been working for years to address on the administrative front.
Date:
BALTIMORE -- Federal environmental officials are mulling the possibility of initiating a rare ban of the paint-stripping solvent methylene chloride -- a chemical that some OSHA stakeholders believe has too high of a workplace permissible exposure limit. The Environmental Protection Agency policy move indicates a continued focus on regulating “existing” chemicals on the heels of EPA's plans to explore similar restrictions on the common degreasing solvent trichloroethylene (TCE).
Date:
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) has freed up investigative resources by completing phases of two major investigations and is now in a position to probe last month's explosion at the ExxonMobil refinery in Torrance, CA, which could eventually lead to safety recommendations to federal and California OSHA.
Date:
Congressional oversight members, in a rare bipartisan consensus regarding the future leadership of a federal agency, have reached apparently universal agreement that the head of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) should quit or be removed from office immediately, despite just 15 weeks left in his appointed term, over alleged serious management problems ranging from internal whistleblower allegations, to alleged records law violations, to what critics are calling a surprise power grab to consolidate executive authority within the agency chair.
Date:
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) is coming under fresh attack from congressional oversight members who allege actions by the agency and its chief amounted to abuse of power and federal records violations, with lawmakers lobbing a new round of allegations that CSB violated whistleblower rights and created a workplace rife with fear of retaliation, low morale and high turnover.
Date:
A new policy rolled out last fall enforcing strict limits on the maximum numbers of on-site employees for an employer to qualify for OSHA's small business compliance recognition program has effectively forced 220 work sites nationally out of the assistance effort and pushed them instead toward voluntary programs designed for larger companies, according to internal agency data obtained by Inside OSHA Online.
Date:
OSHA is commencing a public push for a newly devised regulatory plan for safety certification of crane operators on construction sites, potentially resolving one of the controversies that has plagued the agency's nearly five-year-old rule to update safety standards for use of cranes and derricks.
Date: