A large national coalition of worker advocacy groups is calling on the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) to revise its procedures to allow interested parties including so-called “affected” employees to participate in cases before OSHRC even if they do not work directly for an employer contesting citations -- a move that would effectively expand the scope of cases stemming from multi-employer job sites.
September 17, 2026
Federal chemical safety investigators are set to release on Wednesday a final report and accompanying recommendations calling for tighter industry standards following their probe of the August 2012 crude unit fire at the Chevron refinery in Richmond, CA, an investigation that has been subject to controversy due to both the length of the probe and an ongoing debate over whether regulators should adopt a European-style “safety case” approach to head off such disasters.
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Industry attorneys are raising concerns following a new lawsuit filed by an environmental health legal group that aims to force California regulators to require Proposition 65 chemical warning labels on any product that exposes the public to any amount of lead – with the suit arguing that state officials used OSHA’s threshold limit as a flawed basis for exempting products that have exposures at or under 0.5 ug/day.
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Nearly four-fifths of emergency responders to a hazardous chemical spill following a 2012 train wreck in New Jersey failed to use recommended respiratory protection during the incident, a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report finds -- underscoring concerns among worker advocates about lack of responder preparedness, an issue that OSHA is attempting to tackle at the federal level.
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OSHA recently clarified new requirements on worker amputations and eye loss under a stricter incident reporting rule that took effect this month, delineating the circumstances under which such events are reportable, with industry sources saying the interpretation is useful in some ways -- particularly whether blindness versus removal of an eye falls under the mandate.
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OSHA alerts employers in a new publication to a variety of safety and health concerns -- none tied directly to silica exposures -- arising at hydraulic fracturing sites around the country, where the primary issue emphasized until now has been the potential for workers to develop silicosis or other diseases linked to inhalation of silica dust.
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Federal chemical safety investigators have pinpointed “hydraulic shock” as the root cause of an accident several years ago in Alabama that resulted in a disastrous release of anhydrous ammonia -- findings that come as OSHA and other regulatory agencies collaborate on a sweeping initiative to mitigate chemical plant safety hazards.
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A top House Democrat is pushing legislation that would give the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) power to force chemical facilities to use controversial inherently safer technology (IST) measures to reduce the consequences of a terrorist attack, a move that comes as federal agencies including OSHA and the Environmental Protection Agency come under increasing pressure to consider IST mandates.
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OSHA should go back and start from scratch on its efforts to draft a new federal rule to reduce the risks of health care workers contracting infectious diseases, small business representatives say, calling for a more piecemeal regulatory approach that possibly exempts some segments of the industry and holds employers in compliance as long as they follow official guidance materials issued by federal agencies.
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OSHA is voicing concern to employers, especially in sectors where federal officials have raised red flags over ergonomics, about in-house licensed nurses potentially downplaying musculoskeletal and other worker injuries by treating them as first aid-type incidents that never show up on the companies' OSHA recordkeeping logs.
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OSHA stakeholders and expert observers predict the agency will at least come close this year to finishing a new rule to protect construction workers against confined space hazards -- along with making strides on other rules including reductions in silica exposure limits, changes to OSHA recordkeeping procedures and a proposed rule tamping down on potential hazards from beryllium.
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House Republican leaders blocked an attempt by the labor committee's top Democrat to shield an OSHA rulemaking on infectious diseases in health care from the procedural requirements in a newly passed bill that adds new layers of review to the federal regulatory process.
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Advocates say the Environmental Protection Agency's finding of risks to workers in a recent draft human health risk assessment of the commonly used pesticide chlorpyrifos bolsters their push for the agency to strengthen proposed revisions to its worker protection standards (WPS), due out this year, though advocates argue banning the pesticide is the surest way to reduce risks.
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An OSHA action trying to force one of the country's largest medical transport providers to reinstate a pilot who refused to fly a helicopter the employee deemed unsafe is again putting into the spotlight OSHA's increasing efforts to enforce a host of federal whistleblower statutes on top of its substantial OSH Act 11(c) caseload.
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Public interest advocate Ralph Nader worries that OSHA has increasingly been denied the authority it needs to carry out its mission to craft workplace safety and health rules and effectively enforce them across U.S industry sectors, with the White House under both parties gradually sapping the agency of the power to take forceful policy action, the activist and onetime presidential contender tells Inside OSHA Online.
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OSHA and NIOSH are urging health care employers to craft “fatigue risk management plans” to head off risks to workers responding to Ebola situations where officials are concerned that health responders have been put in danger by protracted stress-filled work shifts.
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Lawmakers are all but demanding that OSHA start providing 10 days' notice to Congress of any looming special emphasis enforcement programs, whether at the state, regional or local level, a move that appeared to take stakeholders by surprise but that Washington sources tell Inside OSHA Online could be a result of recent highly controversial programs like OSHA's investigation of recordkeeping compliance at work sites across the country.
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OSHA has launched a publicity effort to inform employers about their new obligations under an injury reporting rule that went into effect Jan. 1, on top of widely disseminated information from worker advocacy groups to remind companies of the new OSHA requirements, which change mandates regarding worker hospitalizations, amputations and eye losses.
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The Environmental Protection Agency has finalized rules further restricting the uses of three groups of largely phased-out chemicals, including a controversial rule that revokes the agency's usual exemption on a chemical's presence in “articles” or finished products for nine benzidine-based dyes, rejecting opponents' arguments that the EPA rule could overstep the authorities of OSHA and consumer safety officials.
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Congressional appropriators sent a clear signal to OSHA that it needs to weigh “all currently available technology” when it crafts an envisioned final rule tackling crystalline silica hazards in the workplace -- echoing technical feasibility concerns voiced in the employer community.
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