OSHA says a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) backs up OSHA's case that employers need to acclimatize workers to extremely hot weather conditions, which the agency is arguing as part of its annual campaign to pressure businesses to require ample water, rest and shade and in which it cited the OSH Act general duty clause 20 times over a two-year period in instances where it believed employers flouted the law.
September 17, 2026
A key chemical safety advisory agency is urging businesses to address “hot work” hazards arising from situations in which workers are potentially exposed to live ignition sources, saying welding or cutting activities near chemical storage tanks pose a huge disaster risk.
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An outside legal counsel to the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) who served as President George W. Bush's ethics counsel in the White House tells Inside OSHA Online that Congress should pass legislation to let agencies like CSB selectively waive privilege in order to comply with document requests from inspectors general.
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The Environmental Protection Agency inspector general, who has oversight of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB), is one of 47 IGs who signed a letter to lawmakers raising strong concerns that several agencies allegedly tried to block the inspectors' investigative activities, and citing as a key example a long-running legal dispute with CSB leadership over a probe into accusations of whistleblower retaliation.
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Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) has placed a hold on President Obama's two pending nominees to the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB), threatening to sidetrack what would be a nearly complete CSB membership if the federal investigative board's management does not fully comply with a key request from the Environmental Protection Agency Office of Inspector General (OIG) for all documents related to whistleblower allegations.
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A Labor Department spending measure recently unveiled by Senate appropriators strongly encourages OSHA to continue supporting its Voluntary Protection Program (VPP), a longtime compliance assistance initiative that has weathered controversy and drawn mixed support over the years from the agency, which earlier under Democratic leadership considered a private-sector funding model rather than permanent government funding for the program.
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Senate Democrats attached language to a pending Labor/HHS funding bill that calls on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to expand a program that encourages health care worker flu vaccinations -- an issue that has been controversial with labor unions that do not want workers to be be pushed into taking flu shots, though a key union supports voluntary measures to increase flu vaccination rates.
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A top OSHA official said last week that the agency eventually agreed with lawmakers that it had put “confusing” language in a controversial enforcement directive aimed at allowing compliance officers to enforce regulations at post-harvest operations located on the same sites as small farms, the latter of which is restricted by a longstanding 1970s-era congressional policy rider restraining the agency on small farm enforcement.
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Industry experts engaged in advanced-design textiles are urging health care providers and policymakers to support the use of fluid-repellant laboratory coats as a “first line of defense” against disease pathogen transmission in health care settings, saying such apparel amounts to an engineering control against the biological health hazards that are ubiquitous in hospitals and other facilities -- a push that occurs as OSHA reportedly moves forward internally on a rule to address infectious diseases across numerous types of work sites.
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A new executive order from President Obama intended to clamp down on the hiring of federal contractors with allegedly questionable health and safety records and OSHA compliance histories opened a new rift Thursday (July 31) with the business community and congressional Republicans who blasted it as a giveaway to trial lawyers and an example of executive overreach, in the face of many worker safety advocates lauding the move.
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Congressional investigators have commenced a study partly on whether OSHA should attempt to issue a specific standard tackling workplace violence in the health care sector, following on a request late last year from House Democrats to look into the issue, Washington sources tell Inside OSHA Online.
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OSHA has issued a citation with $7,000 in proposed penalties that invokes the OSH Act general duty clause against Miami Seaquarium over the proximity of animal trainers to a killer whale, an enforcement action that closely resembles the contentious SeaWorld citations that landed the agency and employer in court where OSHA ultimately prevailed in exercising the often-disputed section of its enabling statute.
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OSHA has sent a detailed memorandum to regional officials describing how OSHA field officers should handle investigations of possible hazards in temporary work arrangements and the determination of responsibility among host employers and staffing agencies for worker training and hazard abatement, pushing forward stringently on an issue that has been a top priority of agency chief David Michaels.
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A recent report stemming from an internal investigation by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) into a June incident involving the “unintentional exposure” of personnel to potentially viable anthrax raises serious concerns about worker safety in laboratories, an issue that OSHA has long scrutinized and also addressed in guidance documents in recent years.
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The Senate labor appropriations panel's spending bill would give OSHA several million more dollars than current funding levels in fiscal 2015, proposing to allow the agency to spend roughly $557 million next year -- but that's less than President Obama wants and unlikely to be embraced by House Republicans as the fall fiscal and electoral battles approach.
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Federal chemical safety investigators are stepping up calls for regulatory action to tackle workplace combustible dust hazards after probing the causes of a deadly 2010 explosion in West Virginia, citing concern about purported holes in what they say should be universal industry adoption of consensus standards.
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OSHA has come out with a new policy on fall protection in the cellular tower industry that comports with longtime industry requests that the agency clarify that its safety policies relating to a practice of hoisting workers from one elevated work station to another apply not only in construction but also maintenance activities.
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OSHA has entered into its Severe Violator Enforcement Program (SVEP) an agriculture feed supplement employer whose storage bins collapsed in January, killing two people and devastating the facility -- and OSHA also called out the employer in a highly publicized statement, as industry while lamenting the tragedy questions the agency's approach to putting employers in such programs prior to completion of legal contest.
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House Democrats are citing worker ergonomic concerns in urging the White House to direct the Agriculture Department to revisit a new rule aimed at “modernizing” poultry slaughter line speeds.
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Several companies are challenging the Environmental Protection Agency Region IX's strict action levels and strengthened sampling strategies that California regulators have implemented at some waste cleanup sites to address vapor intrusion from trichloroethylene (TCE), arguing that the agency has formally adopted the novel approach – a policy that grows out of longtime EPA efforts to protect workers from exposures at cleanup sites.
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