A member of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) has told the White House she is resigning effective June, the board's chairman tells Inside OSHA Online while acknowledging there are differences of opinion among CSB members in some critical areas including the so-called “safety case” approach to preventing catastrophic chemical accidents but not directly tying Beth Rosenberg's resignation to the debate over how stringently the investigative board should push the controversial policy, which could someday affect recommendations to OSHA.
A pair of federally funded children's and farmworker groups are urging the Environmental Protection Agency to strengthen requirements in the agency's proposed revisions to the worker protection standards (WPS) by expanding buffer zones around fields where pesticides are sprayed, citing neurodevelopmental risks to children exposed to pesticides.
OSHA is exploring whether it can return to a 1990s-era enforcement stance under which the process safety management (PSM) standard applies to oil and gas production facilities – a posture that was voided after the petroleum industry argued the agency had not conducted the required economic feasibility analysis specific to production sites when it first formulated the rule.
OSHA will likely face new pressure to raise the profile of worker health concerns related to nanomaterials as researchers come out with a high-profile new study in a medical journal they say shows the first-ever case of direct harm to a worker from exposure to nanoparticles -- with worker health experts saying the issue needs greater attention even if a future regulatory effort proves elusive.
Arizona's state OSHA plan has filed papers formally challenging OSHA's view that the program fails to meet minimum federal standards to protect workers from fall hazards -- likely setting up a protracted fight between the agencies with potential long-term implications for how state plans are defined as “at least as effective.”
Chemical safety investigators are calling on Washington state's OSHA plan to initiate a series of changes designed to beef up oversight of workplace equipment and safety procedures after they reached conclusions from a sweeping investigation of the Tesoro refinery accident that took seven lives and sparked uproar over safety conditions in the refining industry.
Facing competing calls from industry and environmental justice advocates over how to strengthen plant safety, the Environmental Protection Agency is preparing an advance notice of proposed rulemaking in order to take comment on whether or how to revise its accidental release prevention program, a move that suggests any changes to the program are likely a long way off.
A key construction safety advisory group to OSHA, in what is viewed as a rare move, has come out against an agency regulatory proposal by rejecting the agency's plan to remove the 2010 cranes and derricks standard's references to insulating links and proximity alarms as safety measures.
OSHA and NIOSH have signed an agreement on scientific research that could potentially bolster future regulatory action, in what NIOSH chief John Howard tells Inside OSHA Online is at least partly in response to a report from congressional investigators two years ago saying the research and regulatory agencies should attempt to work more closely together.
Companies involved in the healthcare industry are warning EPA against disrupting the “reverse distribution” system currently used to dispose of outdated or unsaleable pharmaceuticals as the agency decides how federal waste regulations apply to the retail sector.
Cal/OSHA has started rolling out a new campaign to prevent heat illness in the state's workplaces by issuing its first high heat advisory of the year, pushing again on a high-profile issue that the agency has long argued sets it apart from many other states and federal OSHA in terms of the vigor in which it pursues enforcement on the issue.
A pair of senior Republican senators is grilling OSHA for highly specific levels of data on recent case outcomes in the OSHA whistleblower program -- which administers 21 federal anti-retaliation statutes on top of the OSH Act 11(c) section that aims to protect worker health and safety complainants -- as the agency strives to invigorate the program by pouring in additional resources and seeking expert advice from stakeholders on how to beef up enforcement efforts.
OSHA is floating a few potential major revisions to beryllium exposure standards, including up to a 95 percent cut to the permissible exposure limit (PEL) for the toxic metal and a host of engineering and exposure controls – but under two options considers leaving construction out of the scope of a new rule completely, and in one scenario making no changes at all.
Sen. Robert Casey (D-PA), chair of the Senate subcommittee that oversees OSHA, tells Inside OSHA Online there are several key changes to the OSH Act that would vastly improve protections against retaliation for private-sector workers who voice safety and health concerns, but Capitol Hill is a “complicated place” and he doesn't see actual legislation on the issue moving anytime soon.
The Environmental Protection Agency is resisting industry charges that its landmark penalty for failing to disclose the results of a health and safety study was time-barred, arguing in a recently submitted brief that Congress clearly intended the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to define such violations as "continuing" and subject to daily penalties for each day the violation occurred -- a dispute that follows a similar case regarding OSHA's view of "continuing violations" of OSHA's recordkeeping rule.
OSHA chief David Michaels put two related regulatory concerns -- a pending rule to tighten controls on crystalline silica dust and the agency's worry about antiquated chemical permissible exposure limits -- at the centerpiece of a push on Friday (April 25) for tougher OSHA protections ahead of Workers Memorial Day, April 28, sounding alarms about what he calls a host of “silent killers” rampant in the workplace.
OSHA has reached a huge settlement with a major steel employer that reverts to an earlier agency stance of negotiating pre-citation penalties and also scores a big victory for OSHA by requiring a comprehensive safety program that a source familiar with the matter says could serve as a model for voluntary injury and illness prevention programs (I2P2), which OSHA has tried for years to push unsuccessfully through a rule.
OSHA standards officials are considering adding new layers of chemical safety oversight to the agency's decades-old rule requiring users of risky chemical processes to develop and put in place “management-system” practices, a concept that could engender opposition down the line as industry argues the performance-based elements of the rule, which already set it apart from most OSHA regulations, have been shown to work.
The chemical industry is likely to push back against new signals by OSHA that regulators may explore revising the process safety management (PSM) standard governing safety requirements in potentially dangerous chemical uses to cover all reactivity hazards, an issue borne out by probes into accidents over the years and which has emerged as a key concern after a massive fertilizer plant explosion in Texas last year.
Several OSHA experts say the agency's planned data request exploring ways to update the agency's permissible exposure limits (PELs) -- which are largely based on 1960s science and widely viewed as antiquated in both industry and labor quarters -- is just a tentative step in tackling a highly complex issue with no clear path to overcoming the restrictions imposed by a key 1991 court decision that dashed OSHA's last wholesale effort to revise the levels.