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healthcare industry are warning EPA against disrupting the “reverse distribution” system currently used to dispose of outdated or unsaleable pharmaceuticals as the agency decides how federal waste regulations apply to the retail sector.
September 17, 2026
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.
Date:
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.
Date:
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.
Date:
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.
Date:
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.
Date:
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.
Date:
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.
Date:
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.
Date:
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.
Date:
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.
Date:
NIOSH is expressing concern based on research about rates of obesity keyed to occupations in Washington state, raising broader questions about whether employers need to address such personal worker issues by attempting to improve “poor health behaviors,” with agency officials saying it “likely is in the employer’s best interest to do so.”
Date:
Federal officials engaged in probing chemical disasters pressured OSHA chief David Michaels and other Obama administration officials in a White House meeting after the West, TX, fertilizer plant explosion to embrace the use of inherently safer technologies (IST) where possible and to revisit a range of longstanding OSHA process safety management (PSM) requirements, and continue to push for tougher regulatory policies, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board chairman told Inside OSHA Online in an interview Tuesday.
Date:
The industry coalition American Chemistry Council (ACC) is challenging New Jersey's model chemical facility safety program, arguing in comments to the Environmental Protection Agency that the state incorrectly labels facilities' routine safety upgrades as shifts to inherently safer technologies (IST) and fails to account for changes that shift risks to other parts of production processes -- a dispute that occurs as OSHA comes under increasing pressure to embrace IST.
Date:
A group of worker health activists issued a scathing report Thursday (April 17) sharply critical in some respects of how OSHA under the Bush administration handled its response to worker hazards in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York, calling for several policy changes to beef up enforcement and training in such a future event.
Date:
OSHA is making the case for a much stricter standard on respirable crystalline silica by forming an alliance with several groups of occupational health experts in the Atlanta region -- a partnership designed to provide construction employers and workers with guidance and training to prevent overexposure to the toxic dust generated in some building activities.
Date:
OSHA is seeking clearance from the White House budget office to publish a formal information request designed to gather stakeholder input on the problematic issue of how to update a host of chemical exposure caps in the workplace, pushing ahead on a subject that has stymied worker health advocates for decades.
Date:
OSHA won a closely monitored appellate court review of citations the agency issued in what critics blasted as an overzealous exercise of the OSH Act general duty clause following the much-publicized mauling death of a SeaWorld orca trainer in 2010.
Date:
U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) investigators are set to release preliminary findings from their probe into last year's disastrous explosion of a fertilizer processing plant in West, TX, potentially teeing up recommendations to OSHA on how safety regulators could tighten up federal rules covering such facilities.
Date:
The Obama Administration's pressure on Congress to beef up OSHA's whistleblower law enforcement division could help the agency clear up a persistent backlog in cases including OSH Act 11(c) complaints.
Date: