Worker health activists want to know why OSHA proposes that employers offer medical surveillance to workers when silica exposure levels reach the permissible exposure limit of 50 micrograms per cubic meter, TWA, rather than triggering such surveillance when exposures reach the action level, which is half the PEL's level.
September 17, 2026
Employer-side groups are in an uproar that OSHA allotted only two and a half hours for stakeholders to question agency officials at the opening of a roughly three-week series of hearings on agency's hotly contested crystalline silica rulemaking before moving on to testimony from various stakeholders, saying they had several more hours' worth of inquiries for regulators and pleading for a whole day to be set aside to interrogate OSHA.
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OSHA has released a new advisory document on temporary worker injury and illness recordkeeping that some OSHA experts say could implicitly suggest an obligation for staffing providers to communicate more thoroughly with host employers, though one staffing industry group generally lauded the guidance and OSHA makes clear that the recordkeeping requirements apply to the host employer in most situations.
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Business advocates intend to make the privacy of employees and OSHA's logistical ability to scrub employer injury and illness reports of any worker-identifying information part of the backbone of their vigorous effort to thwart OSHA's planned rulemaking to mandate electronic submission of records which would then be disseminated on the Internet.
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The Senate confirmed an industry-side attorney on Wednesday (March 12) to serve on the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) -- filling out the body with an Obama nominee who would not likely generate controversy with Republicans, and making it easier, sources say, for the review board to move ahead to clear its increasingly clogged docket.
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An OSHA letter of interpretation might be enough to assuage worker advocates' concerns over industry use of a “weight of evidence” standard in the classification and labeling of potentially cancer-causing agents under OSHA's 2012 hazard communication rule, and sidestep a contentious rulemaking, some experts following the issue tell Inside OSHA Online.
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OSHA's proposal to mandate electronic submission and online posting of injury and illness data has ignited a dispute among worker and industry advocates over the precedence of federal agencies collecting data in that manner and over OSHA's statutory authority to issue the planned regulations, sources told Inside OSHA Online as comments flowed into the regulatory docket to meet a Monday (March 10) deadline for feedback on the contentious rule proposed last fall.
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A key steelworkers union is putting rigorous pressure on OSHA to send to the White House for review a rule that would tighten controls on worker exposures to the toxic metal beryllium, long after the union teamed with the only U.S. producer of pure beryllium to propose the agency cut the permissible exposure limit (PEL) for the metal by 90 percent.
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Environmental Protection Agency waste chief Mathy Stanislaus declined at a March 6 Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW) hearing to commit the agency to mandating the use of inherently safer technologies (IST) to prevent or reduce the consequences of accidents or attacks at industrial facilities, despite strong urging from several Democratic senators.
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Senate environment committee Chair Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has agreed to a GOP request to postpone a planned markup on legislation creating a new Environmental Protection Agency program governing chemical releases from above-ground storage tanks, a delay that senators hope will allow them time to resolve concerns from states and others as they respond to the recent West Virginia chemical spill.
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The petrochemical corporation that the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) earlier accused of obstructing its probe into a sulfuric acid leak at a California refinery that reportedly injured two workers is now starting to cooperate with the investigative agency, a CSB source tells Inside OSHA Online.
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The Obama administration wants Congress to allow OSHA to inspect work sites with 10 or fewer employees that potentially fall under the agency's process safety management (PSM) standard or the Environmental Protection Agency's Risk Management Program (RMP), which would modify a longstanding congressional mandate that precludes OSHA from inspecting such small businesses.
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OSHA has decided to extend by three weeks the comment period on its request for data from stakeholders on whether changes are needed to the process safety management (PSM) and related standards, agreeing to stringent industry requests that the original March 10 deadline be delayed to provide more time for research due to complexity of the proposal and supporting analyses.
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The Obama administration has proposed a budget for fiscal 2015 that would essentially flatline the agency's funding as compared to levels two years ago before the advent of budget sequestration, with a proposed level of $565 million and an intensive focus on enhancing whistleblower protection program activities.
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The Labor Department is suing AT&T over allegations that the telecom giant suspended without pay more than a dozen workers after they reported alleged workplace injuries from 2011 to 2013.
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Worker safety and health policy experts tell Inside OSHA Online it is significant that OSHA has decided to integrate into its new Site-Specific Targeting (SST) program an initiative the agency recently launched to ensure compliance with stipulations made by employers engaged in so-called “strategic partnerships,” saying the new policy sets the stage for more rigorous enforcement of those agreements.
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Federal chemical safety experts are blasting a major petrochemical company for allegedly blocking a crucial investigation of a sulfuric acid release at a California refinery that they say seriously injured two workers, but the company refutes the suggestion it is improperly preventing a probe and says the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) lacks jurisdiction in the matter.
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OSHA officials and stakeholders are reacting to the death of Joseph Dear, whom as OSHA chief during the Clinton administration pushed key health and safety policies including willful violation penalties, personal protective equipment requirements and electrical and hazardous communication standards.
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OSHA has reached a settlement with the petroleum industry and unions following 21 months of complex negotiations in a hazardous communication case challenging the agency's enforcement of its March 2012 Global Harmonization Standard amendment, according to sources and documents obtained by Inside OSHA Online.
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OSHA is working with the Agriculture Department and farmer groups to craft new guidance balancing the agency's focus on preventing fatalities at grain handling facilities against congressional restrictions on small farm enforcement, after having pulled a contentious June 2011 memo that GOP lawmakers charged violated appropriators' ban on small farm enforcement.
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