California's hotel industry is pushing back strongly against a union-led effort to persuade Cal/OSHA to promulgate an ergonomics standard that would specifically apply to hotel room housekeepers, citing an extensive scientific study that business officials say demonstrates there are no risk factors triggered by housekeeper activities or tasks.
A sweeping OSHA reform bill continues to pick up Democratic backing in the Senate, but observers say the measure remains unlikely to gain much traction this year even if parts of the bill are split off in a bid to pick up Republican support.
OSHA has issued an extensive new guidance document for protecting emergency responders to combustible dust fires, a comprehensive effort to provide more information on accident response that comes in tandem with the agency's ongoing rulemaking to require measures to prevent such explosions.
OSHA is ramping up its annual summertime campaign to combat heat illness, a key education and enforcement priority of the agency, a top OSHA official tells Inside OSHA Online.
OSHA has begun a lengthy process of rethinking several policies related to its Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory (NRTL) program, including how to monitor independence of testing labs; how to expedite application processing; and how to handle the laboratory renewal process.
A Cal/OSHA advisory panel is closely studying whether there is a need for a rulemaking to provide ergonomic protections to hotel room housekeepers, but the agency is far from what would be a groundbreaking move toward such an ergo regulation.
Richard Fairfax, OSHA's career deputy assistant secretary and its top administrator of field operations, will retire at the beginning of May, the agency confirmed Wednesday (March 27) to Inside OSHA Online.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) reintroduced the Protecting America’s Workers Act (PAWA) on Friday (March 22), reinvigorating a legislative push that began several years ago to update the OSH Act with a slew of provisions expanding OSHA coverage and workers' and victims' rights.
House Democrats are again pushing legislation to require OSHA to issue interim rules addressing combustible dust hazards.
OSHA has published a new slide presentation that the agency hopes will advance injury and illness prevention programs with employers, a move that comes as the agency works toward a small business review of a controversial proposed rule that would require such programs in workplaces.
OSHA is moving forward aggressively on a rule to address workplace combustible dust hazards, a top OSHA official says, while also acknowledging the many challenges involved in the controversial proposed regulation.
OSHA has no intention of backing off its longstanding support for voluntary protection programs (VPP), despite stakeholder concerns that the agency under the current administration may pull back resources for the initiative, OSHA official Jordan Barab tells Inside OSHA Online in an exclusive interview.
President Obama's nominee to lead the Department of Labor is winning votes of confidence from congressional Democrats, but Republicans are already questioning the nomination and characterizing it as divisive.
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) will be revisiting recommendations it made to OSHA and key industry and labor groups on how to tackle fatigue and process safety management issues in the petrochemical industry that came out of the board's probe of the 2005 fire and explosion at the BP Texas City Refinery that killed 15 workers and injured 180.
The chemical industry is again pressing the National Toxicology Program (NTP) to allow the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to complete its review of the 2011 listings of styrene and formaldehyde before issuing a new Report on Carcinogens (RoC), in comments criticizing NTP's proposed new analyses for the next RoC as overly simplistic.
The Senate on Thursday (March 14) voted down an amendment by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) to a short-term spending measure that would have resulted in a $4 million boost to OSHA and headed off an Obama administration plan to cease funding for two NIOSH programs.
Rep. Tom Petri (R-WI) has reintroduced a bill to codify OSHA's Voluntary Protection Program (VPP), launching another legislative effort to solidify the program as part of the agency's mission.
OSHA intends to focus on a diverse cluster of issues ranging from workplace violence to health hazards and is developing a new Field Operations Manual (FOM) for industrial hygiene, the agency's top enforcement administrator told lawyers and OSH stakeholders at a legal conference in California, according to sources at the meeting.
The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed significant new use rules (SNURs) for some 37 chemicals, including more than a dozen nanomaterials, requiring greater worker protections than the agency's past SNURs for other carbon nanotubes, a change labor groups and federal occupational health and safety officials have been seeking, according to a source with a safe technology group.
OSHA's Severe Violator Enforcement Program (SVEP), which the agency initiated in 2010 to more forcefully crack down on employers with egregious non-compliance, made progress in the first 18 months but has encountered some challenges, including the transitory nature of some construction employers that makes it difficult to follow up and track the companies, the agency says.