EPA has proposed a safety rule for pigment violet 29 (PV29) that would require facilities to provide personal protective equipment (PPE) to workers who could be exposed to its dry-powder form, but in a break from its other risk-management policies, the agency is not setting an exposure limit for the chemical or seeking to ban any of its uses.
The California Legislature is weighing a bill that would impose new restrictions and certification requirements for stone fabrication shops to protect workers from being exposed to crystalline silica, in the latest step of a years-long push to stem a rise in the deadly disease silicosis in the Golden State and elsewhere.
Labor groups and employers are offering widely divergent responses to OSHA’s release of “comprehensive” workplace safety data from the first year of its long-debated electronic recordkeeping and reporting program, with industry fearing misuse of the information while unions and their allies are welcoming it as a major step for transparency.
The Biden OSHA could advance as many as four rules ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, according to its new regulatory agenda, including a long-awaited proposed infectious disease safety standard, fall protection mandates for elevated walking surfaces, and several statute-specific whistleblower protection procedures.
OSHA is again urging a federal court to permanently dismiss for lack of standing a California road authority’s challenge to a Trump-era memo easing implementation of federal scaffolding safety mandates, arguing that the plaintiff’s amended complaint still fails to establish that it has standing to bring its suit.
California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) is touting what it says is the state’s first citation for a “willful” violation of outdoor heat safety standards, targeting a landscape maintenance company with a fine of more than $276,000 and underscoring the agency’s renewed commitment to bolster enforcement efforts.
EPA has issued a final TSCA risk management rule for the solvent carbon tetrachloride (CTC) that sets strict new worker-protection requirements for many applications of the chemical while allowing industry to continue most if not all of those current uses, while extending key compliance deadlines from what it proposed last year.
OSHA has finalized as proposed a long-awaited rule that expands fit-testing requirements for personal protective equipment (PPE) in construction -- a measure the agency has argued will protect workers who are smaller or larger than average adults, especially women, but which could be a rollback priority for the incoming Trump administration.
Employer-focused attorneys are saying they expect California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) inspectors to focus primarily on “enterprise-wide” and less on “egregious” violations as part of an agency initiative to toughen enforcement policies by establishing those new categories of citations as required by a 2021 state law.
EPA has signed its long-awaited final TSCA rules restricting uses of the industrial solvents trichloroethylene (TCE) and perchloroethylene (PCE) with several changes from the 2023 proposals, including a much more lenient “interim” workplace exposure limit for TCE and an extended deadline for facilities to adopt new worker protections for PCE.
The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has completed review of final EPA rules seeking to limit workplace risks from three toxic solvents, teeing up their release in the last weeks of the Biden administration -- and likely efforts to narrow or reverse them after President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
OSHA and the steel company claiming that Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) review of enforcement actions is unconstitutional have agreed to push the agency’s deadline to answer the novel litigation until February, leaving it to the incoming Trump administration to decide how -- or whether -- the government will contest those arguments.
EPA has issued a draft TSCA evaluation of the synthetic rubber component 1,3-butadiene finding that inhalation exposure to the ubiquitous chemical poses unreasonable risk to the health of workers and the general population, just weeks after finalizing court settlements that set deadlines for that review and more than 20 others.
OSHA is giving stakeholders another two weeks to file comments on its proposed heat safety standard, pushing the deadline from Dec. 30 into the new year -- though far sooner than the two months or more that many employer groups sought -- while also scheduling an online hearing on the rule for summer.
EPA has unveiled its long-awaited final TSCA evaluation of “legacy” asbestos uses, finding ongoing risk to workers and the general population from several asbestos fiber types and applications that were excluded from its Trump-era “Part 1” review -- and triggering a mandate for the incoming Trump administration to regulate those dangers.
A three-judge appellate panel is evaluating whether EPA correctly determined that it has authority to regulate rail cars as a “stationary source” under its Risk Management Program (RMP) and emergency planning rules for facility safety, questioning how it should review the agency’s interpretation since the high court eliminated Chevron deference.
Russell Vought, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to run the White House Office of Management & Budget (OMB) for a second time, is expected to push a series of measures from the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 deregulatory blueprint for the new administration to slash OSHA and other agencies’ budgets, as well as wider efforts to scale back the executive branch civil service.
President-elect Donald Trump has selected outgoing Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR), a moderate who has sponsored union-friendly legislation, to head the Department of Labor (DOL), drawing skepticism from pro-business Republicans and cautious praise from organized labor -- though many are questioning whether the administration will allow her to maintain those priorities.
California OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) standards board is launching an advisory committee that will weigh amending state safety rules to eventually allow deployment of certain types of autonomous agricultural equipment, amid continued pushback from labor advocacy groups.
Two employer attorneys say a New Jersey steel company’s bid to declare the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) unconstitutional poses legal questions that will likely require resolution by the Supreme Court -- though possibly only after similar cases make their way through multiple lower courts.