Deputy OSHA chief James Frederick told members of the National Advisory Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NACOSH) that the agency plans to complete the realignment of its regional offices announced in May by the start of fiscal year 2025 on Oct. 1, amid concerns from both federal officials and panelists over continued impacts of funding cuts on federal and state safety work.
September 17, 2026
OSHA chief Doug Parker is urging workers and safety advocates to use public comments on the agency’s proposed heat-illness standard to tell “stories” of dangers they and their co-workers have faced from excessive heat and how businesses have successfully addressed them, in order to illustrate the potential benefits of new safety measures.
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Labor unions and worker-protection groups are at odds with employer representatives over California OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) latest revised draft permanent workplace violence-prevention rules, even as companies continue to scramble to comply with interim statutorily required measures that took effect July 1.
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An attorney for the free-market Center for Individual Rights (CIR) says the landmark Supreme Court decision that opened OSHA and other agencies’ long-standing rules to new legal challenges will likely produce a host of circuit splits requiring officials to apply different legal frameworks or even separate regulations in different regions of the country.
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Employer groups are sharply attacking OSHA’s first substantive defense of its controversial rule allowing “third-party” employee representatives to take part in inspection walkarounds, arguing that the agency is refusing to acknowledge likely harms from the new policy while adopting a “baffling” reading of the OSH Act.
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OSHA is seeking to dismiss South Carolina’s suit challenging an Obama-era rule directing states to match federal OSH Act penalty levels, renewing its charge that the state missed a statutory deadline and that the Supreme Court’s recent ruling easing some statutes of limitations has no bearing on this case because it could have sued at any time in that window.
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California lawmakers have passed bills to tighten existing California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) standards, including requiring the installation of metal detectors in hospitals, adding the opioid overdose medication naloxone hydrochloride to workplace first-aid kits, and compensating outdoor workers who suffer heat-related injuries because employers violated safety rules.
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EPA is proposing to find that just three uses of the phthalate known as DINP pose unreasonable risks that could warrant regulation as part of a newly released draft TSCA evaluation, including two workplace applications that the agency is conceding may have already been abandoned by employers.
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OSHA is formally publishing its heat safety standard for indoor and outdoor work, over a month after first unveiling text for the long-awaited regulation, beginning a 120-day public comment period that would close just weeks before President Joe Biden’s term ends -- and thus leaves further work on the rulemaking to the next administration.
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California lawmakers have killed a bill that would have prohibited, beginning July 1, 2026, the sale and use of firefighter personal protective equipment (PPE) containing intentionally added PFAS, and would have required state regulators to align worker-safety rules with a future national standard for PFAS-free firefighting gear.
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Top Democrats on the House workforce committee are calling on OSHA to investigate recent reports that claim officials with California and South Carolina’s state plan agencies have been “tipping off” employers on upcoming agency inspections targeting not only safety issues but child-labor violations and potential trafficking.
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The Department of Agriculture (USDA) pressed EPA to craft guidance on how its just-completed Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) formaldehyde assessment will drive strict workplace limits on the ubiquitous chemical, as part of an interagency review process where USDA and others also echoed employers’ persistent criticism of EPA’s analysis.
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Members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s (NASEM) standing toxicology committee are calling for new approaches to testing the dangers of human exposure to micro- and nano-plastics, particularly in aging veterans -- tests they say could lead to first-time occupational exposure limits for the materials.
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Two employer attorneys say an administrative law judge’s (ALJ) recent decision partly scrapping an OSHA citation based on whether a worker killed in a 2020 accident had been standing in a recognized “danger zone” underlines the burden the agency faces to show specific evidence of industry practice to support such claims.
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The AFL-CIO and Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) are urging EPA to strengthen its proposed TSCA rule for n-methylpyrrolidone (NMP) by banning more uses of the solvent and imposing tighter restrictions on continuing applications, saying the current version sidesteps the hierarchy of controls and will not adequately protect workers.
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EPA has unveiled its long-awaited and controversial Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) formaldehyde assessment -- a pivotal factor in a pending TSCA evaluation of the chemical -- that generally retains conservative risk values that employers have long feared will lead to strict limits on workplace exposures.
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California OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) standards board has approved a set of highly contentious regulatory amendments to its fall-protection standard for residential construction workers in order to meet federal OSHA’s requirements for such rules, despite reluctance from the panelists and employers’ claims that current state practices are more protective.
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United Airlines is asking the 7th Circuit to review an OSHA enforcement case where it has argued that its agreements with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and its staff union limit its duty to implement certain hazard-prevention requirements under the OSH Act -- a claim an administrative law judge (ALJ) rejected earlier this year.
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A federal appellate court has for a second time denied the AFL-CIO’s petition to intervene in litigation over TSCA limits on methylene chloride to defend the rule against industry challenges, appearing to guarantee that no environmental or labor group will be able to step in if the next administration stops defending the case or seeks to settle it.
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The California government district that owns and manages the Golden Gate Bridge is suing OSHA over a Trump-era guidance letter that loosened its safety standard for scaffolding, calling it an “illegal and unjustified attempt to reduce the factor of safety for temporary scaffolding designs,” that contradicts the regulatory text.
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