The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is launching development of “a hazard review document” for outdoor workers’ exposures to wildfire smoke, building on a multi-agency effort to limit the fires and their effects that the White House launched late last year.
September 17, 2026
California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) officials have released a model for firms to draft workplace violence-prevention plans required by a controversial 2023 state law that sought to broaden the state’s long-standing violence protections for healthcare workers to “general industry,” as employer groups expect a scramble to put the plans in place by a July 1 deadline.
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The Biden administration is asking Congress to set OSHA’s budget at $655.463 million in fiscal year 2025 as part of a pared-down budget for the Department of Labor (DOL) as a whole -- an increase from current levels but substantially below what the White House sought in prior appropriations requests.
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Chemical companies and trade groups are renewing calls to loosen EPA’s impending rule setting strict worker-protection requirements for the solvent methylene chloride, arguing in recent White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) meetings that the agency must adopt broader exemptions and longer compliance timelines in order to make the policy workable.
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EPA chemicals chief Michal Freedhoff used a March 5 speech to reiterate her defenses of the agency’s approach to workplace safety in a series of landmark chemical-safety rules, seeking to counter arguments that it is improperly stepping into areas that should be the domain of OSHA or older environmental programs.
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Industry groups and other supporters of the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program are urging lawmakers to reauthorize it as part of an emerging fiscal year 2024 appropriations package that could be finalized before the end of the month.
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California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) is facing both a stakeholder petition and pending legislation seeking what would be a pioneering rule mandating that workplace first-aid kits include the nasal spray naloxone hydrochloride -- a medication to rapidly reverse opioid overdoses -- but the calls are facing early employer objections over costs and feasibility.
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EPA’s newly final Risk Management Program (RMP) update is facing criticism from all sides over its cost-benefit calculations, especially for novel mandates to consider climate impacts and safer technologies -- provisions that industry says will be unworkably expensive but which pro-regulatory advocates say carry even greater benefits than the rule assumes.
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EPA has finalized long-anticipated updates to the Risk Management Program (RMP), with several changes that aim to toughen the proposal issued in 2022 -- including a new mandate that a broader list of facilities now required to perform a safer technology alternatives analysis (STAA) adopt at least one of its recommendations, a win for environmentalists who argued that such upgrades should not be voluntary.
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Environmental groups are arguing that EPA’s first draft TSCA risk evaluation since the Trump era fails to consider the “aggregate” risks workers and other vulnerable populations face from toxic chemicals, as they press the agency to instead assess -- and eventually regulate -- dangers from multiple sources at once.
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Industry groups and unions are raising sharply contrasting arguments on OSHA’s pending final rule to allow worker representatives to take part in enforcement “walkaround” inspections even if they are not employed at the site, with employers calling the rule “unconstitutional” and demanding it be scrapped while labor groups are strongly backing it.
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Employers’ attorneys are highlighting California OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) newly released list of its most frequently cited standards in recent enforcement actions -- led by injury and illness prevention plans and outdoor heat exposure programs -- to show how the state agency’s enforcement priorities differ significantly from federal OSHA’s.
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California lawmakers have introduced several bills to bolster requirements in the state’s safety standards covering indoor and outdoor heat exposure and crystalline silica exposure in “engineered stone fabrication” businesses and add enforcement heft to the policies, continuing a trend of using legislation to toughen California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) rules.
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OSHA’s proposed safety standard for emergency responders includes a call for information on claims that firefighters face health risks from toxic, long-lasting chemicals known as PFAS that are used as water- and oil-proofing agents in their protective gear -- the latest step in a long-running debate on that question.
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Two conservative lawyers are expecting the Supreme Court will side with petitioners and expand the six-year statute of limitations to bring lawsuits challenging OSHA and other federal agencies’ actions under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) after the court heard oral arguments this week in a high-profile administrative law case.
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Environmentalists are renewing their calls for EPA to “ban” vinyl chloride, one of five substances the agency is considering prioritizing for risk evaluation under TSCA, saying such a rule is needed to protect workers who use either the cancer-causing chemical or plastics made from it -- including the ubiquitous polyvinyl chloride (PVC).
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Supreme Court justices appeared to offer little clarity during Feb. 20 oral arguments on how they will decide when the Administrative Procedure Act’s (APA) six-year statute of limitations starts to run, appearing torn between concern over fairness to regulated parties and fear of reopening decades-old policies from OSHA and other agencies.
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California OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) standards board has approved tough new worker-safety rules for lead exposure in the construction and general industry sectors to take effect next year, codifying a proposal that had already been held up as a potential model for other states and federal OSHA, which is weighing updates to its own lead policies.
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Republicans on the House Workforce Committee are renewing their attacks on OSHA’s rulemaking to revive an Obama-era policy allowing worker representatives to take part in enforcement “walkaround” inspections even if they are not employed at the site, charging that the rule “interferes in labor-management relations” as the White House has begun reviewing the final policy.
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Attorneys for an industry law firm used a recent webinar to highlight what they say are likely pitfalls for employers as OSHA’s electronic recordkeeping and reporting rule comes into effect this year, including a heightened need to track injuries as they happen and the threat of repeated citations if a company fails to implement the new program.
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