The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) has sent its final rule updating the 50-year-old standards for respirable crystalline silica (RCS) to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for interagency review, advancing a long-delayed rulemaking process and teeing up a last round of debate on the policy.
September 17, 2026
California’s public-health authority has eased its guidance on when COVID-19 is likely to be contagious, greatly loosening the state OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) requirement for employers to isolate workers with confirmed infections and likely also easing other elements of its permanent safety rules for the coronavirus, experts say.
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Attorneys and former officials say the Senate’s failure to confirm a second member to the Occupational Safety and Health Association Review Commission (OSHRC) threatens short- and long-term complications for OSHA enforcement, including a backlog of cases and prolonged uncertainty on whether employers will be penalized for failing to abate alleged violations.
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OSHA has announced its annual inflation adjustments to minimum and maximum OSH Act penalties for violations cited in the coming year, raising both figures by about 3.2 percent and triggering a regulatory mandate for state plans to apply a matching adjustment to their own penalties, amid continuing litigation over whether than requirement is lawful.
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California OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) standards board is gearing up to consider a long-pending, controversial proposal to adopt updated federal fall-protection safety standards for residential frame construction, amid continued fierce opposition from construction companies, employers and industry groups.
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A coalition of labor and environmental groups is urging OSHA to formally propose its long-delayed heat-danger standard before the start of summer, and to prioritize what they say are key elements for the eventual rule such as requiring employers to craft mandatory written safety programs and allow flexibility only within “careful” limits.
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A top official at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) says her team is refocusing their facility-safety resources on the voluntary ChemLock initiative after Congress allowed the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program to expire, but underlined that it “is not a substitute in any way” for binding regulation.
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California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) officials are revising a key proposal to exempt short-term “incidental” exposures from first-time heat safety rules governing indoor worksites, in response to complaints by employer groups that a previous carve-out was much too limited and ahead of a key standards board vote expected in March.
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An industry law firm is urging companies to be ready to report workplace monitoring data for the five chemicals EPA has targeted for TSCA’s prioritization process, warning that regulators may assume any sectors that have not sent such data will be unable to implement new exposure limits and should have their uses of the substances banned instead.
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Jeff Killip is resigning as chief of California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) after less than two years with the agency in order to return to his former home in Washington state, amid a backlog of worker-safety rulemakings and a stubbornly high staff vacancy rate at the Golden State’s worker-safety agency.
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The Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) is again urging OSHA to either extend current safety standards to oil and gas drilling operations or craft a new rule for the sector in its report on a fatal 2020 blowout at a Texas oil well.
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Trade groups are urging EPA to rewrite not only its proposed TSCA exposure limit for trichloroethylene (TCE) but also its broader approach to crafting existing chemical exposure limits (ECELs) under the toxics law, arguing that the current process is “opaque” and must at minimum go through a public peer review.
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EPA is requiring chemical manufacturers and processors to report all data they possess on “significant adverse human health and environmental effects” from exposure to the industrial chemical 4,4'-Methylene bis(2-chloroaniline) (MBOCA), invoking a little-used power requiring employers to submit information on worker harms gathered as long as 30 years ago.
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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit will not revisit its ruling upholding as constitutional the OSH Act provisions granting OSHA’s standard-setting authority, after the judges rejected claims by a contracting company that the decision was incorrect as a matter of law and created a circuit split on when the agency must regulate to address workplace dangers.
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EPA’s proposal to change how TSCA chemical evaluations consider workers’ use of personal protective equipment (PPE) is drawing starkly different interpretations from industry and a labor-environmental coalition, with each side insisting that the agency is enacting the other’s preferred approach and demanding a reversal.
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Led by President Joe Biden, OSHA has unveiled its long-promised proposal to set health and safety standards for “emergency responders,” replacing a current rule that applies only to firefighters with one that also covers emergency medical personnel and search-and-rescue workers, and floating a long list of requirements that aim to address dangers ranging from toxic chemicals and equipment failures to the mental health impacts of overwork.
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Industry figures say enough lawmakers are signaling support for reauthorizing the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program that they expect “opportunities” for a renewal in the new year -- though still with some uncertainty over whether that support will be enough to push a bill across the finish line.
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The court hearing South Carolina's challenge to the OSHA mandate for states to match inflation adjustments in federal OSH Act penalties is staying the case pending a Supreme Court decision on the Administrative Procedure Act's (APA) statute of limitations, rejecting arguments from the agency that legal issues in the two are largely unrelated.
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Amid rising illness and deaths, California OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) standards board has adopted an emergency temporary standard (ETS) for crystalline silica exposure in “engineered stone fabrication shops,” rejecting calls by industry representatives to consider amendments that would ease some of the rule’s stringent new worker-safety requirements.
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The Biden administration is launching a new government-wide initiative to strengthen cost-benefit analyses that OSHA and other agencies use to justify key rules, signaling that officials are planning to collaborate with private sector researchers to help identify data gaps and obstacles to improving quantification and monetization of costs and benefits.
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