Worker-safety and environmental groups are seeking alternative paths to a comprehensive emergency temporary standard (ETS) for heat illness including a push for state-level policies, citing concerns that OSHA lacks the staff or resources to quickly craft such a rule alongside its top priority of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.
A new Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) raises the already-high bar OSHA must clear to cite employers for a willful violation of its noise exposure standard, holding that the agency must go beyond showing that an employer had a heightened awareness of the standard.
OSHA’s nationwide suicide-prevention training initiative for the construction sector could build a record to support for formal guidance or even enforcement action, several employers’ attorneys tell Inside OSHA, though they say the agency is likely to face an uphill battle if it does pursue that path.
OSHA’s deputy regulatory chief told an Aug. 31 conference the agency plans to let its COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) expire after a six-month window, noting that while future developments could lead officials to reverse course, its plan “at this point” is to allow the rule to sunset before proposing a permanent disease rule.
California lawmakers are advancing several worker-safety bills supported by labor unions and opposed by employer groups ahead of a Sept. 10 deadline to pass legislation, including measures aimed at protecting warehouse employees and speeding new safety rules by exempting them from mandatory cost-impact analyses.
Labor groups are urging OSHA to rework and make permanent its temporary COVID-19 standard, including calls from nurses to mandate vaccination for health workers while general-industry unions hope to extend the rule to all sectors and decouple it from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines.
Health care employers say OSHA’s COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) conflicts with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance and say recent findings supports loosening key provisions in the rule, alongside calls to delay implementation by up to six months and scrap plans to enact a permanent version of the ETS.
As California struggles to contain record-setting wildfires, state lawmakers appear poised to approve legislation that would require Cal/OSHA to create a “wildfire strike team” it could deploy during dangerous air quality events to investigate agricultural workplaces for compliance with wildfire smoke worker-safety requirements.
OSHA is launching a novel nationwide suicide-prevention training initiative for the construction sector, expanding on a 2020 regional effort based in part on a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that found the industry’s suicide rate was four times higher than that of the general population.
A recently published study suggests that existing California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) standards for heat-related illness (HRI) do not adequately protect the state’s agricultural workers and recommends reforms similar to those labor groups and others are seeking in their petition for an OSHA heat standard.
California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) is facing competing pressures on how to rework its COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) into what is expected to become a permanent rule, including from some of its standards board members and labor unions who want more stringent protections, and from employers seeking more flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances.
OSHA’s new general-industry guidance tightening recommendations for face coverings in the workplace is drawing a mixed response from employers’ attorneys, with some praising the agency for aligning its policy with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) while others say the precise scope of the guide is still unclear.
OSHA is seeking a $1.3 million fine against a Massachusetts contractor over a Feb. 24 accident that killed two workers, in the latest step of its push to bolster enforcement against repeat, willful and severe violations of safety standards.
Environmental groups are urging EPA to draw on OSHA data on workplace chemical exposures in its newly announced “tiered” reporting rule under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), alongside arguments that officials should tighten their current plans for the rule in order to generate new data that could aid OSHA and other agencies.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is crafting a five-year action plan to improve the efficacy of personal protective equipment (PPE) for first responders after a meeting where speakers from several public-safety agencies warned of problems with their gear including thermal stress and integrity after exposure to disinfectants.
OSHA has updated its COVID-19 guidance to recommend face coverings for workers at indoor work sites in areas with “substantial or high transmission” of the disease regardless of vaccination status, based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) new guide aimed at stemming the more-contagious “Delta” coronavirus variant.
Over the objections of labor unions and other groups, a federal appellate court has granted Biden administration requests to remand Trump-era evaluations of the flame retardant cluster known as HBCD as well as the solvent 1,4-dioxane, clearing the way for officials to redo the analyses without necessarily addressing petitioners’ legal claims.
The sudden death of AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka leaves the country’s largest labor group at a potential crossroads just as it is in position to help shape OSHA policymaking and other Labor Department actions in the Biden administration, as well as to make a renewed push for congressional passage of several longstanding worker-safety bills.
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a think tank that aims to bolster protections for “low- and middle-income workers,” is urging Congress to step up fiscal year 2022 funding for OSHA as part of a broader push to boost resources for “worker protection agencies,” just as the Senate is ramping up debate on its FY22 appropriations bills.
A top official at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) says the sheer number of engineered nanomaterials in use has made targeted toxicity testing impractical despite a reporting mandate forcing agencies to focus on identifying analogues they can use as the basis for risk assessments.