The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), which aims to prevent fatalities and injuries at U.S. mines, is announcing more than $10.5 million in funding for states to provide training and retraining of mine operators and their employees, covering all aspects of mining including emergency preparedness and exposures to dust hazards.
OSHA and the grain industry are floating a series of steps that owners of grain storage facilities should consider in order to reduce the risk of worker accidents and deaths, saying “common sense” measures might help reduce the increasing risk of entrapment and fatalities at the thousands of grain bins across the United States.
Even as the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) works to continue operating despite a one-member board and a lack of administrative resources, industry attorneys say it still has the capacity to boost inspections of incidents involving using potentially hazardous chemicals from Trump-era levels, should officials choose to take that path.
OSHA is touting a $1.5 million settlement in a criminal enforcement case centered on a worker’s 2016 death by crushing at an Alabama auto-parts plant, including a three-year judicially mandated timeline for the firm to improve hazardous energy control measures at the facility.
OSHA is launching its next round of Susan Harwood Training Grants despite the Trump administration’s long-running efforts to defund the program, marking a win for defenders of the grants that support training and education for workers and employers on workplace safety and health hazards, responsibilities and rights.
EPA is urging a federal appeals court to reject environmentalists’ request to stay litigation challenging its rollback of Obama-era chemical disaster safety mandates as the agency weighs their reconsideration petitions, arguing a stay runs counter to the Clean Air Act (CAA) even if petitions for rule reconsideration are pending.
As they seek to stall legal challenges, critics of EPA’s rule rolling back Obama-era chemical disaster safety mandates are urging the agency to reconsider the measure, arguing in administrative petitions that officials “cherry pick[ed]” new data, ignored significant continuing chemical accidents and relied on new rationales.
Facing legal and administrative deadlines, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) has finalized a first-time rule that mandates reports from chemical facilities in the wake of accidental chemical releases, despite industry claims that the rule is unnecessary or that the board should rely on other accident reports that facilities submit to other federal entities such as EPA or OSHA.
Senators are warning that the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) risks losing its quorum when one of its two current member’s terms expires next week and are calling for the Senate to quickly vote on a pending Trump administration nominee, though the vote appears to have stalled amid partisan wrangling.
Major industry groups are seeking to intervene on EPA’s behalf in litigation brought by environmentalists and a labor union challenging the agency’s rollback of Obama-era Risk Management Plan (RMP) facility safety mandates, an action the industry groups may need should President Trump lose re-election and the next administration abandons its defense of the rollback.