California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) officials are facing pressure from labor unions, worker-safety advocates and some of the agency’s standards board members to tighten proposed first-time employee-safety rules for heat illness prevention at indoor worksites, primarily by lowering the temperature thresholds that trigger several worker-protection requirements.
Public-health groups are renewing litigation seeking to revive OSHA’s Obama-era electronic reporting rule even as a final rule expected to reinstate many or all of its requirements is awaiting White House approval, arguing that a federal court should scrap the 2018 rollback of those mandates immediately as their absence is causing ongoing harm.
Industry attorneys are questioning OSHA’s plan to soon issue an interim final rule (IFR) that the agency says will provide “clarity” on its use of subpoenas but which one attorney says may include major changes to the process without a notice and comment period.
Groups representing employers, industries, labor unions and worker-safety advocates are gearing up for what are expected to be highly contentious deliberations by California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) on its proposed first-time worker-safety rules for heat illness prevention at indoor worksites -- an effort that could also help shape standards at the federal level.
A National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health (NACOSH) working group crafting advice for OSHA’s long-awaited heat-danger standard appears set to recommend that the rule avoid tying protections to specific temperatures and instead account for variability in working conditions and geographic areas.
California OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) standards board is divided over a pending proposal to substantially strengthen worker-safety rules for lead exposure in the construction sector and general industry, with several members agreeing with employers that the draft standard should be slowed and scaled back and others arguing it is far overdue.
A scientist at EPA’s TSCA office says the agency’s collection of data on worker safety and chemical exposures differs in scope and purpose from industrial hygienists and employers’ methods, offering more insight into the program’s assessment process just as it is floating its first set of workplace safety standards in a newly proposed rule for methylene chloride.
EPA chemicals chief Michal Freedhoff used the launch of the agency’s landmark TSCA risk-management proposal for methylene chloride to temper top officials’ prior statements that cast the rule and its worker-protection standards as a model for future chemical regulations under the law, saying key elements of the draft rest on case-specific factors.
EPA’s newly proposed TSCA rule for methylene chloride would require a quick phaseout of most uses of the solvent but allows others to continue under a strict workplace exposure limit with monitoring and protective-gear mandates based on OSHA standards -- a line the agency’s chemicals chief says her office drew based on its “trust” in those sectors to adopt its safeguards.
EPA is proposing new measures that would significantly strengthen regulatory oversight of emissions of the solvent ethylene oxide (EtO) from sterilization facilities and other settings, unveiling plans to set strict new workplace safety standards under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) as well as air emissions limits to mitigate high cancer risks.