The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) has proposed a long-awaited update to its 50-year-old standards for silica dust, advancing a rulemaking process that has been in progress for many years but hit repeated delays over the intervening years, despite OSHA enacting a parallel update to its own silica rules in 2016.
The Department of Labor’s (DOL) Office of Inspector General (OIG) says workplace safety and health ranks as one of the department’s top “management challenges,” citing a decline in OSHA enforcement, mounting whistleblower investigations, and silica protections as key subjects where the agency must improve.
OSHA is rejecting an Inspector General (OIG) report that found silica standard inspections dropped by 50 percent when its long-standing enforcement emphasis program lapsed and recommended policy reforms to avoid such gaps, arguing that it is not “appropriate” for the watchdog office to weigh in on the agency’s enforcement priorities.
OSHA is seeking nominees to its Advisory Committee on Construction Safety and Health (ACCSH) as 14 of the panel’s 15 members near the expiration of their two-year terms, opening the possibility that the agency’s current leaders could appoint ACCSH’s new membership ahead of the transition to the Biden administration.
Five Democratic senators are pushing the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) to quickly craft a long-pending update to its silica standard in response to a recent Office of Inspector General (OIG) report that found its current policies to be “out of date” and insufficiently protective of workers’ health.
The National Institute for Occupation Safety and Health (NIOSH) is launching a pilot study to evaluate workplace hazards facing landscapers and groundskeepers and to develop “appropriate” controls for one of the highest-risk sectors, seeking participants to take part as NIOSH eyes options for reducing workers’ exposures to substances like silica.
OSHA has launched a National Emphasis Program (NEP) to focus its resources on enforcing silica standards for manufacturing, construction and several other industries, while also requiring states to adopt the NEP in order to identify and reduce or eliminate worker exposures to respirable crystalline silica (RCS) in the affected sectors.
The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has quickly competed its review of OSHA’s draft request for information (RFI) that could help open the door to easing implementation of the Obama administration’s rule requiring protective equipment for construction workers exposed to crystalline silica.
After months of delay, OSHA has formally submitted to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) a draft request for information (RFI) that could eventually open the door to easing implementation of the Obama administration’s rule requiring protective equipment for construction workers exposed to crystalline silica.
In a new final agenda for construction safety research, a coalition convened by NIOSH is backing labor groups' calls for prioritizing research on protecting workers from falls and during natural or man-made disasters, while also softening past criticism of OSHA's lockout/tagout standard, which the Obama OSHA sought to revise, despite industry opposition.