Business groups are seeking to boost the chemical industry’s legal arguments that TSCA is intended to be a “gap-filling” statute between OSHA’s authority and other environmental and public health laws, arguing in a recently filed amicus brief that the Biden-era rule phasing out most ongoing uses of chrysotile asbestos improperly shifted that balance.

Petroleum refiners and chemical manufacturers are urging OSHA to ease compliance in a pending proposal to amend 2016 updates to the agency’s fall-protection requirements, asking OSHA to either repeal requirements for personal fall protection systems or grandfather in the use of cages or wells on existing fixed ladders.

Petroleum refiners and chemical manufacturers are urging OSHA to ease compliance in a pending proposal to amend 2016 updates to the agency’s fall-protection requirements, asking OSHA to either repeal requirements for personal fall protection systems or grandfather in the use of cages or wells on existing fixed ladders.

A federal district court in West Virginia has stayed a challenge by a pair of coal miners to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) layoffs of most of the staff at a key worker-safety agency last year, after the miners and HHS jointly asked for a pause in the litigation because HHS has now rescinded all the layoff notices.

Employer and industry groups are pressing California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) to scale back certain provisions of a long-overdue rule to update the agency’s first-aid kit requirements for general industry and construction companies, including requirements for additional protections for unique hazards and a new 3-4-minute time limit for employees to access kits.

The AFL-CIO is urging key members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee to reject a Republican draft discussion bill aimed at making numerous industry-requested changes to TSCA, arguing the legislation as written “would put American workers, their children, spouses and neighbors in danger.”

The House has approved a fiscal year 2026 spending bill that includes funds for OSHA and other worker-safety agencies at levels roughly the same as FY25, after House and Senate appropriators reached a deal on funding for several federal departments that rejects President Trump’s efforts to cut or nearly eliminate worker-protection funding.

EPA is poised to release its proposal scaling back the Biden administration’s Risk Management Program (RMP) rule, a measure that will spark heated debate as environmentalists charge the measure guts crucial protections from industrial incidents while industry groups say it is needed to end the “regulatory whiplash” that characterizes the policy.

EPA is poised to release its proposal scaling back the Biden administration’s Risk Management Program (RMP) rule, a measure that will spark heated debate as environmentalists charge the measure guts crucial protections from industrial incidents while industry groups say it is needed to end the “regulatory whiplash” that characterizes the policy.

The Labor Department (DOL) is urging the D.C. Circuit to uphold an OSHA citation against a Louisiana-based oil and gas drilling specialty contractor, arguing an administrative law judge (ALJ) correctly found the company exposed its employees to a hazard when a pipe ruptured at a gas well in south Texas in 2022.