Environmental, labor and public interest groups are urging White House officials to preserve and quickly implement the Obama-era rule bolstering EPA's facility accident prevention program, even as the Trump administration prepares to issue a plan that is widely expected to scale back the regulation.

House Speaker Paul Ryan's (R-WI) announcement that he would not be seeking reelection in the upcoming midterms appears to have boosted prospects for Democrat Randy Bryce, a union iron worker who is running on a platform that pledges to “fully fund” OSHA in the face of the Trump administration's budget cuts.

A healthy food group is challenging the safety record of a demonstration facility that is operating under an Agriculture Department (USDA) regulatory waiver program as the agency considers a planned rule that would ease oversight and increase line speeds at swine processing facilities, charging the facility lost “process control,” and found increased contamination and personnel hazards when line speeds increased.

A healthy food group is challenging the safety record of a demonstration facility that is operating under an Agriculture Department (USDA) regulatory waiver program as the agency considers a planned rule that would ease oversight and increase line speeds at swine processing facilities, charging the facility lost “process control,” and found increased contamination and personnel hazards when line speeds increased.

OSHA has submitted a final version of the Trump administration’s plan to scale-back Obama-era beryllium standards to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review, just as slag- and non-slag abrasive producers are intensifying their battle over which products would trigger the rule's safety requirements.

OSHA has submitted a final version of the Trump administration’s plan to scale-back Obama-era beryllium standards to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review, just as slag- and non-slag abrasive producers are intensifying their battle over which products would trigger the rule's safety requirements.

OSHA has submitted a final version of the Trump administration’s plan to scale-back Obama-era beryllium standards to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review, just as slag- and non-slag abrasive producers are intensifying their battle over which products would trigger the rule's safety requirements.

EPA is touting a list of more than two dozen federal rules from 1983 to 2013 in which agencies have delayed existing regulations while weighing revisions to those policies, in response to an appellate court order to provide the list in a suit testing EPA's delay of an Obama-era facility safety rule while the agency reconsiders the regulation.

The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) is warning that a draft EPA rule allowing a new use of an existing chemical fails to adequately assess risks to workers and is “legally vulnerable,” suggesting a new chemical-specific path for groups to challenge EPA's approval of new chemical uses under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

Six states operating under OSHA-approved state plans have yet to adopt their own rules to implement the Obama OSHA's March 2016 regulation updating limits for exposure to silica, raising legal questions and warnings from observers that it poses a significant “compliance dilemma” and jeopardizes workers' safety.