A rule designed to reduce health hazards from inhalation of crystalline silica dust in the workplace will be completed in this administration, a top Labor Department official told an audience Tuesday at DOL headquarters in Washington.
A national umbrella group of worker advocacy organizations on Thursday (April 23) urged federal and state law enforcement officials -- including the Justice Department working in concert with OSHA officials -- to increase the number of criminal prosecutions brought in severe safety and health cases, particularly ones involving fatalities and alleged willful violations of the OSH Act.
OSHA's recent citations against a New York supplier of plastic balls used in hydraulic fracturing, alleging process safety management (PSM) violations and other hazards, appears to underscore the agency's heightened attention to safety in the large-scale use of chemicals, with one OSHA official lodging concern about the storage or use of more than 1,000 pounds of formaldehyde.
OSHA on Monday renewed its alliance with the Society for Chemical Hazard Communication to reduce and prevent worker exposure to chemical hazards, a move that comes as OSHA explores the potential for new rulemaking to update its worker right-to-know regulations.
A review of Cal/OSHA's oversight of oil refinery safety, called for by state lawmakers following work site accidents, finds that facilities generally are complying with six out of seven new elements of the Department of Industrial Relations' evolving process safety management (PSM) requirements.
Construction stakeholders are applying new pressure on OSHA to take into account the long-term economic impact of the agency's proposed crystalline silica rule, sending new data to regulators that the sector argues show much deeper ripple effects than earlier estimated from the rule based on passed-along price increases for building materials.
Federal chemical safety experts are raising concern about what they characterize as serious gaps in process safety management regulations on the 10th anniversary of the explosion and fire at BP Texas City refinery, which the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) says was the most serious refinery accident it ever investigated.
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) has freed up investigative resources by completing phases of two major investigations and is now in a position to probe last month's explosion at the ExxonMobil refinery in Torrance, CA, which could eventually lead to safety recommendations to federal and California OSHA.
OSHA and NIOSH are voicing concern about exposures to respirable silica dust in stone countertop manufacturing, as OSHA continues analyzing data toward a potential final rule on silica before the end of the Obama administration.
The Obama administration is trying to reassure congressional appropriators of OSHA's intent to exhaustively review the wide array of data it has collected over the years as it attempts to move forward with a crystalline silica rulemaking, but the move is also generating deep concern among organized labor officials that detailed analysis could derail the rulemaking once Obama leaves office.