OSHA has reached a settlement with the petroleum industry and unions following 21 months of complex negotiations in a hazardous communication case challenging the agency's enforcement of its March 2012 Global Harmonization Standard amendment, according to sources and documents obtained by Inside OSHA Online.
OSHA has extended by two days, until March 10, the comment period for its proposed rule to add electronic injury and illness submission requirements to the agency's recordkeeping rule.
The Small Business Administration is urging OSHA to work with industry to craft a “safe harbor” provision in the silica rule for construction employers who follow certain silica-safe work practices.
The federal Chemical Safety Board (CSB) is faulting voluntary oil industry safety standards for failing to prevent fires at refineries that killed or endangered workers and is reiterating a call for the Environmental Protection Agency to require inherently safer technologies (IST), such as use of less-toxic chemicals or other engineering changes to curb such industrial incidents.
As OSHA is under fire from industry for allegedly downplaying the cost of its recent silica rulemaking, another federal agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, is asking its scientific advisors how the agency could better use "economy-wide" modeling to determine the costs and benefits of its regulations.
Key House and Senate lawmakers are choosing different laws under which to create a new environmental chemical response program to address gaps highlighted by the recent West Virginia spill, with the Senate bill proposing to use the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) and the House proposing to use the Clean Water Act (CWA).
Chemicals, petroleum and other industry groups are urging President Obama and other officials to drop consideration of a federal mandate requiring use of inherently safer technologies (IST), such as benign chemicals, in any upcoming proposal on facility security, saying it will create an impossible burden and derail the president's effort to improve safety at the nation's industrial plants.
An industry with perhaps the most obvious of all possible stakes in OSHA's rulemaking to tackle crystalline silica hazards -- the brick-making business -- has started expressing serious apprehensions with the agency's regulatory approach, saying there are many unanswered questions about the technical feasibility of the rule, on top of concerns about its potential economic impact on companies that manufacture the building materials.
OSHA's proposed silica rule, even if eventually finalized, would be opened up to substantial legal challenges if the agency continues to refute a need for separate, formal avenues by the small business community to review and offer criticism of the proposal, a pair of GOP lawmakers suggested in a recent letter to OSHA chief David Michaels.
OSHA has pushed until Feb. 11 the deadline for submitting comments on its proposed crystalline silica rule -- in what amounts to a 15-day extension -- due to an apparent posting error on the web-based regulations portal that Republicans say could have led some affected stakeholders to believe the window had already closed on putting comments in the record.