The Environmental Protection Agency is boosting its procedures for how to inspect chemical facilities to ensure they are complying with security rules, as well as sharing data and coordinating inspections with OSHA, as steps in meeting President Obama's executive order (EO) to bolster plant security, according to an EPA-devised plan.

OSHA has produced new broad-based guidance for the health care sector in the event of a worldwide infectious disease outbreak that strongly suggests respirator use is superior to surgical masks in an airborne outbreak situation, but cautions that respirators must be properly fitted and meet N95 or better filter standards as well as NIOSH certification to be effective in OSHA's view.

A technical report from federal chemical safety investigators into February's Tesoro Refinery sulfuric acid spill that injured two workers in California concludes in part that many of the nation's chemical facilities need to beef up their process safety management (PSM) activities to avert such accidents, a recommendation aligned with their push for more federal regulation and OSHA oversight on the issue.

A key Washington advocacy group for stronger safety and health protections is holding up OSHA's proposed rule tackling crystalline silica exposures as one of 10 key federal rulemakings that the Obama administration should complete as the rules would purportedly not only save lives but carry greater net benefits than costs.

OSHA is looking at revising its controversial electronic recordkeeping proposed rule to make it even tougher on employers by potentially mandating employer notifications to workers and strengthening whistleblower protections in response to some stakeholders' concerns that the proposed electronic posting of information might lead employers to retaliate against employees who report injuries and illnesses.

The West African Ebola virus outbreak and subsequent worries over transatlantic travel and spread of the disease could result in stepped-up calls on OSHA and state regulators to toughen their oversight of health sector workers' use of personal protective equipment (PPE), just as the SARS and H1N1 scares of recent years amplified calls for more stringent health care worker and patient protections.

NIOSH has backed off its relatively aggressive call earlier this year for OSHA to consider two approaches -- one, called the “safety case” model, which has drawn apprehension in both management and labor circles, and the other known as “inherently safer design” -- as OSHA casts a wide net for information about possible future changes to its process safety management (PSM) and related regulations.

The Obama administration is putting new pressure on Congress to increase OSHA penalties, leveraging a new federal interagency report on chemical safety and security to push in vague terms a highly controversial proposal earlier written into OSHA reform legislation, which gained tentative momentum early on in the Obama presidency but long since receded as a viable issue after Republicans seized control of the House in 2010.

OSHA as part of a federal interagency working group says it would consider an array of measures to strengthen the safety and security of industrial plants in the wake of recent disasters, including pushing facilities to use inherently safer technologies (IST), though agencies continue to oppose a requirement sought by activists for the Environmental Protection Agency to mandate specific IST.

The sudden resignation of a U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) member has exposed deep divisions over both the controversial “safety case” approach that the board's chair is pushing for chemical catastrophe prevention as well as broader concerns over a top-heavy CSB structure that gives rank-and-file appointees less policy influence -- internal tensions detailed in an exclusive conversation Thursday (May 22) between departing CSB member Beth Rosenberg and Inside OSHA Online.