OSHA’s Midwest Region V is tightening enforcement of a host of standards for workers who clean mobile storage tanks used in rail and truck shipping, saying 97 safety incidents and 23 deaths suffered by workers in the sector since 2016 are enough to justify a formal regional emphasis program (REP).
September 16, 2026
The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) has struck down OSHA’s citation against a New Jersey construction company for a 2017 accident that the agency claimed violated lockout/tagout requirements in its construction safety standard, taking a narrow view of the “maintenance” work that triggers those provisions.
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The House Appropriations Committee is pushing OSHA to impose higher penalties for safety violations, update its standard for workplace noise and quickly craft a rule to protect workers from heat illness, arguing that those and other steps are needed to undo long-term “erosion” of the agency’s enforcement program.
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OSHA has published its first handbook for compliance officers to enforce the COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) just as the rule’s first wave of employer mandates are going into effect, with guidelines for both remote and in-person inspections at healthcare facilities as well as criteria for applying the rule’s site-specific exemptions.
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The Department of Labor (DOL) is suing a New York healthcare center over allegations that it fired a whistleblower who raised alarms over potential COVID-19 exposures at the business -- the first time it has announced opening a lawsuit over whistleblower claims related to the pandemic.
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OSHA has released four new regulatory interpretation letters that aim to clarify several recordkeeping and reporting requirements, including new guidance for workers’ newly discovered chemical sensitivities, accidents during a commute, injuries related to both on- and off-the-job activity, and mandatory training at a third-party site.
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OSHA is walking back its guidance for employers to treat adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccination as “work-related” for recordkeeping and reporting purposes if the vaccine was “required” for workers, promising not to enforce that mandate until at least 2022 in order to avoid “any appearance of discouraging” vaccination.
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An OSHA enforcement official says the agency is working with the Department of Labor’s Office of the Solicitor (SOL) on policies for considering vaccinated workers’ status as it implements its COVID-19 national emphasis program (NEP), with delegated states slated to decide soon on whether to adopt the federal enforcement plan.
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OSHA has issued interim enforcement guidance for revisions the Trump administration made last year to the agency’s beryllium standards, detailing procedures to guide compliance officers’ site inspections and citations for alleged violations of the revised policies for general industry worksites, shipyards and construction sites.
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OSHA is touting a proposed $265,265 penalty against the discount retail chain Dollar Tree as highlighting the latest in a long string of violations by a company with “a history of not taking the safety of its workers and customers seriously,” the latest sign that the agency has dropped a Trump-era ban on “regulation by shaming.”
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