Rulemaking

OSHA chief Doug Parker is urging workers and safety advocates to use public comments on the agency’s proposed heat-illness standard to tell “stories” of dangers they and their co-workers have faced from excessive heat and how businesses have successfully addressed them, in order to illustrate the potential benefits of new safety measures.

OSHA is formally publishing its heat safety standard for indoor and outdoor work, over a month after first unveiling text for the long-awaited regulation, beginning a 120-day public comment period that would close just weeks before President Joe Biden’s term ends -- and thus leaves further work on the rulemaking to the next administration.

California OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) standards board has approved a set of highly contentious regulatory amendments to its fall-protection standard for residential construction workers in order to meet federal OSHA’s requirements for such rules, despite reluctance from the panelists and employers’ claims that current state practices are more protective.

Several state-level sheriffs’ associations are warning OSHA that its proposed health and safety standard for “emergency responders” did not properly consider the costs it would impose, particularly for smaller search and rescue (SAR) organizations, echoing objections that a host of local firefighting companies has raised against the rule.

Lawmakers on the House workforce protection subcommittee used a recent hearing to express competing arguments about OSHA’s recent slate of regulatory actions including its controversial final rule on worker representatives in enforcement walkarounds and pending proposed safety standards for heat danger and emergency-response workers.

California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) is preparing to implement its first-time indoor heat worker-protection standards -- which generally require employers to implement new employee-safety measures when indoor temperatures reach 82 degrees -- after they formally took effect July 23, following an expedited review by the state’s Office of Administrative Law (OAL).

OSHA is seeking nominees to its National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health (NACOSH) to replace the four members on the 12-seat panel whose terms are slated to end in January.

The Biden administration has released its latest Unified Agenda of regulatory actions, detailing updated timelines for a host of long-pending OSHA policies along with a single newly announced rulemaking process where the agency says it plans to consider whether to approve a new fit-testing protocol for respiratory protective gear.

OSHA has released its proposed nationwide heat illness and injury prevention standard after years of development, closely following the outline it previewed to agency advisors earlier this year that mandates written safety plans at both indoor and outdoor work sites, with triggers for action based on either heat index or wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT) measurements.

A broad coalition of unions, public-health groups and environmentalists is petitioning the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to recognize extreme heat and related wildfires as “major disasters” eligible for federal relief funding, arguing the move would help local authorities quickly ramp up protections for workers and vulnerable communities.