Rulemaking

The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) has sent its final rule updating the 50-year-old standards for respirable crystalline silica (RCS) to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for interagency review, advancing a long-delayed rulemaking process and teeing up a last round of debate on the policy.

California OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) standards board is gearing up to consider a long-pending, controversial proposal to adopt updated federal fall-protection safety standards for residential frame construction, amid continued fierce opposition from construction companies, employers and industry groups.

A coalition of labor and environmental groups is urging OSHA to formally propose its long-delayed heat-danger standard before the start of summer, and to prioritize what they say are key elements for the eventual rule such as requiring employers to craft mandatory written safety programs and allow flexibility only within “careful” limits.

Trade groups are urging EPA to rewrite not only its proposed TSCA exposure limit for trichloroethylene (TCE) but also its broader approach to crafting existing chemical exposure limits (ECELs) under the toxics law, arguing that the current process is “opaque” and must at minimum go through a public peer review.

EPA’s proposal to change how TSCA chemical evaluations consider workers’ use of personal protective equipment (PPE) is drawing starkly different interpretations from industry and a labor-environmental coalition, with each side insisting that the agency is enacting the other’s preferred approach and demanding a reversal.

Led by President Joe Biden, OSHA has unveiled its long-promised proposal to set health and safety standards for “emergency responders,” replacing a current rule that applies only to firefighters with one that also covers emergency medical personnel and search-and-rescue workers, and floating a long list of requirements that aim to address dangers ranging from toxic chemicals and equipment failures to the mental health impacts of overwork.

Amid rising illness and deaths, California OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) standards board has adopted an emergency temporary standard (ETS) for crystalline silica exposure in “engineered stone fabrication shops,” rejecting calls by industry representatives to consider amendments that would ease some of the rule’s stringent new worker-safety requirements.

The Biden administration is launching a new government-wide initiative to strengthen cost-benefit analyses that OSHA and other agencies use to justify key rules, signaling that officials are planning to collaborate with private sector researchers to help identify data gaps and obstacles to improving quantification and monetization of costs and benefits.

EPA has released a draft TSCA evaluation of the flame retardant tris(2-chloroethyl) phosphate (TCEP), finding that nine of 20 uses the agency considered contribute to unreasonable risk from the “whole chemical” and floating a workplace limit for airborne exposures -- measures that if finalized could support broad regulation under the toxics law.

OSHA’s latest regulatory agenda says it intends to advance several long-promised rules in either the final days of 2023 or early 2024, including updated safety standards for powered industrial trucks and elevated walking surfaces, even higher-profile rulemakings such as those for heat danger, workplace violence and infectious diseases remain on uncertain timelines.