Rulemaking

OSHA has appointed three new members to the National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health (NACOSH) and reappointed a fourth, ensuring the 12-member panel is fully staffed although it is uncertain whether the incoming Trump administration will utilize the committee tasked with crafting policy recommendations.

Employers are growing apprehensive about ensuring they are complying with California OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) stringent new worker-safety standard for lead exposure in the construction and general industry sectors because they say the agency has not yet issued key guidance documents, even though the new rules went into effect Jan. 1.

California OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) standards board has adopted final, permanent standards to protect fabricated stone workers from exposure to crystalline silica despite continuing pushback from industry leaders, who claim that dozens of onerous new requirements and likely uneven enforcement will penalize businesses that are adequately protecting employees.

EPA has proposed a safety rule for pigment violet 29 (PV29) that would require facilities to provide personal protective equipment (PPE) to workers who could be exposed to its dry-powder form, but in a break from its other risk-management policies, the agency is not setting an exposure limit for the chemical or seeking to ban any of its uses.

The Biden OSHA could advance as many as four rules ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, according to its new regulatory agenda, including a long-awaited proposed infectious disease safety standard, fall protection mandates for elevated walking surfaces, and several statute-specific whistleblower protection procedures.

EPA has issued a final TSCA risk management rule for the solvent carbon tetrachloride (CTC) that sets strict new worker-protection requirements for many applications of the chemical while allowing industry to continue most if not all of those current uses, while extending key compliance deadlines from what it proposed last year.

OSHA has finalized as proposed a long-awaited rule that expands fit-testing requirements for personal protective equipment (PPE) in construction -- a measure the agency has argued will protect workers who are smaller or larger than average adults, especially women, but which could be a rollback priority for the incoming Trump administration.

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has completed review of final EPA rules seeking to limit workplace risks from three toxic solvents, teeing up their release in the last weeks of the Biden administration -- and likely efforts to narrow or reverse them after President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

OSHA is giving stakeholders another two weeks to file comments on its proposed heat safety standard, pushing the deadline from Dec. 30 into the new year -- though far sooner than the two months or more that many employer groups sought -- while also scheduling an online hearing on the rule for summer.

California OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) standards board is launching an advisory committee that will weigh amending state safety rules to eventually allow deployment of certain types of autonomous agricultural equipment, amid continued pushback from labor advocacy groups.