OSHA's newly rolled-out areas of emphasis for compliance officers conducting hospital and nursing home inspections -- focused intently on ergonomic issues, bloodborne pathogens, workplace violence, tuberculosis and slips, trips and falls -- comes after lengthy and intense pressure by health care worker advocates, particularly the nurses' lobby, on the agency to increase inspectors' concentration on inpatient facilities, Washington sources say.

NIOSH says researchers have found that attaching a regular shop vacuum to a dust-collecting circular saw can provide a “simple, low cost solution” to reduce exposure to hazardous dust when construction workers cut fiber-cement siding -- findings that come as OSHA works intently to finalize a controversial rule to reduce exposures to crystalline silica dust, which is a major concern in dealing with that type of construction material.

OSHA fully expects before the Obama administration ends to finalize and enact new regulations aimed at reducing workplace hazards from crystalline silica dust, OSHA's top non-career deputy told safety and health activists at a Maryland conference Wednesday (June 3).

OSHA may be only four months away from publishing a long-promised and highly controversial rule to compel employers to submit electronic records of work-related injuries and illnesses, with the September date for the rule inked in the latest regulatory agenda only a month slip from the agency's earlier target, leaving observers to speculate the Obama administration is determined to finish the rule but needs to iron out final technical details before publishing it.

A key organization of industrial hygienists has added to stakeholder calls, mostly among worker health activists and their Democratic allies on Capitol Hill, for the Obama administration to release for public review OSHA's stalled regulatory proposal to reduce occupational exposure to beryllium, but the White House remains reticent on the timing of the rule's potential publication.

A rule designed to reduce health hazards from inhalation of crystalline silica dust in the workplace will be completed in this administration, a top Labor Department official told an audience Tuesday at DOL headquarters in Washington.

A national umbrella group of worker advocacy organizations on Thursday (April 23) urged federal and state law enforcement officials -- including the Justice Department working in concert with OSHA officials -- to increase the number of criminal prosecutions brought in severe safety and health cases, particularly ones involving fatalities and alleged willful violations of the OSH Act.

OSHA's recent citations against a New York supplier of plastic balls used in hydraulic fracturing, alleging process safety management (PSM) violations and other hazards, appears to underscore the agency's heightened attention to safety in the large-scale use of chemicals, with one OSHA official lodging concern about the storage or use of more than 1,000 pounds of formaldehyde.

OSHA on Monday renewed its alliance with the Society for Chemical Hazard Communication to reduce and prevent worker exposure to chemical hazards, a move that comes as OSHA explores the potential for new rulemaking to update its worker right-to-know regulations.

A review of Cal/OSHA's oversight of oil refinery safety, called for by state lawmakers following work site accidents, finds that facilities generally are complying with six out of seven new elements of the Department of Industrial Relations' evolving process safety management (PSM) requirements.