Public interest advocate Ralph Nader worries that OSHA has increasingly been denied the authority it needs to carry out its mission to craft workplace safety and health rules and effectively enforce them across U.S industry sectors, with the White House under both parties gradually sapping the agency of the power to take forceful policy action, the activist and onetime presidential contender tells Inside OSHA Online.

OSHA and NIOSH are urging health care employers to craft “fatigue risk management plans” to head off risks to workers responding to Ebola situations where officials are concerned that health responders have been put in danger by protracted stress-filled work shifts.

Congressional appropriators sent a clear signal to OSHA that it needs to weigh “all currently available technology” when it crafts an envisioned final rule tackling crystalline silica hazards in the workplace -- echoing technical feasibility concerns voiced in the employer community.

Federal chemical toxicity experts are anticipated to release soon their initial findings from studies regarding effects of human exposures to the substance involved in last year's disastrous spill and ensuing environmental disaster in West Virginia's Elk River, a chemical that worker health advocates are concerned poses a danger to workers if they come into contact with it during any similar future events.

Democratic-backed language that would allow OSHA to inspect small work sites -- those defined as 10 or fewer employees -- for purposes of identifying process safety management (PSM) hazards did not make it into Congress' final budget deal for fiscal 2015, with a Capitol Hill source telling Inside OSHA Online that House lawmakers blocked the provision when drafting the spending bill.

A top OSHA official says the agency's regulatory initiatives to reduce exposures to crystalline silica, tackle hazards from confined spaces in construction, put in place an online injury recordkeeping system, and help prevent slips, trips and falls on working surfaces are among the major rules that OSHA is most intent on trying to finish in the waning years of the Obama administration.

A top OSHA official says the agency's regulatory initiatives to reduce exposures to crystalline silica, tackle hazards from confined spaces in construction, put in place an online injury recordkeeping system, and help prevent slips, trips and falls on working surfaces are among the major rules that OSHA is most intent on trying to finish in the waning years of the Obama administration.

A bipartisan bill in the Senate would set aside federal resources to create “treatment hubs” for Ebola cases -- legislation that comes as health care worker advocates press major concerns with OSHA and other federal health officials about the potential for more Ebola cases to appear in U.S. hospitals and lead to alarm about worker exposures.

The length of time it could still take for OSHA regulators to pore over the massive trove of documents related to their long-proposed rule to reduce exposures to crystalline silica dust in general industry and construction – with an analysis not wrapping up until at least next spring, they say – means it could be nearly impossible for the agency to finish the rule before President Obama leaves office, considering the Republican takeover of Congress, Washington insiders say.

The government's lead agency in regulating how thousands of clinical laboratories reliably conduct testing on human specimens is urging state health officials to ensure that labs follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines in specimen collection to stop the potential spread of Ebola – and hew to safety mandates and guidelines including those issued by OSHA as part of infection control.