U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) investigators are set to release preliminary findings from their probe into last year's disastrous explosion of a fertilizer processing plant in West, TX, potentially teeing up recommendations to OSHA on how safety regulators could tighten up federal rules covering such facilities.

Government chemical safety experts are pressuring OSHA to get rid of  key exemptions applying to the oil and gas sector in the agency's process safety management (PSM) standard in response to what they call high rates of injuries and fatalities throughout the industry, after an earlier dispute over covering those work sites ended in industry's favor.

Safety and health activists, in pressing for a new OSHA rule cutting down on worker exposures to crystalline silica dust across the spectrum of both large and small U.S. businesses, have tapped into a long-simmering source of grievance with the federal regulatory process: that agencies often rely heavily on the Small Business Administration's (SBA) expansive view of what constitutes a small entity and as a result over-estimate rules' impact on small businesses.

Industry groups appear split on the role local emergency planning committees (LEPCs) should play in federal efforts to improve the safety and security of industrial plants, with some industry advocates arguing the groups authorized under the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) should play a key role and others seeking to largely bypass them – discourse that comes as OSHA seeks to update plant safety policies as a central part of a broad federal push by President Obama on the issue.

NIOSH officials say a multi-stakeholder partnership involving industry, union and government experts on respirable crystalline silica has evaluated a range of engineering controls in field studies that are effective at keeping exposures to the toxic dust during road milling below the research agency's 50-microgram recommended exposure limit (REL) for silica dust – a level mirroring the compulsory exposure cap in OSHA's planned silica rule – and suggest use of the developed controls could obviate a need for respirator use over full shifts in road milling operations.

A plastics industry group charges OSHA's proposed rule to mandate electronic filing of injury and illness records quarterly at large firms -- information that would later be disseminated on the Internet -- fails to qualify for an exemption from Privacy Act provisions that bar agencies from publicly distributing data concerning individuals.

President Obama's regulatory czar said Monday he feels no “particular pressure” to put an eventual final OSHA silica rule on a fast track for completion before the swiftly approaching end of the administration, and does not take that view toward any other rule despite a generally recognized 90-day window for the White House budget office to review agency standards -- a period often extended for lengthy stretches to the ire of pro-regulation groups.

The national paving industry, with key union backing, is urging OSHA officials to reexamine a mandate for respirator use under some exposure conditions that the agency included in a proposed new standard for silica control measures in construction activities, saying a requirement triggered by more than four hours of possible exposure actually creates new and greater hazards for road workers.

Construction industry trade groups are mounting an informal challenge to OSHA's crystalline silica rulemaking that hinges on an argument that agency officials did not adequately consult with their construction advisory panel on details of the planned regulations as required by OSHA procedures before issuing the proposal last year.

A national group of occupational hygiene experts wants OSHA to craft a formal regulatory definition of “recognized and generally accepted good engineering practices” (RAGAGEP) as it explores a range of options for potential revisions to its process safety management (PSM) standard designed to protect workers from chemical disasters, urging OSHA to help clarify an issue that has become the subject of enforcement disputes.