Inside OSHA

March 18, 2024

Homepage

EPA has released its final TSCA risk-management rule for chrysotile asbestos, aiming to phase out the carcinogen from chlor-alkali production on a sliding timeline that will run between five and 12 years based in part on the alternative technology to which a facility is switching -- a win for industry groups that argued the proposed two-year deadline was impossible.

Latest News

OSHA is petitioning the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit to require a Kansas-based contracting company to comply with Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) orders after the firm was found liable for four OSH Act violations -- a rare step for the agency to rely on a court petition to enforce orders.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is launching development of “a hazard review document” for outdoor workers’ exposures to wildfire smoke, building on a multi-agency effort to limit the fires and their effects that the White House launched late last year.

California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) officials have released a model for firms to draft workplace violence-prevention plans required by a controversial 2023 state law that sought to broaden the state’s long-standing violence protections for healthcare workers to “general industry,” as employer groups expect a scramble to put the plans in place by a July 1 deadline.

The Biden administration is asking Congress to set OSHA’s budget at $655.463 million in fiscal year 2025 as part of a pared-down budget for the Department of Labor (DOL) as a whole -- an increase from current levels but substantially below what the White House sought in prior appropriations requests.

Chemical companies and trade groups are renewing calls to loosen EPA’s impending rule setting strict worker-protection requirements for the solvent methylene chloride, arguing in recent White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) meetings that the agency must adopt broader exemptions and longer compliance timelines in order to make the policy workable.

EPA chemicals chief Michal Freedhoff used a March 5 speech to reiterate her defenses of the agency’s approach to workplace safety in a series of landmark chemical-safety rules, seeking to counter arguments that it is improperly stepping into areas that should be the domain of OSHA or older environmental programs.

Industry groups and other supporters of the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program are urging lawmakers to reauthorize it as part of an emerging fiscal year 2024 appropriations package that could be finalized before the end of the month.

California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) is facing both a stakeholder petition and pending legislation seeking what would be a pioneering rule mandating that workplace first-aid kits include the nasal spray naloxone hydrochloride -- a medication to rapidly reverse opioid overdoses -- but the calls are facing early employer objections over costs and feasibility.

EPA’s newly final Risk Management Program (RMP) update is facing criticism from all sides over its cost-benefit calculations, especially for novel mandates to consider climate impacts and safer technologies -- provisions that industry says will be unworkably expensive but which pro-regulatory advocates say carry even greater benefits than the rule assumes.

 

Topics