OSHA chief Doug Parker is urging workers and safety advocates to use public comments on the agency’s proposed heat-illness standard to tell “stories” of dangers they and their co-workers have faced from excessive heat and how businesses have successfully addressed them, in order to illustrate the potential benefits of new safety measures.
September 11, 2024
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An attorney for the free-market Center for Individual Rights (CIR) says the landmark Supreme Court decision that opened OSHA and other agencies’ long-standing rules to new legal challenges will likely produce a host of circuit splits requiring officials to apply different legal frameworks or even separate regulations in different regions of the country.
Employer groups are sharply attacking OSHA’s first substantive defense of its controversial rule allowing “third-party” employee representatives to take part in inspection walkarounds, arguing that the agency is refusing to acknowledge likely harms from the new policy while adopting a “baffling” reading of the OSH Act.
OSHA is seeking to dismiss South Carolina’s suit challenging an Obama-era rule directing states to match federal OSH Act penalty levels, renewing its charge that the state missed a statutory deadline and that the Supreme Court’s recent ruling easing some statutes of limitations has no bearing on this case because it could have sued at any time in that window.
California lawmakers have passed bills to tighten existing California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) standards, including requiring the installation of metal detectors in hospitals, adding the opioid overdose medication naloxone hydrochloride to workplace first-aid kits, and compensating outdoor workers who suffer heat-related injuries because employers violated safety rules.
EPA is proposing to find that just three uses of the phthalate known as DINP pose unreasonable risks that could warrant regulation as part of a newly released draft TSCA evaluation, including two workplace applications that the agency is conceding may have already been abandoned by employers.
OSHA is formally publishing its heat safety standard for indoor and outdoor work, over a month after first unveiling text for the long-awaited regulation, beginning a 120-day public comment period that would close just weeks before President Joe Biden’s term ends -- and thus leaves further work on the rulemaking to the next administration.
California lawmakers have killed a bill that would have prohibited, beginning July 1, 2026, the sale and use of firefighter personal protective equipment (PPE) containing intentionally added PFAS, and would have required state regulators to align worker-safety rules with a future national standard for PFAS-free firefighting gear.
Top Democrats on the House workforce committee are calling on OSHA to investigate recent reports that claim officials with California and South Carolina’s state plan agencies have been “tipping off” employers on upcoming agency inspections targeting not only safety issues but child-labor violations and potential trafficking.
The Department of Agriculture (USDA) pressed EPA to craft guidance on how its just-completed Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) formaldehyde assessment will drive strict workplace limits on the ubiquitous chemical, as part of an interagency review process where USDA and others also echoed employers’ persistent criticism of EPA’s analysis.