Insight & Commentary on Occupational Safety & Health Issues
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has issued its 2025 update to the National Emphasis Program on Amputations in Manufacturing Industries (Amputations NEP), renewing the program and introducing several notable changes for employers. The directive aims to refine enforcement criteria and focuses on higher-risk workplaces.
The directive, effective June 27, 2025, and set to…
Top leaders of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) have detailed new and upcoming enforcement efforts to protect “vulnerable workers” (i.e., immigrant, minority, female, and lower-paid) who may be more vulnerable to workplace hazards.
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As thermometers hit their peak, the White House is touting the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) heat illness prevention efforts to “protect millions of workers from heat illness and injury.”
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More than six months after the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) promulgated an Emergency Temporary Standard for healthcare employers (Healthcare ETS), OSHA announced its intentions to propose an infectious diseases standard covering all industry sectors in April 2022. The agency said the new standard will address airborne, droplet, and non-bloodborne contact diseases.
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The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) had announced this spring its intention to implement a new heat illness standard that will apply to indoor environments. Now, the U.S. Department of Labor has announced “enhanced and expanded” efforts to address heat-related illnesses as part of the Biden Administration’s commitment to workplace safety, climate resilience,…
Signaling significant regulatory and enforcement changes from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), President Joseph Biden has named a California official to lead the agency.
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The Occupational Safety and Health Administration plans to inspect at least 1,260 establishments under its site-specific targeting (“SST”) program for 2013. Details are here.
OSHA has announced a National Emphasis Program (NEP) to encourage compliance with safety and health standards at nursing and residential care facilities through programmed inspections. The NEP, which directs OSHA compliance officers to focus inspections on ergonomic stressors associated with lifting patients; slips, trips, and falls; bloodborne pathogens; exposure to tuberculosis; and workplace violence, took…
OSHA has embarked on a new National Emphasis Program (NEP) targeting hexavalent chromium in the workplace, along with other toxic substances found in conjunction with hexavalent chromium. OSHA’s intent with the NEP is to "target workplaces with occupational exposures to hexavalent chromium" and certain other toxic substances (e.g., antimony, arsenic, cadmium, lead, iron oxide) to encourage compliance with applicable standards. …
In 2009, OSHA emerged from the regulatory and enforcement shell that had shrouded it during the eight years of the Bush Administration. Once confirmed, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis announced that a “new Sheriff” was in town, who would refocus the Department of Labor – including OSHA – on tough enforcement and aggressive rulemaking. In both areas, OSHA…
