Items Tagged with 'On Safety'

The Department of Labor’s Spring 2022 regulatory agenda was published June 21. In regard to OSHA, frankly, it’s disappointing.

On April 8, OSHA launched its long-awaited National Emphasis Program on outdoor and indoor heat hazards. A compliance directive (OSHA Instruction CPL 03-00-0240) describes agency policies and procedures related to the NEP. The program targets specific industries that OSHA considers to have the highest exposure potential to heat-related hazards and resulting illnesses and deaths.

Despite the recent withdrawal of OSHA’s emergency temporary standard on COVID-19 vaccination, testing and masking and the partial withdrawal of the agency’s ETS on COVID-19 for health care workers, a lot of questions remain regarding mask and respirator use.

The unified agenda is intended to let the “regulated community” know what the different agencies are working on, or planning to work on, over the next six months. It’s an interesting document. Some administrations put everything they can think of on it – whether they’re actually working on it or not. Others keep it simple by listing only what they’re actually intending to work on. My preference has always been the latter.

One of the common questions we receive from NSC-ORCHSE members is: “Just what all does OSHA include as a powered industrial truck?”

With the COVID-19 pandemic, several OSHA State Plan states already have issued emergency temporary standards for COVID-19. President Joe Biden recently issued an Executive Order for OSHA to consider an ETS for COVID-19.