Photos: OSHA; MASTER/gettyimages
Washington — The first regulatory agenda of President Donald Trump’s second administration, officially published Sept. 4, includes the recent spate of proposed rules issued by the Department of Labor’s safety agencies.
OSHA (25) and the Mine Safety and Health Administration (18) combined to publish 43 proposed rules on July 1.
Among the proposals from OSHA are substance-specific standards, including for asbestos, benzene, cadmium, cotton dust, formaldehyde and lead. The agency also issued a proposed rule that would remove medical evaluation requirements for filtering facepiece respirators and loose-fitting powered air-purifying respirators.
“The agency preliminarily concludes that there is not sufficient evidence to conclude that wearing FFRs and loose-fitting PAPRs without a prior medical evaluation can result in unavoidable adverse outcomes, and that the assumption that medical evaluation effectively detects risk for adverse effects from the occupational use of FFRs and loose-fitting PAPRs is unproven,” OSHA says.
Among MSHA’s proposals is eliminating agency district managers’ roles in making changes or requiring additions to:
- Training and retraining programs for miners
- Approval criteria for roof control plans
- Approval criteria for ventilation plans
The regulatory agenda is typically issued twice a year by the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The agenda provides the status of and projected dates for all potential regulations listed in three stages: pre-rule, proposed rule and final rule.
The Spring 2025 regulatory agenda was briefly published Aug. 15 but removed from the OIRA website hours later.
Forthcoming proposed rule on ‘chemical-specific standards’
Also listed on the agenda for OSHA is a proposed rule titled Updates to Respiratory Protection Requirements in Chemical-Specific Standards, but details aren’t provided on which standards.
The agency says the updates will “allow employers to use new and improved respiratory protection that may not have existed at the time the chemical-specific standards were promulgated” and allow employees to “have more variety in choices for devices, which may result in lower cost alternative devices.”
A notice of proposed rulemaking is expected to appear as soon as May.
Final rule stage
Listed in the “final rule stage” for OSHA is an update to its standard on powered industrial trucks, which may be published as early as November.
The agency’s other potential regulations listed in the “final rule stage” concern procedures for handling retaliation complaints under various laws and the procedures for the use of administrative subpoenas.
Workplace violence and process safety management: ‘long-term actions’
OSHA moved its potential rule on workplace violence in health care and social assistance to the reg agenda’s long-term actions list. That typically means the agency doesn’t plan to make any progress on a regulation for at least six months.
The White House’s nominee to lead OSHA, former UPS and Amazon safety executive David Keeling, said during his June 5 Senate confirmation hearing that he saw the workplace violence standard as “a massive opportunity for improvement.”
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on June 26 approved Keeling’s nomination, but he had yet to receive a confirmation vote from the full Senate as of press time.
Also moved to long-term actions are OSHA’s rules titled:
- Process Safety Management and Prevention of Major Chemical Accidents
- Amendments to the Cranes and Derricks in Construction Standard
- Occupational Exposure to Crystalline Silica: Revisions to Medical Surveillance Provisions for Medical Removal Protection
In the Fall 2024 regulatory agenda, the process safety management rule had moved back to the pre-rule stage from proposed rule. The other two were listed as proposed rules.
A rule proposed by MSHA – Testing, Evaluation, and Approval of Equipment for Use in Underground Mines – also was moved to long-term actions.
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Original article published by Safety+Health an NSC publication