Continuing our examination of the Occupational Health and Safety Administration’s (OSHA) Fall 2009 Regulatory Priorities, we now turn our attention to several of the more targeted initiatives that the Administration plans to set in motion in 2010.
Several hazardous materials – specifically, how they are handled in the workplace and how to control employee exposure to them – will fall under more intense scrutiny. Crystalline silica, which is essentially the dust produced by a wide variety of different industrial, manufacturing and construction operations will be subject to a new rulemaking that will change current exposure limits. It will also institute additional regulations concerning worker protections from exposure to the dust. OSHA hopes to make their intentions known with a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to be issued in July, 2010.
Two other substances will also be dealt with in the spring and fall of that same year. In March, the metal beryllium will be the focus of a peer review its health effects and overall risk with regards to permissible exposure limits and worker protections. The dust or fumes emitted by this metal can in some cases result in an immune disease that eventually brings forth a host of unpleasant and debilitating symptoms that may take as long as 30 years post-exposure to develop. Then, in October diacetyl will take its turn undergoing the same analysis. A food additive most commonly found in butter-flavored microwave popcorn, there have been several concerns regarding its possible respiratory impact on workers when inhaled over a long period of time. Specifically, OSHA will examine a disease called bronchiolitis obliterans linked to the chemical.
Combustible dust, which has grabbed headlines over the past few years due to several spectacular and fatal explosions at a number of facilities in the United States, is set to gain its own standard from the Administration. The process is already well underway, and the goal is for OSHA to gather what regulations they currently have on the books related to combustible dust hazards and combine them with additional research and information in order to complete a general standard and prevent future tragedies. Crane and derrick safety will also see similarly sweeping standards changes in the summer of 2010 when a new final rule is issued. In an industry where almost 100 lives are lost each year in workplace accidents, OSHA is working quickly to update safety regulations which were first implemented in 1971 and rarely altered since.
The final component of the Fall 2009 agenda addresses infectious diseases which have an airborne vector, otherwise known as the H1N1 initiative. OSHA is looking to expand the epidemic response guidelines that were heavily publicized in August and September of 2009 through a Request for Information that will focus on how healthcare workers can better protect themselves from not just influenza but all other types of illness which can be easily transmitted through the air. The formal Request will take place in March of next year, and it is hoped that the effort will be able to head off an increasingly large number of reported sick workers on the front lines of American’s healthcare industry.
