2023 State Updates to Know

Welcome to the “2023 State Updates” page, your trusted source for the latest developments in state-level workplace safety regulations and policies. Staying informed about state-specific changes is essential for employers, employees, and safety professionals, as it directly impacts compliance, safety practices, and standards within your state. At OSHA Journal, we are committed to providing you with timely insights and analyses on how these updates may influence your workplace and industry.

The year 2023 marks the beginning of new state-level updates and revisions in workplace safety regulations. These updates can encompass a wide range of areas, including occupational safety standards, labor laws, and industry-specific guidelines. Our goal is to keep you well-informed about these changes, enabling you to adapt effectively and ensure the safety and well-being of your workforce.

Last year was a busy one for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), with many new updates and enforcement protocols.
Obviously, that’s a good thing, since increased safety and health considerations are crucial to the well-being of employees and the overall success of a business enterprise. But it’s also tough to keep up with all the changing OSHA updates and regulations that affect your business.
That’s where we come in. In the following article, we’ll take a look at some of the most important OSHA regulatory updates for 2023, so you know what your business ought to be aware of. So, without further ado, let’s examine some of the main points and key takeaways from the new regulatory regime.

1- New Workplace Safety Plan

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is the federal agency responsible for ensuring safe and healthy working conditions for employees across the United States. In January 2023, OSHA announced an aggressive new plan to address workplace safety, including several key initiatives aimed at reducing injuries and fatalities in the workplace. The Biden administration is focused on increasing its investigation and enforcement activity against employers in the coming months/years.
In this post, we will take a closer look at OSHA’s new initiatives and provide some tips for employers on how they can improve workplace safety.

OSHA’s new plan for workplace safety in 2023 has several key areas that will attempt to improve working conditions for employees across the country. These initiatives include:

Strengthening Enforcement

OSHA will be strengthening enforcement efforts by increasing the number of inspections and citations issued for workplace violations. OSHA also plans to increase its use of their subpoena powers during their initial investigations. These changes should help OSHA ensure employers are taking appropriate measures to keep their workers safe and healthy.

Targeting High-Risk Industries

OSHA has indicated its intention to target high-risk industries, such as construction and manufacturing, to help reduce the number of injuries and fatalities in these sectors.

Emphasizing Prevention

OSHA will place greater emphasis on the prevention of injuries by encouraging employers to identify and address potential hazards before they result in injuries or illnesses.

Improving Data Collection

OSHA will attempt to improve its data collection efforts to better track workplace injuries and illnesses. This should help OSHA identify trends and areas for improvement in workplace safety.

Instance-by-Instance Citations

The new regulations place particular emphasis on OSHA citations for instance-by-instance claims.
OSHA regional administrators and area directors can now issue fines for certain types of violations which they deem “instance-by-instance citations.” And that’s particularly the case where the agency identifies what they determine to be serious infringements of OSHA standards. It also applies to specific situations where the rule’s language allows a citation for each instance of noncompliance.
The press release explains that these circumstances include those related to lockout/tagout, machine guarding, respiratory protection, falls, and certain violations concerning OSHA recordkeeping. The reason for the rules changes is to make sure OSHA personnel are using the “full” capacity of the OSH Act when greater punishments are needed to discourage illegal behavior.
OSHA’s January 26 memorandum clarifies that case-by-case citations will only be issued if the new regulations permit it. That means they can be issued, for example, per machine, work area, entrance, or worker, as well as when violations can’t be resolved through a single method.
The press release also instructs inspectors to carefully document each violation if an inspection may lead to instance-by-instance violations.

Employers Are Encouraged Not to Group Citations

The second aspect of OSHA’s new memorandum encourages regional administrations and area directors to not group citations together.
Instead, OSHA instructs employers to better comply with the OSH Act through issuing individual citations. It’s a small change, but one that the agency feels is an important one. The OSHA updates also state that “violations that are proposed as instance-by-instance citations should not be combined or grouped.”

2- Recordkeeping Proposed Rule

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration is proposing amendments to its occupational injury and illness recordkeeping regulation, 29 CFR 1904.41. The current regulation requires certain employers to electronically submit injury and illness information – that they are required to keep – to OSHA. The agency uses these reports to identify and respond to emerging hazards and makes aspects of the information publicly available. In addition to reporting their Annual Summary of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses, the proposed rule would require certain establishments in certain high-hazards industries to electronically submit additional information from their Log of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses, as well as their Injury and Illness Incident Report. As part of OSHA’s mission to protect workers and mitigate workplace hazards, this rule would improve OSHA’s ability to use its enforcement and compliance assistance resources to identify workplaces where workers are at high risk. The proposed rule would also advance the department’s mission to empower workers by increasing transparency in the workforce.

The proposed rule would

Require establishments with 100 or more employees in certain high-hazard industries to electronically submit information from their OSHA Forms 300, 301 and 300A to OSHA once a year.
Update the classification system used to determine the list of industries covered by the electronic submission requirement.
Remove the current requirement for establishments with 250 or more employees not in a designated industry to electronically submit information from their Form 300A to OSHA annually.
Require establishments to include their company name when making electronic submissions to OSHA.

Establishments with 20 or more employees in certain high-hazard industries would continue to be required to electronically submit information from their OSHA Form 300A annual summary to OSHA annually.

3- New Hazard Communication (HazCom) Standard

The Hazard Communication (HazCom) Standard is one of the most significant and far-reaching of the OSHA updates and new regulatory rules.

Recently, OSHA released an update—one that was long in coming—to the HazCom Standard. Most importantly, the change aligned it with the seventh edition of the United Nations’ Globally Harmonized System (GHS).

So what does that mean for businesses? In truth, it means a lot of important updates, including revised classifications for combustible vapors, aerosols, modified requirements for shipped containers, and revised transportation demands for bulk shipments. Basically, the new OSHA regulatory updates require substance manufacturers to comply with a whole slew of new safety and compliance measures.

The Alterations

The alterations being proposed would have broad repercussions for the entire chemical supply chain, mainly for the producers of relevant chemical items. Consequently, OSHA got plenty of input from stakeholders before the public comment window closed in May of 2021. OSHA also organized a public hearing in late September of that year, to offer an opportunity for stakeholders who had registered a Notice of Intent to Appear before the deadline to provide further remarks. The Regulatory Agenda for 2022 required that OSHA publish their HazCom update at the end of 2022. And since the period for compliance begins as soon as the update is published, it’s up to businesses to now ensure this is the case in 2023. We will have to wait for the finalized rule to determine if OSHA has adjusted the timeline of the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), as many industry members at the 2021 public hearing mentioned that the timeline for both substance and mixture producers was too short. It is certain, however, that big modifications are on the way and those in the chemical supply chain must get ready.

2- Lockout-Tagout (LOTO) Update

The Control of Hazardous Energy standard (29 Code of Federal Regulations [C.F.R.] 1910.147), commonly known as Lockout Tagout (LOTO) under the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has been relatively untouched since it was published in 1989. LOTO infractions are one of the persistent and most-cited OSHA standards. The top 10 frequently cited LOTO infractions include a failure to:

HAVE EQUIPMENT-SPECIFIC LOTO PROCEDURES
TRAIN WORKERS IN LOTO
CONDUCT PERIODIC INSPECTIONS
ESTABLISH A LOTO PROGRAM
FOLLOW THE SEQUENCE OF LOTO
PROTECT WORKERS DURING GROUP LOTO OPERATIONS
IDENTIFY ALL OR DISCONNECT ALL ENERGY SOURCES
NOTIFY EMPLOYERS
MANAGE SHIFT CHANGES
FOLLOW THE “SERVICING AND TOOL CHANGE” EXCEPTION

For some time, OSHA has discussed the potential for revision, and in May 2019, OSHA issued a request for information (RFI) to solicit information from stakeholders and industry on updates or changes in relation to strengths and limitations of modern technology for the control of hazardous energy to protect workers. For example, the 2019 RFI noted the LOTO standard specifies that control circuit devices cannot be used as energy-isolating devices, but “the agency recognizes recent technological advances may have improved the safety of control circuit-type devices.” A notice of proposed rulemaking (NRPM) was anticipated for September of 2022 but was never announced.

3- Silica Update

In 2016, OSHA issued two new standards for respiratory crystalline silica (RCS) ? one for general industry and maritime (29 CFR ? 1910.1053) and one for construction (29 CFR ? 1926.115).
The 2016 standards established an exposure action level (AL) of 25 ?g/m3 and reduced the silica PEL from 100 to 50 ?g/m3- both calculated as 8-hour time-weighted averages (TWAs). The standards include requirements for installing exposure controls, implementing medical surveillance programs to monitor workers’ health and exposure to RCS, and maintaining a written exposure control plan.

OSHA standards for other chemicals have medical removal provisions such as lead, cadmium, and formaldehyde. Each require the employer to monitor certain exposure indicators such as airborne concentrations of chemicals or bloodborne concentrations (as in the case of lead exposure) and remove the employee from the source of exposure once specified maximum levels are reached. Following publication of the 2016 final rules, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit concluded that OSHA failed to adequately explain its decision to omit medical removal protections from the rule and remanded the rule for further consideration of the issue.

The Spring Regulatory Agenda contains an initiative called “Occupational Exposure to Crystalline Silica: Revisions to Medical Surveillance Provisions for Medical Removal Protection.” OSHA is planning to revisit the silica rules to include medical removal provisions with an estimated timeframe of May 2023 for publication of an NPRM.
Employers subject to the silica rules will need to be sure they have thorough workplace inspection and industrial hygiene (IH) medical surveillance programs in place, and an efficient incident management system to enable prompt recording of medical removal cases.

How to Improve Your Compliance With OSHA Updates

Okay, so now that we know about some of OSHA’s regulatory updates, what can your business do to improve its compliance measures? There’s a lot to prepare for to avoid OSHA penalties, but there are a few steps you can take that will help you avoid the wrath of the Federal government. Let’s take a look at some of easiest ways to do so:

Better Inspection Programs

Looking at different standards and regulations, it’s obvious that inspections are a major factor. The Lockout/Tagout standard requires inspections to be done periodically to ensure all energy control procedures are in order. The silica rule also requires that employers do “frequent and regular inspections” of areas that fall within the rule’s regulatory sphere.

Better Incident Management

OSHA recordkeeping updates mandate that businesses begin electronically submitting data from Forms 300 and 301. So it helps to devise simpler methods of recording all accidents and illnesses in the workplace, as well as storing the documents in one place. It’s also best to fall into the habit of completing all mandated OSHA forms.

Use Data to Improve Decision-Making

To remain aware of the regulatory environment, which seems to change with increasing frequency, you need to be able to stay flexible and adapt to changing circumstances. This is why it’s essential to be able to easily access safety data so you can monitor progress, adjust tactics when needed, and create more informed choices for ongoing development. Resources like our Online SDS will let you easily index data, compile regulatory reports, and archive data sheets, all from a personalized dashboard.