The West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals has cleared the way for two miners’ widows to pursue a lawsuit against the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) for its admitted failure to inspect and enforce safety regulations at the Aracoma Coal Company’s Alma Mine #1 in that state.

The National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) submitted comments on Jan. 22 raising questions about a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) proposed-policy to allow the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) oversight of aircraft cabin workplace safety issues. The FAA proposal raises the specter of additional oversight and regulation of business aircraft operations, according to an NBAA press statement.

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) said an explosion and fire that killed five workers during a fireworks disposal operation in Hawaii in 2011 resulted from unsafe disposal practices; insufficient safety requirements for government contractor selection and oversight; and an absence of national guidelines, standards, and regulations for fireworks disposal.

The Washington Post’s Wonk Blog has a piece this week on the burgeoning costs of regulations. WaPo’s Jim Tankersley writes, “If you’re a business leader or conservative economist who worries that the federal government is strangling the economy in red tape, 2012 was a banner year. If you’re a consumer advocate or an environmentalist anxious for the government to do more to boost public health … ditto.”

Brady has released DVD –based training programs for the Globally Harmonized System (GHS) and OSHA’s Hazard Communication regulations that train and inform employees on the updated regulations and standards.  The new training programs include videos and literature that will help employees understand the changes to OSHA’s Hazard Communication regulation and its updates to align with GHS.

Congressional opponents of public protections spent much of 2012 attempting to increase the procedural hurdles to establishing new rules that would implement federal laws and standards according to the regulatory watchdog group OMB Watch. Efforts to attack the scientific evidence employed by agencies continued.

A government watchdog group says that anti-regulation lawmakers used procedural hurdles and attacks on science to block new federal laws standards in 2012  - and that they're likely to continue that strategy in the coming year. "Both efforts are likely to re-emerge next year,” predicts OMB Watch, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization that monitors actions by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

The people who write huge swath OSHA standards are from the same philosophy (big government solves all ) that wrote: 2700 pages of healthcare law, begatting multiple thousands of a pages of regulations; 2300 pages of financial law, with more thousands of pages of regulations, etc. etc.  Enough!!

Employees of some nightclubs are being exposed to dangerously high noise levels, according to a study published recently in the International Journal of Noise & Health.

Wondering what the official Democratic and Republican Party platforms have to say about occupational safety and health? Here are the relevant references from each platform: