Posted with permission from Confined Space, a newsletter of workplace safety and labor issues.
OSHA and the Beryllium industry have reached a settlement regarding changes in OSHA’s Beryllium standard for general industry. The changes, which mostly focus on clarifications of “ancillary requirements” dealing mostly with regulated work areas, hygiene (cleaning of workers and equipment) and medical management, will be phased in in two major stages. The permissible exposure limit (PEL) will remain the same, as will requirements for engineering controls (for example) which don’t come into effect until 2020.