In a Federal Register notice, OSHA announced it is accepting comments on a proposed Baseline Safety and Health Practices Survey, which will be sent to 14,202 private sector establishments in nonagricultural industry, as a one-time survey. The goal of the survey is to help OSHA develop industry-specific, statistically accurate estimates of the safety and health practices currently used among establishments. The estimates will be used to support a rulemaking effort directed toward requiring injury and illness prevention programs.

In addition to the survey, OSHA is also proposing to conduct 85 case study interviews in two sectors:

• Establishments in the agriculture sector to assess the prevalence of safety and health practices among farms with more than 10 workers; and
• Interviews with government officials in State Plan states to assess safety and health practices among agencies and departments operated by state and local governments.

OSHA also is proposing to conduct as many as 50 site visits to employers. During its visits, OSHA would collect information on current employer practices (much like the information collected in the ‘‘case studies’’ and the survey questionnaire itself), but also solicit information from employers on how they would comply with such a regulation and what time or costs would be required to do so. These site visits would be conducted either by OSHA personnel or a contractor under OSHA’s direction.