White House Reviewing OSHA’s Proposed Rule on Infectious Diseases
The White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs is conducting a final review of an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) proposed rule that seeks to introduce new standards to better protect workers from infectious disease hazards such as COVID-19, SARS, tuberculosis, measles, varicella disease, and MRSA.
The new standards will apply to healthcare and other occupational settings where employees face an increased risk of exposure to infectious diseases including nursing homes, homeless shelters, drug treatment programs, correctional facilities, coroners’ offices, mortuaries, emergency response facilities, and laboratories that handle materials that may be a source of pathogens.
The new rule has been a long time coming. OSHA issued its initial Request for Information in May 2010, analyzed comments the same year, and held stakeholder meetings in July 2011, then the proposed rule stalled until 2014 when SBREFA was initiated and completed.
OSHA has been examining regulatory alternatives for control measures to protect workers against infections disease exposures to pathogens that can cause significant disease and has now penned a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NMPR) which is under review.
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The NMPR may be published by OSHA ahead of President Trump’s inauguration; however, it remains to be seen whether the new administration will press ahead with new safety and health standards to protect against infectious diseases or will instead shelve or scrap the proposed rule.
