The spring 2019 regulatory agenda released by OSHA last week includes rulemakings in various stages that will be priorities for the agency in the near future. Included on the agenda:

Just in time for World No Tobacco Day - which is today - the World Health Organization (WHO) has unleashed a barrage of statistics on the toll tobacco takes on lung health. For starters, tobacco kills at least eight million people a year across the globe. That’s according to WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who noted that millions more live with lung cancer, tuberculosis, asthma or chronic lung disease caused by tobacco.

Are you born with it? Or do you develop it over time? Although a new study on preferred learning styles was intended to make childhood education more efficient, its findings could hold some lessons for those who design safety training for adult workers.

Early-onset colorectal cancer –cancer occurring before age 50—is rising most rapidly in Western states, where healthy behaviors are prominent, according to a new study. The authors of the study, which appears in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, say the findings indicate the need for further etiologic studies to explore early-life colorectal carcinogenesis.

OSHA’s recent call for comments that may be used to help update its Lockout/Tagout (LOTO) standard highlights an area of growing concern for safety professionals: robotics-human interaction. When the agency’s Control of Hazardous Energy (LOTO) standard was issued in 1989, industrial robots were in use – primarily in manufacturing – but they bore little resemblance to their modern day counterparts. In the 1960s, '70s and '80s, industrial robots were capable of gripping objects, moving them from one point to another and performing assembly tasks.

Staff at the Anoka Metro Regional Treatment Center say safety conditions have deteriorated so badly at the state-run psychiatric hospital that many are afraid to go to work. Workers say staff members have been knocked unconscious, dragged across the floor by their hair and had feces and urine thrown at them. Recently, a nurse was hospitalized after being beaten by a patient.

The opioid overdose epidemic continues to claim lives across the country with a record 47,600 overdose deaths in 2017[i]. The crisis is taking an especially devastating toll on certain parts of the U.S. workforce. High rates of opioid overdose deaths have occurred in industries with high injury rates and physically demanding working conditions such as construction, mining, or fishing[ii],[iii].

Jeremy Westfall was cutting the grass last month at his home in Mineralwells, West Virginia, when he decided to put his riding mower in reverse. He didn’t see his 6-year-old daughter Michaela walking up behind him, and backed over her.

Some 67 percent of highway contractors report that motor vehicles crashed into their construction work zones during the past year, according to the results of a new highway work zone study conducted by the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC). In response, association officials have launched a new radio and media campaign urging drivers to slow down and remain alert in highway work zones.

The recent destructive barrage of tornadoes in Ohio, Kansas and Pennsylvania that took lives and demolished buildings is a reminder that “tornado season” – the time of year when most tornadoes happen – is far from over. The dangerous vortex of violent, rotating wind that accompanies a storm system occurs most often in the U.S. from April to June, although tornadoes can wreak havoc long before and after that time.