Alexander Acosta has moved a step closer toward being confirmed U.S. Labor secretary after being approved last week by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

A Louisiana jury last week awarded $37.1 milllion to a 27-year-old worker who lost his leg four years ago in a workplace accident.

The steady stream of enforcement announcements issued by OSHA – which identified companies who commit major safety and health violations and revealed the fines levied against them – may have stopped on inauguration day, but a former OSHA official is getting the information out there, by posting it on his blog.

The U.S. Labor Department (DOL) has proposed a delay in the effective date of the final rule on Examinations of Working Places in Metal and Nonmetal Mines -- from May 23, 2017, to July 24, 2017.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is trying to determine the cause of the crash Wednesday on Highway 83 in Texas that left 13 people dead – all but one of them senior citizens.

Attorney Jeffrey Rosen’s nomination for deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) is running into opposition by dozens of safety and environmental advocacy groups, who are urging senators on the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation to reject his nomination.

While regulations are being rolled back at the federal level, the state of California is implementing new ones, including a regulation aimed at protecting the state’s health care workers from on-the-job violence that takes effect on April 1, 2017.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt signed an order yesterday denying a petition that sought to ban chlorpyrifos, a pesticide the agency deemed potentially dangerous to consumers – during the Obama administration. The EPA cited scientific uncertainty about chlorpyrifos’s risks in its decision.

With a fatality rate of 25.1 per 100,000 workers compared to 3.8 for all industries, the landscaping industry’s dangers are obvious – even more so when the numbers are broken down by tasks: landscaping/groundskeeping workers (10.1 per 100,000 workers), pesticide handlers (15.4) and tree trimmer/pruners (an astounding 179.9).

A new checklist developed by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) can help companies evaluate the effectiveness of their Hearing Loss Prevention Programs* (HLPPs) and better protect their workers from noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL).