Occupational Safety and Health Administration - Health and Safety Standards

Health and Safety Standards

The Occupational Safety and Health Act allows OSHA to issue workplace health and safety regulations. These regulations include limits on chemical exposure, employee access to information, requirements for the use of personal protective equipment, and requirements for safety procedures.

In its first year of operation, OSHA was permitted to adopt regulations based on guidelines set by certain standards organizations, such as the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists, without going through all of the requirements of a typical rulemaking.

In 2000, OSHA issued an ergonomics standard. In March 2001,Congress voted to repeal the standard through the Congressional Review Act. The repeal, one of the first major pieces of legislation signed by President George W. Bush, is the only instance that Congress has successfully used the Congressional Review Act to block a regulation.

Between 2001 and 2011, OSHA has issued just four new health and safety standards; during this period, the agency has promulgated regulations at a far slower rate than during any other decade in the agency's history.

Read more about this topic:  Occupational Safety And Health Administration

Famous quotes containing the words health and, health, safety and/or standards:

    At present the globe goes with a shattered constitution in its orbit.... No doubt the simple powers of nature, properly directed by man, would make it healthy and a paradise; as the laws of man’s own constitution but wait to be obeyed, to restore him to health and happiness.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    To safeguard one’s health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness indeed.
    François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)

    For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the sportsman;... but what beside safety they got by sailing in the middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love its water for the same reason that I do.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Barbarism is the absence of standards to which appeal can be made.
    José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)