Indoor and outdoor workers exposed to excessive heat can find safety tips in a newly released OSHA video.

In its latest OSHA Minute with Marlis, the agency says employers should educate employees on the hazards of heat exposure and heat illness prevention, as well as have an emergency action plan.

From walkaround rules and proposed heat standards to a vacant review commission and a new president with new priorities, a lot has changed in the world of workplace regulations in recent months.

A presentation this week during the American Society of Safety Professionals 2025 Conference + Expo sought to shed some light on these issues and more. Here are some of the important topics they touched on:

Nearly a third of Cal/OSHA positions were vacant last year. A new state audit found that caused the agency to skip in-person inspections, even when workers were injured.

California’s worker safety agency is under-inspecting workplaces after accidents and worker injuries, failing to enforce labor regulations in a way that “may undermine” them because it does not have enough employees to do the inspections, a state audit found. 

A new U.S. Department of Labor policy cuts workplace safety inspections and lowers fines for small and first-time offending businesses, drawing criticism from experts who warn it will lead to more job-related deaths and illnesses.

Liza Gross reports for Inside Climate News.

Efforts to expand OSHA’s compliance assistance programs clashed with the Trump administration’s push to cut federal safety agency staffing, budgets and regulations during a July 16 House Workforce Protections Subcommittee hearing.

High temperatures contributed to the deaths of at least three workers last week as a heat dome smothered much of the U.S., illustrating the high stakes of a public hearing that was unfolding at the same time to help determine the fate of the nation's first proposed worker heat protections.

OSHA’s administrator no longer has to consult with the agency’s Advisory Committee on Construction Safety and Health to “promulgate, modify or revoke standards applicable to construction work.”

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration June 30 released a proposed rule to remove what remains of its emergency temporary standard for occupational exposure to COVID-19 that had required certain health care employers to protect workers in health care settings from exposure to the virus that caused COVID-19. Specifically, the proposal would remove the recordkeeping and reporting requirements imposed on covered health care employers related to health care workers with COVID-19. 

HA has renewed and revised its National Emphasis Program on preventing amputations in the manufacturing industry.

The NEP, which went into effect June 27, features “significant” changes. For instance, any establishment inspected under the NEP in the previous 24 months – and with no reported amputations during that period – “may be deleted from the programmed inspection list.”