Updates to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) Voluntary Protection Programs (VPP) Policies and Procedures Manual took effect June 16. Changes include updates to requirements for participants’ safety and health management systems.

OSHA’s VPP, established in 1982, recognizes and promotes effective worksite-based safety and health management systems (SHMSs). In VPP, management, labor, and OSHA establish cooperative relationships at workplaces that implement or have implemented comprehensive SHMSs. The agency helps organizations seeking VPP-level safety performance.

Three years ago, Safety+Health offered an overview of efforts by the federal government and states to address heat injury and illness prevention on the job.

At the time, five states – California, Colorado, Minnesota, Oregon and Washington – had some form of a heat-related standard in effect. Colorado’s standard covers agricultural workers, while Minnesota’s applies only to indoor workplaces.

Since 2023, Maryland and Nevada have finalized heat regulations for indoor and outdoor workers. Meanwhile, many other potential rules are in various stages of the legislative or regulatory process.

The U.S. Department of Labor has proposed more than $3.5 million in fines against three companies after federal inspectors determined they failed to protect workers during post-emergency response cleanup after a chemical spill at the BWC Terminals industrial facility in Channelview.

The department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration initiated three inspections after a Dec. 27, 2025, sulfuric acid spill at the BWC Terminals LLC industrial facility led to multiple employee injuries. OSHA found that despite safety warnings, BWC Terminals mixed fresh and spent sulfuric acid, triggering a tank overpressure that ruptured a supply line releasing 1 million gallons of sulfuric acid resulting in multiple employee injuries.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s OSHA will host a free, virtual training event designed to help federal agency personnel strengthen workplace protections.

The three-day event will feature half-day seminars led by the OSHA Training Institute and the Office of Federal Agency Programs. Sessions will cover critical safety issues, including the OSHA inspection process, control of hazardous energy, combustible dust hazards, fall protection and office ergonomics. Additional topics will focus on workplace violence, heat stress, lead hazard awareness and managing respiratory protection programs.

At ASSP Safety 2026 in Anaheim, OH&S sat down with Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health David Keeling for a wide-ranging discussion on OSHA’s priorities and direction.

During the interview, Keeling discussed the status of OSHA’s ongoing heat stress rulemaking efforts, noting that the agency is reviewing more than 40,000 public comments while continuing outreach through its updated Heat National Emphasis Program. He also highlighted OSHA’s renewed focus on small and medium-sized businesses through the agency’s Safety Champions initiative, which is designed to help organizations strengthen safety programs regardless of where they are in their safety journey.

California’s workplace safety agency recently deemed that the process for cutting and shaping a material commonly used for kitchen countertops cannot be safely regulated and moved to become the first in the US to ban the process.

The only problem: the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health isn’t allowed to create a standard that can’t be reasonably followed even if people are being harmed, attorneys say. The agency is hamstrung by state laws that limit it to creating standards that must be economically and technologically feasible for industries.

It’s better to be proactive about safety, even in ways that aren’t compelled by federal rules, because facilities are exposed to liability any time there’s a safety mishap, according to Philip Jacklin, continuing education program manager at Diversified Fall Protection.

“If a worker gets injured on the job, even if there’s not a safety requirement in place that was in violation, the employer is still held responsible for mitigating it,” Jacklin told Facilities Dive in an interview.

Regulations administered by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration include a general duty clause, which requires employers to furnish a workplace free from recognized hazards that are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to employees. It acts as a catch-all for hazards not covered by specific OSHA standards, Jacklin said.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recently revised its guidelines (CPL 02-02-079) for enforcing the Hazard Communication (HazCom) Standard to include provisions of the agency’s 2024 update and address issues with the 2012 update to the standard. Earlier this year, OSHA extended compliance deadlines in the 2024 update to May 19 to allow the agency to update its guidance.

The inspection procedures directive instructs the agency’s compliance safety and health officers (CSHOs) on how to conduct inspections for compliance with OSHA’s HazCom Standard. The new inspection procedures cancel the agency’s 2015 directive and became effective on May 19.

The document is called the Field Operations Manual (FOM), and it lives on OSHA's website. It runs to 17 chapters covering everything from how compliance officers plan inspections before they arrive to how penalties are calculated after citations are issued. Chapter 3, Inspection Procedures, is the one that matters most for pre-inspection preparation. It describes the opening conference, the walkaround, the records review, and the specific factors that compliance officers are trained to evaluate when determining whether a safety management system is functioning. It is not a secret. Most EHS teams have not read it.