OSHA Publishes Emergency Response Standard NPRM – Part 1

Today the DOL’s Occupational Health and Safety Administration published a notice of proposed rulemaking in the Federal Register (89 FR 7774-8023) on “Emergency Response Standard”. The proposed rulemaking would replace the existing Fire Brigade Standard (29 CFR 1910.156) with a new Emergency Response Standard, and make supporting revisions to other parts of §1910.

Coverage

In general, OSHA regulations and standards apply only to the private sector (excluding volunteer fire companies). Interestingly, the preamble notes that States with OSHA-approved State Plans under 29 USC 667 “would be required to treat public-sector employees the same as they do private-sector employees when adopting and enforcing a standard at least as effective as any final standard which may result from this rulemaking.” That would also apply to volunteer fire companies in those States.

I will discuss the changes being proposed for §1910.156 in a future post.

Request for Comments

OSHA is soliciting comments on the proposed rule. Comments may be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal (www.Regulations.gov; Docket # OSHA-2007-0073). Comments should be submitted by May 6^th, 2024.

 

For more information on this proposed rule, including a discussion of the need for this rulemaking and other subsections of §1910 being revised to support this rule, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/osha-publishes-emergency-response - subscription required.