On March 25, 2016, 81 Fed. Reg. 16286, OSHA issued a new final rulemaking to reduce silica dust exposure that will directly affect more than 2 million construction workers who drill, cut, crush, or grind silica-containing materials such as concrete and stone, and 300,000 workers in general industry operations such as brick manufacturing, foundries, and hydraulic fracturing. OSHA explains that silica dust exposure occurs in common workplace operations involving cutting, sawing, drilling, and crushing of concrete, brick, block, rock, and stone products (such as construction tasks), and operations using sand products (such as in glass manufacturing, foundries, sand blasting, and hydraulic fracturing).
Latest Posts
| 03.27.2016 |
New OSHA Silica Dust Rule to Impact Over 675,000 Workplaces, Biggest Impact on Construction Industry |
| 12.19.2015 |
On December 17, 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a major new initiative to increase the number of criminal charges in worker endangerment and worker safety cases. Although the DOJ and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) have had a worker endangerment initiative for a number of years, the new changes are intended to bolster the likelihood and number of criminal prosecutions which historically have languished, according to DOJ, due to the OSH Act’s misdemeanor criminal provisions. |
| 07.29.2014 |
If you’ve shied away from government contracts in the past, this free seminar will give you a working knowledge of how to succeed when working with the government. |
| 11.21.2012 |
Businesses that own contaminated property in Missouri, such as brownfield sites and former industrial locations, can avail themselves of Missouri’s Environmental Covenant Act (MoECA), RSMo Section 260.1000 et seq., 10 CSR 25-18.010(18), to expedite cleanup and, if site conditions allow, beneficial reuse of those properties. In particular, property owners can record an environmental covenant on their property that restricts certain land uses and site activities to minimize exposure to impacted soils and groundwater. When coupled with a risk-based cleanup approach, an environmental covenant can present significant advantages to a property owner. Most notably, a company can clean up a site based on human health and environmental risks associated with appropriately tailored uses of the property, such as cleaning up an industrial property to satisfy industrial standards as opposed to residential standards. The most common types of activity and use limitations found in environmental covenants include:
Environmental covenants like other property interests are recorded in a property’s chain of title to provide notice to prospective buyers of the specific activity and use limitations imposed by the restrictions. Missouri, along with more than 20 other states, has adopted a version of the Uniform Environmental Covenants Act. The Missouri Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) has a “model” environmental covenant used by the agency in situations where MDNR is the sole overseeing Department and a second model covenant in which both EPA and MDNR are the overseeing agencies. The provisions in the new model Environmental Covenant differ only somewhat from the provisions in the prior model Environmental Covenant, but the new model serves as a reminder that Missouri has a robust risk-based cleanup program when it is neither pragmatic nor cost-effective to clean up sites to residential levels. The use of Missouri’s risk-based program should be carefully evaluated considering site-specific circumstances. |