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Archived News Release--Caution:
information may be out of date.
For more information call: (202) 219-8151
As part of its reinventing government efforts, the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) today issued a final rule
removing 645 pages of duplicative regulations for the construction and shipyard
industries.
In March 1995, President Clinton directed federal agencies
to undertake a line-by-line review of their rules and regulations to determine
if they were still needed or if they should be revised or revoked. OSHA
identified five rulemaking projects that together would eliminate at least
1,049 pages from the approximately 3,000 pages in the OSHA sections of the CFR.
Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and
Health Joseph A. Dear said, "The page reduction is part of a larger reinvention
effort to rid our rules of outdated and unncessary requirements, confusing
provisions and difficult-to-understand-standards."
Most of the changes being made in the final rule issued
today involve eliminating duplicate health standards from the shipyard and
construction parts of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) and replacing them
with cross references to the identical text in the general industry part.
In the rule, OSHA also is moving two standards currently
in subpart C and subpart G of the general industry standards (part 1910) to
subpart Z of those standards in order to place virtually all OSHA health
standards in one subpart and one volume of the CFR. The two standards are
access to employee exposure and medical records and ionizing radiation.
OSHA's commercial diving standard, currently in both the
general industry and construction standards, will be placed in the general
industry part only. Industry representatives had asked for a single
location.
OSHA also is removing some fire protection standards from
the safety and health regulations that had been inadvertently identified as
applicable to construction work.
The new final rule does not make any substantive changes
to the requirements of the OSHA standards. It will become effective June 30,
1996 and is published in the June 20, 1996 Federal Register.
As part of its customer service efforts and to assist
employers and employees in the construction industry who prefer a single
source, OSHA will publish a comprehensive user-friendly document specifically
for the construction industry. It will include all construction standards and
other materials such as compliance guidelines, recordkeeping and reporting
requirements, inspection, citation and penalty information, the top most
frequently cited standards, and a directory for OSHA field offices, state
plans, and consultation offices.
Archived News Release--Caution:
information may be out of date.
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