Occupational Health and Safety

Wiley represents manufacturers, distributors, other employers and trade associations in the full range of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) activities, including rulemaking and enforcement activities.

Our practice includes working with OSHA and analogous state agencies, both informally and through rulemaking proceedings, on the development, enforcement, and revision of regulatory standards.  Members of our team represent clients before the OSHA and state agencies in seeking favorable regulatory interpretations. We also advise companies and trade associations on the requirements of OSHA’s Hazard Communication (HazCom) regulations for labeling and Safety Data Sheets (SDS) and their interaction with requirements of other statutes, such as those administered by the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the U.S. Department of Transportation, and under California Proposition 65 and other state laws, and on compliance with hazardous chemical-specific safety standards such as Permissible Exposure Limits for particulates, worker medical removal standards, and OSHA regulations governing the implementation of those standards under the “hierarchy of controls.”

Representative Recent Experience:

• Counsels industrial manufacturers on compliance with hazardous material handling and disposal, workplace safety, and Hazard Communications regulations under OSHA, the EPA, and state OSHA counterparts.
• Advises manufacturers and distributors of cleaning products, automotive fluids, and other chemical products on designing product labeling and Safety Data Sheets to comply with Hazard Communication labeling regulations.
• Produced for a major international trade association template Safety Data Sheets and a manual on product labeling and workplace warning signs.
• Representing a domestic manufacturing trade association before a state OSHA counterpart agency to negotiate and implement workplace exposure regulations for the industry’s workers. Obtained key industry-specific provisions to allow the industry’s manufacturing base to remain viable in that state.
• Successfully coordinated multi-industry efforts to discourage a state from adopting workplace exposure standards and compliance regulations more restrictive than those of federal OSHA.
• Conducting internal investigations of OSHA citations for violations of workplace safety standards in single-employer and joint-employer workplaces, and advising clients on resolving those citations with OSHA.

Contact Us

Tracy Heinzman
202.719.7106 | theinzman@wiley.law