Retail giant Walmart reached an agreement with the Labor Department to make improvements at nearly 4,700 Walmart and Sam's Club locations after an Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspection at a Rochester, N.Y., store in 2011 found numerous safety violations, USA Today reports. The company also will pay $190,000 in fines. Similar violations were found between 2008 and 2010 at stores in nine states.

Ammonia nitrate, used in manufacturing fertilizer, is a dangerous and highly combustible explosive, as shown by the April explosion that killed 14 people, including 10 firefighters, and leveled the West Fertilizer Co. plant in the town of West, Texas.

But the rules that govern its use and storage—30 tons of it were at West Fertilizer—fall under “a patchwork of U.S. safety standards and guidance—a patchwork that has many large holes,” Rafael Moure-Eraso, chair of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB), told a Senate hearing Thursday.  

For the second time in the past few days, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has launched an investigation into a chemical plant explosion in Louisiana. On Thursday, a plant in Geismar, La., exploded, killing one person and injuring 73. On Friday, a blast in Donaldsonville, La., killed one person and injured seven. The plant that exploded on Thursday hadn't been inspected by OSHA in 20 years. It is not yet known when the last inspection was done at the Donaldsonville plant.

According to an analysis by Think Progress, the Geismar, La., petrochemical plant that exploded on Thursday has not been inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) since 1993. The blast at the Williams Companies Inc.'s olefins plant killed one person and injured 73. 

Update: After a second factory explosion in Louisiana Friday evening, OSHA has announced it will investigate the cause of the blast that killed one person and injured seven. More details can be found on the Washington Post. 

A replacement worker at American Crystal Sugar Co.’s East Grand Forks, Minn., plant was seriously injured last month, suffering severe burns when he was hit with hot liquid that spewed from a tank, according to news reports.  

The company has been operating with replacement workers since it locked out its highly trained 1,300 member workforce in August 2011. The locked-out workers are members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) and worked at plants in Iowa, Minnesota and North Dakota.

Today marks a sad anniversary for worker safety. Two years ago today, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) submitted the silica dust standard to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB).  

Feb. 14 will mark the second anniversary of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA's) submission of the silica dust standard for review to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Every year that goes by without the enactment and enforcement of the proposed standard that controls workers' exposure to silica dust, 60 workers will die, AFL-CIO Health and Safety Director Peg Seminario told NPR in a story broadcast today.

As more and more employers duck paying workers decent wages, health care and training costs by hiring contingent/temporary workers, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) must step up its protection efforts for those workers, a new report urges. Martha McLuskey, one of the authors of the Center for Progressive Reform (CPR) report, At the Company’s Mercy: Protecting Contingent Workers from Unsafe Working Conditions, says:

Increasingly, employers are treating them as expendable, accepting high injury rates because the company is largely insulated from the economic consequences.

The nation’s flight attendants will gain workplace health and safety protection from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) under a proposed new policy announced by OSHA and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

While OSHA safety and health standards apply to most of America's workers, airline crews have been under the jurisdiction of the FAA since 1975, when the agency claimed exclusive jurisdiction over workplace safety and health for all crew members when they are on board the aircraft.

In 2011, musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) that forced workers to miss at least one day on the job, accounted for one-third of all workplace injuries that required time off from work. That’s up from 29% in 2010, according to recent figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).