On Thursday, June 20, 2024, CMC attorney Kate McMahon and special guest speaker Maureen Ruskin presented a webinar discussing OSHA’s Hazard Communication Standards Update.

OSHA published its long-in-the-making revision to the Hazard Communication Standard (HCS) on May 20, 2024. OSHA’s revised its standard to better align with the United Nations’ Globally Harmonized System of Classification (GHS) in order to enhance conformity with international trading partners and other U.S. agencies, although the standard aligns with outdated version 7 of the GHS. The new standard also builds into the regulatory language a myriad of interpretations the agency has made since it first released its GHS-aligned HCS in 2012. In making these changes, OSHA has introduced numerous new regulatory obligations for chemical manufacturers, importers, distributors, and downstream users required to communicate chemical hazard information.

This webinar explained the changes to the HCS, identified key compliance deadlines, and explained what employers need to do to come into compliance. Specifically, participants in this webinar learned: 

• Background about OSHA’s HCS and its relationship with the GHS
• The most important elements of the recent revisions that employers need to know
• Key implementation deadlines
• Best practices for coming into compliance with the revised HCS

CMC was thrilled to be joined for this special webinar event by co-presenter Maureen Ruskin, the recently former Deputy Director of the Directorate of Standards and Guidance at OSHA, where for many years, Ms. Ruskin was the top OSHA official leading the agency’s effort to align OSHA’s HazCom Standard with the Globally Harmonized System for Classification and Labelling of Chemicals (GHS). Maureen had a major hand in crafting OSHA’s new final HazCom Standard.

We are pleased to share these links to a copy of the slides and a recording of the webinar.

This was the 5th webinar event in Conn Maciel Carey LLP’s 2024 OSHA Webinar Series.  If you would like to be automatically registered for all our future OSHA webinars, click here to send us an email request and we will get you registered.

If you missed any of our past webinars in our annual OSHA Webinar Series, view our OSHA Webinar Library to access all of our webinar recordings. Also, click here to subscribe to our YouTube channel and get an email notification when new recordings become available.