Washington

By Hema Steele

On June 10, 2025, Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo signed into law Senate Bill 260, which seeks to keep employees who are working outdoors safe from the hazards associated with exposure to wildfire smoke. The law directs the Administrator of Nevada’s Division of Industrial Relations to adopt regulations to reduce employee exposure to poor air quality caused by wildfire smoke. Exposure to high Air Quality Index (AQI) levels irritates the lungs and respiratory system and may cause a range of symptoms from coughing and chest tightness to aggravating asthma and other chronic lung diseases, or even permanently damaging lungs. See EPA Brochure Air Quality Index: A Guide to Air Quality and Your Health (February 2014).

Through SB 260, the Legislature directs the Administrator to issue regulations requiring employers to reduce employee exposure to these hazards when the EPA AQI is 150-200 and where it is 200 or more. For perspective, the EPA classifies an AQI in the 150-200 range as “unhealthy,” whereby some individuals may experience adverse health effects, while 201-300 is “very unhealthy,” and above 301 is “hazardous.” See EPA’s Air Quality Index Basics. The Administrator must also specify an AQI level at which employers will be prohibited from having employees perform critical tasks outdoors.

In addition to reducing or eliminating exposure to wildfire smoke, the law directs employers to train employees on the: Continue reading →

By Conn Maciel Carey’s COVID-19 Task Force

As previously discussed on the OSHA Defense Report blog, on April 10, 2020, Federal OSHA issued enforcement guidance for recording cases of COVID-19, relaxing recordkeeping enforcement for employers other than those in the healthcare industry, emergency response organizations (e.g., emergency medical, firefighting, and law enforcement services), and correctional institutions. Unfortunately, the guidance does not mandate that State Plan States follow suit, and not all states with approve OSH Programs have announced whether they will be following Fed OSHA’s guidance.

The state of Washington has not published any guidance on that issue one way or the other. But here is what we have learned from the Washington Department of Labor and Industries (“DLI”) Division of Occupational Safety and Health (“DOSH”).

As a threshold matter, as we know from Fed OSHA recordkeeping, among other requirements, for an injury or illness to be recordable, it must be “work-related.” The language of Washington DLI’s recordkeeping regulation regarding assessing work-relatedness mirrors the Fed OSHA regulation. They both state that an employer:

“must consider an injury or illness to be work-related if an event or exposure in the work environment either caused or contributed to the resulting condition or significantly aggravated a preexisting injury or illness.”

Work-relatedness is presumed for injuries and illnesses resulting from events or exposures that occur in the work environment, unless an enumerated exception applies, and the work-relatedness exceptions for Fed OSHA and Washington are also the same.

Importantly, Washington DLI also has Continue reading →