2025 Mid-Year Regulatory Review with Zach Pucillo

We saw some different things that happened out there, such as the elimination of DEI programs. Also, USAID was cut too, and that’s where the US is providing assistance to other different regions around the world. They’re trying to pull money back into the federal government as much as possible. However, when it comes to the regulatory agencies that we deal with in the EHS side, we haven’t the big impact there. We’ve seen a few hits, but not a major impact.

DOGE does have a website. Take it for what it is, it is a federal government website. However, it’s been under a lot of scrutiny for the accuracy of its data and its numbers. Take it for what it’s worth. With the Department of Labor, which OSHA falls under that category, they cut programs and contracts of about $425 million there. In the EPA, we’re up to about $295 million in contracts that were cut across the board. But as you go through some of these contracts that were out there, some of them were related to cleanup sites. Most of them were third party agencies that they were brought in, so they’re canceling a lot of those contracts that were out there. Then slashing some of the funded agencies’ government programs, such as DEI.

The EPA is also taking a bit of a scale-back as well, too. They’re Administrator Lee Zeldin, he’s probably been one of the most forefront people out there of the new administration with the different secretaries and agencies, and all of that. He’s also pronounced recently that there’s going to be a cutback in their staffing to get to Regan era numbers. We’re going to probably see a layoff sometime soon, of about 2 to 3000 employees within the Environmental Protection Agency.

The area that’s probably going to take the biggest hit is going to be scientific research, research and development. We’ve seen it on the safety side, and now we’re going to see it on the environmental side. These research firms are the ones that are discovering the PFAS issues, the poly fluoroalkyl substances, the microplastics that are out there. Those have been in the news for the past few years. It was discovered by the Office of Research and Development through the EPA. They were starting to put in regulatory drinking water standards. However, those are all been cut and being rolled back and de-regulated at this point. If they’re going to do the deregulation at that point, they’re probably also going to cut in that department.

Then the safety side, the news was NIOSH pretty much. The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, it’s a branch of the Center of Disease and Control. What NIOSH does is basically a lot of research and development on the contaminants and the hazards that a lot of different industries face out there. For instance, coal miners, firefighters, with the air that they’re constantly breathing and the specific hazards that they’re going to be subjected to. They did a lot of research and development into what personal protective equipment is going to work best for those roles. Also, helping to set permissible exposure limits for the chemicals that they’re going to be exposed to in any workplace that are out there. With that loss, it’s really going to take a hit on especially the air quality portion of the research that’s out there. But personal protective equipment standards, trying to make sure that the equipment is up to the level it needs to be to control the hazards, we’re probably going to see an impact on that in the near future.

Yeah, NIOSH laid off about 90% of its workforce.

Now, they did bring some employees back recently. That was due to a coal mining agency in West Virginia basically challenging the authority of Robert F. Kennedy and bringing that program back into place. However, they may not be done completely yet with restructuring that agency and moving it into a different division. NIOSH, unfortunately they are taking a big hit. But if you think about it from a safety standpoint, they haven’t done a whole lot of introduction in new items into the workforce recently. They did a lot of respiratory protection. During the COVID era, they were the ones that really talked about the mask requirements, especially N-95 respirators.

Yes, big need at that point. We’re out of the COVID situation at this point. And therefore, I don’t know what it is about research and development, I’m hoping and we’re all crossing our fingers, that we’re going to be good for a few years. But if something else comes up, there’s going to definitely be a need for NIOSH because they’re always looking toward the future to try to prevent hazards.

[00:06:12]
Yeah. It’s fascinating to hear about not only DOGE’s re-calibrated expectations. I think to hear that they went down from two trillion to 150 billion, that’s a big difference in saving goals. To hear that the head of the EPA is also trying to cut down in their workforce, NIOSH losing 90% of their workforce. All this federal scaling back really sets the stage for my next question. You predicted that states like California and Washington would continue leading the way on safety regulations while federal agencies scaled back. How has the federal and state regulatory dynamic evolved in the first half of 2025? Are we seeing more states stepping up with their own regulations to fill these gaps that are left by agencies like the EPA and NIOSH?

We’re starting to see a little bit of that. I think most states are in a wait and see period. With DOGE and their activity, with the current administration, we’re in a four-year period at this point on the Trump Administration where it’s been determined that it’s going to be probably be pro-business. It’s probably going to be deregulation. Just removing regulations out of the standards for the federal government, it’s not an easy process to do. Therefore, it’s not something that we can just snap our fingers and make happen overnight. I know there’s executive orders out there, but everything everybody tries to do does get challenged in the legal system. People are getting sued, agencies are being sued, and therefore there’s going to be time that has to go into place to see really what the fallout is going to be.

Now, states are trying to step up though. But once again, we’re in this back-and-forth in the judicial system of what’s actually going to happen. For instance, California. California was stepping up and making a vehicle emission standard. Basically, three different regulations that were basically going to make all sales of vehicles by I think 2035 were going to be electric vehicles at that point. There’s the tailpipe emissions rule that was out there. They had that passed and if you think about, with the EPA, you’re allowed to make your own state regulations as long as they are as strict or more strict than the federal government’s regulations. They were taking a step further and trying to get in with the clean energy, and making sure that they were reducing areas like the smog in Los Angeles. What can we do to try to get the air quality better? Therefore, all right, let’s go to clean powered energy with vehicles. That’ll put a huge dent in that smog problem. Therefore, let’s go to EV vehicle sales only.

Well, after that was passed, there was a Congressional Review Act. That is where basically Congress can step in on the behalf of basically the public and state, “This is not really Constitutional at this point. We’re going to take a vote on this for your state and determine whether or not you are allowed to have these waivers from the EPA.” California had to apply for these waivers from the EPA in order to actually put these into place. Congress stepped in and said, “No, no, no. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Let’s take a vote on this.” The vote was basically in favor of California not being able to enforce these standards, not getting these waivers from the EPA.

This affects other states as well too, because 16 other states adopted California’s clean vehicle standards. Therefore, they also have to follow suit with this as well. They cannot apply for these waivers at this point. It’s going to go back-and-forth between California and Congress, because California is saying this Congressional Review Act was an illegal act that they could not actually step in and do because they already had permission from the EPA to obtain these waivers. There’s going to be a back-and-forth period going on here.

California is also stepping up with a new regulation on greenhouse gas emissions as well, too. This is in lieu of the current administration rolling back regulations on power plants across the country with greenhouse gas reporting. They’re rolling back the regulations on having to report what your greenhouse gas emissions are. However, California is stepping in. They’re running with Senate Bill 253 where you have to basically have an emissions disclosure. That’s going to be scopes one, two, and three of emissions.

If you’re a business in California, or if you operate at all in California, and you do over $1 billion of revenue. Doesn’t matter if that’s in California. You could have a nationwide outfit. If you do over $1 billion of revenue and you operate in the state of California, you’re going to have to submit scope one emissions. Which those are emissions that are direct emissions from your processes of your plant and what you do. You’ll have to report scope two emissions, which are indirect emissions from purchased energy and different things like that. Your power plant bills and all of that, how much electrical power you’re consuming and all of that. That’s also emissions that you are making the power plant put out into the atmosphere on your behalf. Then finally, scope three emissions, those are going to be indirect emissions that are because of your operations and your supply chain. If you have a third party come in and do shipping for you, that third party, what kind of emissions are they having with greenhouse gases? You have to basically start to calculate those as well too and report those in.

Then there was an attached bill to that, Senate Bill 261. That’s climate risk disclosure. Basically, anybody with over $500 million revenue doing business in the state of California, now you basically have to come up with a financial plan of how you’re going to try to limit your greenhouse gas emission. California’s going for it, but they’re meeting roadblocks every which way because they came out with this greenhouse gas emissions rule and then the EPA said they’re going to roll back the power plants on the greenhouse gas emissions reporting. Therefore, does that put this Senate bill in jeopardy now? When it comes to the states, it’s all a wait and see atmosphere because as soon as one side does something, the other side’s going to challenge it, it seems like.

[00:12:14]
Yeah, that’s an interesting point about California’s vehicle emission waivers being revoked by Congress. Seeing greenhouse gas reporting being rolled back federally, but California stepping up with these new greenhouse gas reporting requirements coming next year, it sounds like even these traditionally proactive states are going to be facing some federal pushback. I know you said it’s a wait and see thing. But speaking of state-level activity, the heat safety rule was a major topic that we touched on in January. What’s happened to this proposed regulation? Has it been finalized? Has it been significantly modified? Is it shelved? Given what you described about this federal-state tension, how are companies navigating heat safety requirements across states with all these different standards?

Yeah. Let’s start off with the first part there. Where are we at with the heat rule? It’s in a proposed status still with OSHA. OSHA is the one that was attempting to implement it and they’ve done a lot of work on the heat standard. A lot of research and development. How can companies comply with this? What are the resources we can put out there? They have the heat.gov website that they’ve put out there, trying to really hone in the different temperature thresholds as well, too. Because that’s a tricky number to try to pin down, based off of where you’re at geographically. We’re also talking about indoor heat as well, too. It’s not just the outdoor heat alone. It’s also indoor heat. People exposed to radiant temperatures coming off of machines and everything.

It’s still in a proposed status. Now keep in mind, the Trump Administration has already stated that, for every new regulation that you’re going to finalize, you have to deregulate 10 other regulations. I interpret this regulation as being shelved for now. It may stay in the proposed status, it may be shelved there until the next administration. It may just be killed at some point unfortunately, which we don’t want to see that happen. I think it’s a very important rule. We have all kinds of different climates that are out there, all kinds of hazardous exposures. Every year, several lives are taken to heat exposure via working conditions.

In lieu of the proposed standards still being in the proposed state and potentially being shelved, OSHA did just extend the National Emphasis Program on Heat Illness Prevention for another year.

It was set to expire this past month, I believe it was in April at some point. However, it’s been extended out to April 8th, 2026. The National Emphasis Program allows a compliance officer to basically stop in and do any type of random audit that could be related to heat illness regulations. There are no regulations, but the compliance safety and health officer has a checklist that they go down based off the Emphasis Program. That they’re going to ask about heat safety programs, heat safety training, access to water, access to shade, rest breaks, all of that. If the OSHA officer feels that the employee is being subjected to a hazard and not being protected, then they can cite the employer based off the general duty clause which is related to this National Emphasis Program.

That’s where we’re at on the federal side. However, we’re seeing states step up more and more on the heat side.

Currently, California, Washington, Oregon, Maryland, and Minnesota all have some form of a heat illness prevention standard in place at this point. There are some states that have some proposed rules as well out there. You have New Mexico, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey and Arizona have all proposed some House bills in order to put a heat illness prevention standard in place. Some of these states, Illinois, Colorado, and Arizona, also are trying to put in a cold standard as well. It’s a heat and cold standard. If the temperature drops below a certain threshold point, then some policies have to kick in. I don’t live in Arizona, I’m not from there. I’ve only visited maybe a handful of times. But they have a cold standard and I’m guessing maybe it’s at 60-degrees. Where I’m from, 60-degrees is a nice day.

I’m sure in the desert, it does get cold and therefore they do need a cold standard out there in order just to make sure they’re covering all the bases with the employers and the employees as well, too. But I thought it was interesting that a 60-degree threshold was the cold trigger point.

Then you got a state like Florida. Florida, you would think synonymous with the heat, and the humidity, and the high heat indexes, and all that. They had a bill that was proposed. It was going to be the heat illness prevent standard. But House Bill 433 came in and killed the heat illness prevention standard. House Bill 433 is one that was signed by Governor DeSantis and it prevents any local governments from enacting their own heat standard. They’re going the complete opposite way and stating you cannot make a heat illness prevention standard, which I thought was a little extreme in my point of view. We want to protect people, especially in a state like that where there’s such a heat exposure. It was really surprising to me that they were going that way.

[00:17:18]
Yeah. We’ve got this patchwork developing with states like California, Washington, Oregon, Maryland, Minnesota putting together what they can do to keep their heat standard, keep their people protected. While, like you said, a state like Florida that is so hot and humid, sometimes you feel like you’re breathing oatmeal when you’re there, and they’re saying, “Man, no. You can’t make sure that people are safe in the heat.” That does sound pretty wild.

It really highlights how the regulatory landscape is fragmenting at this point, which brings me to another major shift. The Loper Bright ruling that overturned Chevron deference has been in effect for about a year now. Can you share some examples of how that’s impacted specific regulatory bodies like OSHA or EPA, or maybe enforcement cases that have come up that have been impacted by this ruling? Are we seeing the predicted shift where judges are now the ones interpreting the regulations, rather than deferring to these agencies and these scientists who are the ones that understand the background of these cases?

Well, remember where I said that the federal government is making most of their cuts at? Scientific research development.

Therefore, it’s going to probably just fall into the judges’ hands of interpretation because we’re not going to have these people in place unfortunately to help out with the interpretations, even if they could.

When it comes to the examples, we’ve really only seen it come up one time thus far. Not to say it’s not going to come up more often. But really, one when it comes to the EPA. That was in, once again, here we are, California. It’s the city and county of San Francisco versus the Environmental Protection Agency of the United States. Under the Clean Water Act, the EPA will give out national pollutant discharge elimination systems permits. That’s a mouthful as well, too. MPDES permits.

If you’re going to discharge any type of wastewater into a body of water of the United States, in order to do so, you have to have an MPDES permit to do so. The EPA granted the City of San Francisco some of these MPDES permits. Well, the MPDES permit really only talks about the operation limits that the entity that receives it, and this would be the water treatment plants. Really, okay, how much are you going to be discharging type of a thing. It really didn’t go into specific chemicals in these permits that were issued. Therefore, in the body of water that was the point of this investigation, there were higher levels of pollutants that were discovered.

The EPA stated, “Okay, City of San Francisco, you’re responsible because you polluted this body of water at this point with these chemical constituents.” The City of San Francisco said, “No, no, no. If we go back to the MPDES permit that you gave to us, it didn’t have anything in there really about the chemical constituents. It was more about our operations and processes, and how much we can actually put into that body of water.” Some jockeying back-and-forth and everything. Well, the court ruled in favor of the City of San Francisco, meaning that the EPA lost. Really, the court stated, “You were too vague and generalized in your MPDES permit, and therefore we can’t hold the City of San Francisco liable for you not being specific on what you wanted them to do to not pollute this body of water.” Now, the body not going to be protected. No, that’s not the case. They will do some more investigation into that. However, when it came down to this court case, technically the city is not being held responsible under the EPA’s accusation because the permits were too vague.

Now, what does this mean going forward? The EPA has to be more specific in what they actually write into the MPDES permits that they issue out to the entities. That means it’s going to be a longer process in order to obtain one of those permits, and therefore companies are going to have to try to work with that. Really, they can’t discharge any waters until they actually have one of those permits in place. Because of this hiccup in the system because they were using generalized permits in order to get these permits out to these companies for business, now because of this court case decision, it’s going to slow down that process. Therefore, I don’t know how the current administration is going to look at that because they want progress. They want business production. This hinders that and this is all due to a new interpretation on the generalization that the EPA was trying to comply with.

[00:21:51]
Yeah. That example I think is perfect to speak to … I feel like when I was hearing about Chevron deference and the Loper Bright case, and how it was being overturned, it was said, “Oh, well, this is going to help progress.” It sounds like it’s doing absolutely the opposite when these agencies are going to have to make more specific quantifiable limitations, rather than being able to send out these open-ended directives. It sounds like they’re just going to have to be more precise in their rule making going forward.

I know there’s a lot to talk about there, but we have other things that we talked about in January that I want to shift gears to. Let’s talk about innovation. Wearable safety technology and data-driven safety programs were highlighted as trends for 2025 when we spoke in January. Now that we’re midway through the year, which technologies are proving most effective? How are companies balancing innovation with this regulatory uncertainty that we’ve been discussing?

Yeah. Well, you have all different types of technologies that are definitely hitting the safety program market. You’ve got environmental air monitors, those have been out for a long time so that’s not really anything new, but they are getting better with the technology that’s available to them today. Augmented reality glasses, even OSHA tried those out. There was actually an article out there that they tried out about 10 pairs of glasses that basically, with some eye movement or some different patter, that they could actually take pictures while doing an inspection that was out there. Proximity warnings. Vital sign monitoring is a new technology as well too, that some companies are trying out, with maybe some applications, some smart watch items. Lone worker technology. Ergonomics, exoskeletons are starting to actually start to hit the market. That’s making us a little more superhuman as workers, I guess. Smart hard hats are starting to hit the market as well, too. Which are going to have technology built in there, maybe with some GPS type of tracking on workers, especially for lone worker type of areas, too.

The National Safety Council does a survey on technology every year. I did look into this. In 2024, the biggest technology increases for safety that were starting to be adopted by companies was, number one, risk management software. Having a software in place to help you manage everything that you need. Then right after that would be proximity sensors. We’re talking about warnings that go off when an employee approaches an area which is really helpful or machine guarding, lock out, tag out. Maybe keeping an employee out of an area where hazardous chemicals could be stored at.

We’re seeing a lot of companies also start to adapt to phones, tablets, smart watches. It used to be maybe we don’t want the phone to be used in the workplace at all. I think we’ve grown as a society and realized, okay, we can actually make use of this technology. We might as well adapt it. We’re never going to get away from our employees not really being able to have their phones in the workplace. They’re always going to try to sneak it in or something like that, it seems like. Therefore, why not make it useful then? Why not use the camera technology in there with QR codes? Why not have maybe a mass-messaging system out there for emergency purposes?

Data driving is also a very effective current technology that is out there. Having data dashboards that we’re trying to collect all this data on our safety programs. The ability to build a false digital workflow and ensure leading indicators are actually being measured with real numbers is where a lot of safety professionals are trying to get to. We can measure the lagging indicators that are out there. We all know our DART rates, we all know our incident rates. But starting to measure the leading indicators.

How many times are we having toolbox talks? How many times has a CEO made an appearance on the floor to talk with employees to show the accountable and the engagement? Let’s do PPE spot checks. How can we do that? Well, we have to have technology in order to do this on the fly, or else we’re back with paper and pen and clipboard. We’re not going to be able to get the efficient data that we need to actually take a look at these numbers and see are we performing better or are we performing worse? Are we trending in the right direction? Is our leading indicators really having an impact on our lagging indicators? Making that DART, that incident rate go down.

Companies, they’re still moving forward with innovation as the current regulations are not really going anywhere. We understand that losses due to injuries and illnesses are a cost which we can attempt to control. Why not invest in those areas?

I think a lot of people are realizing injuries and illnesses, it’s not about regulations. It’s not about necessarily the citations that are out there. The real costs are the injuries, the illnesses, the indirect costs that are associated with those. Insurance rates are going to probably continue to climb with inflation and deregulation. Why not attempt to control the costs by investing in technology?

[00:26:40]
Yeah. Your point about data-driven workflows being the most effective current technology is really compelling. And measuring those leading indicators, rather than only relying on lagging indicators. Using real numbers to improve response times and training impacts makes a lot of sense because I think you’re right. I appreciate your insight that there are companies investing in innovation because I do believe that injury costs are controllable. I think there’s maybe a lot of people out there who feel like injuries are still just mistakes, but there are so many variables that you can do to keep your people safer. Even as insurance rates climb with inflation and deregulation, I think it’s probably the best best for most companies is to get something out there to measure those leading indicators to keep their people safe.

Let’s talk a little bit about specific industries, like construction and automotive, especially with the ongoing EV transitions and warehousing with increasing automation. Which sectors have been most affected by the regulatory shifts this year in that area? What adaptations are we seeing from safety professionals in those fields?

With the comment on EV, the tailpipe rules in California, we see a potential slight slowdown on the EV market potentially. It really depends. It’s still a new field for us. We’re still not sure on how long vehicles are going to last, what the actual hazardous impact is going to be of lithium ion batteries. Because eventually, we’re going to get a stockpile of lithium ion batteries somewhere that we can’t use anything for.

What do we do with those at that point? Those can be a dangerous hazard and we have to take a look at that as well. The impact there hasn’t been great. But once again, that’s almost like it’s so new that it’s we got to wait and see at this point.

The issue for the safety professional is the backing of why we do what we do. We can’t rely on state and federal governments to keep up with technology and safety surrounding what we’re trying to put into our businesses that are out there. We have AI now that is really, really taking off. The whole AI market out there is blazing a path right now. We have robotics that are out there helping with definitely ergonomic strains. More electric power sources. Who knows when a pandemic could happen like what we’ve had a few years ago?

With the media and how things are narrated, we have to be careful about finding the correct information to share and stand on as safety professionals. The regulation creating agencies will be too slow to keep up with technology. That’s due to what we’ve been talking about for the past half-hour, legal challenges. It will always face legal challenges. They’ve been trying to put that heat illness rule into place for the past, I don’t know, three, four, maybe five years at this point. As we have EVs come out, as we have robotics and exoskeletons, and AI that’s built into maybe augmented reality glasses and hard hats, and all of that, we as the safety professionals have to take a look at consensus standards. Are there additional hazards that this could actually create for us? Is it creating an area that we cannot rely on as well too, with the data that is actually being produced? Especially through AI patterns that are out there as well, too.

Hopefully, we can get the regulatory agencies to keep up. But also, don’t forget to pay attention to the consensus standards that are out there. We don’t really have any rules for EVs right now and they are out there and in the market.

Lithium ion batteries. If you check OSHA’s regulations, there are no regulations specific to lithium ion batteries. There are no really EPA regulations on lithium ion batteries either. They do make mention of lithium ion batteries, they have some safety protocols that are out there, but nothing when it really comes to a regulatory burden of input. You have consistence agencies like ANSI and the NFPA. The NFPA is one of the most leading areas I think when it comes to the lithium ion battery handling safety and storage. They’re set to come out with NFPA 800 to address batteries due to the fire hazards associated with those batteries this year. Wait and see on that. Like I said, I feel like we’re in a theme of wait and see here.

We’re not going to see specific regulations surrounding robotics from OSHA, or AI, or augmented realities. But we already do have some consensus standards out there when it comes to NFPA and ANSI. We have to make sure that we’re taking a look at the consensus standards. We have to make sure that we are being patient, but not too patient. We can’t always remain in a wait and see mode. We have to actually take a look at what are the regulations that are out there now and do they apply.

For instance, there’s one that I’m taking a look at right now with EVs. That is EVs have lithium ion batteries, that’s a new power source that’s being introduced into these repair garages. Therefore, is that power source really being considered when it comes to lock out, tag out standard? The lock out, tag out standards should be in play when it comes to repairing an EV vehicle when that hood goes up if they have to do any battery work. There’s also arc flash that could potentially happen there. Even though it doesn’t really state anywhere in the regulations about EV safety, we can take the current regulations and apply them as safety professionals. We can start to get more content and information out there. I think it’s our job to do so and educate the public.

[00:31:58]
Yeah, that’s a crucial point about safety professionals really not being able to rely on state and federal governments to keep pace with technology. Especially with being patient, but to a point to where we know we have to move forward at some point. Whether it’s EV battery handling, AI, robotics, or augmented reality, I really appreciated your example about NFPA 800 for battery fire standards while we still lack specific standards really illustrates the gap there for safety professionals.

As we’re looking forward to the second-half of 2025, what regulatory developments should safety professionals be preparing for? Are there any unexpected regulatory trends or enforcement priorities that weren’t on our radar in January that companies should be aware of? Or is it just going to be a sit back and see what happens sort of a thing?

Yeah, I’m going to go with the latter of that. I’m going to go the opposite direction unfortunately, which as a safety professional you don’t necessarily want to hear.

Deregulation is still the current theme that is out there. We have to stay in the know. We have to actually know what is going on. We must focus on the compliance, but also going beyond compliance as well, too. Because compliance may be limited, to a certain degree, with whatever regulatory standards that are out there. And remember, most of the regulations are not going to go away. We’re not going to probably see new regulations, but the current code of federal regulations is probably not going to be changed very much.

In fact, talking about states earlier, one thing I forgot to cover. The state of Kentucky. They voted recently to go back to the actual federal standards. Kentucky is a state plan for their Department of Labor. If you don’t know it, all 50 states, you can choose just to adopt basically the federal regulations on safety, which comes down from OSHA. OSHA can do all your enforcement. Or you can have a state program. You have to adopt all of OSHA’s regulations, but you can become more strict as well too, and make modifications. Kentucky recently decided, “You know what? We’re going to go back to the federal standard. We’re not going to have these additional state regulatory codes when it comes to our safety code.” Therefore, they went back to the federal standard, which is pretty unique. You haven’t really seen that yet out of any state.

The governor actually vetoed that order. It was approved by the Senate, voted as a yea. The governor vetoed it, and then that veto was actually overturned. Which is something that’s very rare to happen as well, too.

Back to your question, sorry. I just wanted to throw that one back in there.

When it comes to an incident, you can’t only address the regulatory side. We all understand that there are direct and indirect costs. If an employee gets hurt, we’re in a world now where the employee may look outside for legal counsel. If your ducks were not in a row, then it becomes such an easy case for that employee to win. A lot of times, it doesn’t even get to court. A lot of times, it gets settled upfront because it’s easy for an attorney to sit at the table and be like, “Well, let me see your safety programs. Let me see all your safety training records. Okay, I’m going through your safety programs, it doesn’t address what happened here. You guys aren’t following this right here.” You’re easily making the case for the attorney at that point which you don’t want to do. You want to make sure that you’re adhering to what your policies are, you’re adhering to your disciplinary programs. You’re not giving anybody any slack out there. You’re holding everybody accountable. And you’re implementing those programs to the T as much as you can. Dot the Is, cross the Ts.

Evolving tech is out there, AI, don’t use it to write your safety programs. I just want to throw that out there. I think a lot of people may say, “Hey, AI program, go write me a lock out, tag out program for this, and this, and this.” It’s not going to be specific to your site, and therefore we can’t get into a trend like that. As a regulatory professional, a safety professional, don’t rely on just all the artificial intelligence that’s out there to try to craft any of your safety program. I’ll admit it, I have used it before. I’ll use it as a thought starter, or if I get a log jam in my brain or something like that. It’ll help me break away from that, but that’s all I use it for. Everything else, I try to make sure it’s original thought coming from me.

And also, with the additional technology going into the workplace, another concern out there, that brings in additional injury source hazards like we just talked about with the EVs.

Tech is doing great things, like robotics that’s going to ease the strain on the human body. But when you add those items in, you’re adding in new energy sources, new moving parts that tend to need repair or be replaced. That means we’re applying more lock out, tag out than maybe we have in the past.

Finally, as NIOSH undergoes some restructuring, the EPA eases regulations on PFAS, we have challenges with MPDES permits, we’re seeing loosened restrictions on power plants as we’ve all talked about. These regulatory shifts shouldn’t be seen as a green light for the unchecked industry activity. We don’t want to prioritize short term production at the expense of longterm responsibility.

We don’t want to take these next three to four years off because of deregulation and create hazards that we’re going to end up paying for down the road. Invest now, keep doing what you’re doing. Even though there’s deregulation, check with the consensus standards. Go beyond what you are hired to do.

[00:37:22]
Absolutely. Put your people first, make sure they’re safe. Not only for the legal reasons, but it’s your responsibility to make sure that your people can go home safe every day. I think you did a little bit of my job here. Usually, this is where I summarize what we talked about, but you did that for me.

Thank you so much for your insight on all of that. Is there anything that you want to share with our listeners before we wrap up?

Yeah, I’ll just say this. Once again, summing it all up. While the regulatory landscape is shifting, now more than ever it’s going to be important to stay proactive. Monitor the state-level requirements because that’s where we’re going to continue to see the changes at. Lean on consensus standards when those federal regulations are unclear, we’re not sure if it’s enacted or not. Lean on the consensus standard because usually they’re creating the standards for the good of the people. Use your data to drive your safety decisions as well, too. Reallocate your resources into some of your top risks that are out there. Regulations may fluctuate, but the costs of inaction, whether it’s an injury, a lawsuit, reputational damage, it remains high. Invest in the systems that are going to help you stay informed, be responsive and resilient.

[00:38:31]
That’s great. Thank you so much, Zach. I always enjoy our episodes together. It’s always nice to hear from someone who’s really got boots on the ground, understands what’s going on, and what these safety professionals are facing. I know our listeners appreciate it, too. Thanks for sharing.

My pleasure, as always. Thank you for having me.