Your written respiratory protection program cites 29 CFR 1910.134 by paragraph. So does a line in the contractor onboarding packet, and probably a question or two on the audit checklist your site leads work through. Those paragraph numbers were right when somebody typed them. This week OSHA finished a run of public hearings on whether some of the paragraphs they point to should still exist.
The hearings ran virtually from August 19 through August 26, 2026, covering several of the deregulatory actions OSHA has on the table. Most of that package was published in the Federal Register on July 1, 2025, with a Walking-Working Surfaces proposal added on April 6, 2026. The stated basis is Executive Order 14192, “Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation.”
23
Notices of proposed rulemaking listed on OSHA’s deregulatory rulemaking page as of August 28, 2026
Source: OSHA, Deregulatory Rulemaking
What is actually in the package
Sixteen of the twenty-three are parallel rulemakings amending the respiratory protection provisions in the standards for sixteen substances, each with its own docket. The list runs through asbestos, benzene, lead, cadmium, formaldehyde, ethylene oxide, vinyl chloride, methylene chloride, coke oven emissions, cotton dust, inorganic arsenic and five more. The other seven stand on their own: medical evaluation requirements in the respiratory protection standard, fixed ladders under Walking-Working Surfaces, the safety color code for marking physical hazards along with textiles, sawmills and shipyard employment, construction illumination, occupational exposure to COVID-19 in healthcare settings, rescission of the coordinated enforcement regulations, and an interpretation of the General Duty Clause.
The General Duty Clause item is the one to read closely, and it is easy to read too much into. OSHA proposes to clarify its interpretation of 29 U.S.C. 654(a)(1) “to exclude from enforcement known hazards that are inherent and inseparable from the core nature of a professional activity or performance.” The proposed regulatory text sets a three-part test that has to be satisfied in full: the activity is integral to the essential function of a professional or performance-based occupation, the hazard cannot be eliminated without fundamentally altering or prohibiting the activity, and the employer has made reasonable efforts that do not alter the nature of the activity to control the hazard through engineering controls, administrative controls or personal protective equipment. That third condition is a continuing duty on the employer.
The proposal names sectors where the limitation might apply, but its own regulatory text says those sectors “may include, but are not limited to” the ones listed, and OSHA has asked for comment on whether the list should be made exclusive rather than illustrative. Treating it today as a settled boundary around a handful of industries would be getting ahead of the record. Section 5(a)(1) itself is untouched by the proposal.
A rescinded federal rule is not a rescinded state rule
Here is where multi-site employers get caught. The regulation governing how State Plans track federal changes, 29 CFR 1953.5, applies to standards, so it reaches the sixteen substance rulemakings and the other standards-level items rather than every proposal in the package. Within that scope, the obligation runs differently in each direction.
Under 1953.5(a)(1), a new permanent standard or a more stringent amendment obliges a State Plan to promulgate its own version, or an at least as effective equivalent, within six months, with a longer period available if the Assistant Secretary accepts a timely showing of good cause. Going the other way, 1953.5(a)(2) says something different. Where the comparable federal standard is revoked or made less stringent, the regulation states that it “would generally be unnecessary for a State to revoke a standard,” and that a state declining to follow the federal action “need only provide notification of its intent to retain the existing State standard to OSHA within 6 months of the Federal promulgation date.”
What a State Plan owes OSHA when a federal standard changes
| Federal action | What the State Plan must do |
|---|---|
| New permanent standard, or a more stringent amendment to an existing one | Promulgate the federal standard or an at least as effective equivalent within six months, or demonstrate its existing standard already is. The Assistant Secretary may allow longer for good cause shown in time |
| Federal standard revoked or made less stringent | Generally unnecessary to revoke. A state that keeps its own standard need only notify OSHA of its intent to retain within six months |
| Federal standard modified, revised or revoked, where it applies to products used or distributed in interstate commerce | Section 18(c)(2) restricts State plan authority here, so the federal change may require a matching state change, unless the state standard is required by compelling local conditions and does not unduly burden interstate commerce |
Source: eCFR, 29 CFR 1953.5, Special provisions for standards changes
Twenty-two State Plans cover most private sector workers along with state and local government workers, twenty-one states plus Puerto Rico. Seven more cover state and local government workers only. All of them have to be at least as effective as federal OSHA. Outside the interstate commerce case in the table, a state that wants to keep the standard it already has can simply keep it. So if you run sites in California, Michigan, Oregon and Texas, one of those four picks up federal relief automatically and the other three each decide for themselves.
The General Duty Clause proposal travels a different road, and it is worth not confusing the two. In that rulemaking OSHA states it has preliminarily determined the rule “would not result in any diminution of the effectiveness of a State Plan compared to Federal OSHA, and therefore State Plans are not required to amend their program.”
Where these proposals leave the actual hazard
Whether a control still earns its place at your site is a question about the exposure and the people working in it. That answer was the same last month as it is today, and it will be the same the day a final rule publishes.
There is also a document problem sitting under the legal one. Written programs, job hazard analyses, contractor packets, training decks and inspection checklists all cite CFR paragraphs by number, and every one of those citations is a dependency somebody has to maintain. When the CFR moves and the documents do not, you end up with an internal document committing the site to something it has quietly stopped doing, or still asking an inspector to check a box against a paragraph that no longer reads the way the checklist assumes. Either version is awkward to explain to an auditor or a customer.
What to do while these are still proposals
Where to start
Federal OSHA or a named State Plan, site by site, before you change anything. Relief that lands in one state does not land in the next one over.
Decide whether the control is still doing work on your process on its own merits. Only then ask what the rule now requires.
Written programs, SOPs, contractor packets, inspection checklists, training material. You cannot update what you have not listed.
Customer specifications, prime contractor requirements and insurance conditions are written separately from the CFR and do not move when it does.
If a question comes off an inspection form, you want to be able to show what was being checked and on which date.
These are still proposals. The post-hearing record and the public comments sit on regulations.gov under each docket number.
How Q-Inspection Can Help
Of the six steps above, Quantum’s Inspection and Audit module handles two: step three, for the checklists specifically, and step five. Inspection forms are built and edited directly in the form builder, so a question can be revised in place, with the question bank available as an optional source to pull from. Completed inspections are kept as historical records showing what was checked and when. And when an inspector marks an answer non-compliant, Smart Reference identifies the specific regulation the finding goes against, drawing on the operating context set at the organization level, region plus industry, to decide which body of regulation applies.
The judgment calls sit outside the software. Which jurisdiction a site falls under, whether a control still deserves its place once the requirement behind it is gone, what your contracts already commit you to: those are steps one, two and four, and they belong to your team. The rest of the Quantum EHS platform is built on the same division of labor. It holds the record so a decision is visible and defensible a year later, and the deciding stays with the people who know the site.
