New Federal Program From OSHA Focuses On Marijuana Industry Workplace Hazards In Colorado

A new federal program from the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) will attempt to identify and minimize risks to workers in Colorado’s legal cannabis industry, with the agency’s offices in the cities of Denver and Englewood undertaking an initiative centered on outreach and enforcement.

The intent of the new “Local Emphasis Program for Cannabis Industries” is “to encourage employers to take steps to address hazards, ensure facilities are evaluated to determine if they are in [compliance] with all relevant OSHA requirements, and to help them correct hazards, thereby reducing potential injuries, illnesses, and death for their workers,” the federal agency said in an executive summary of the campaign.

“Workers employed in the cannabis industry are exposed to a wide variety of safety and health hazards,” the directive says. “Activities such as extraction and production of concentrates involve the use of flammable liquids and have resulted in serious injuries to employees from burns and explosions. Other hazards such as electrical issues, exposure to hazardous chemicals, and unguarded machinery are also prevalent.”

To that end the new OSHA efforts aims to “reduce the incidence of serious health and physical injury or death from hazards associated with cannabis processing, growing, cultivating and product manufacturing facilities.”

Two OSHA officials spoke earlier this year at an event about protecting workers in the cannabis industry, an issue prompted in part by the 2022 death of an employe of the multi-state cannabis operator Trulieve who collapsed at work and died—what one OSHA official described at the event as “the first fatality from occupational asthma in the U.S. cannabis industry.”

Though marijuana is still illegal under federal law, OSHA’s federal and state plans around health and safety standards are nevertheless “applicable to employers engaged in commercial cannabis,” the officials pointed out at the time.

That effort to protect cannabis industry workers comes not only through federal guidance but also OSHA-approved state plans in 29 jurisdictions, most of which apply to both public and private employees.

OSHA described the new Denver- and Englewood-area campaign variously as a “local emphasis program” (LEP) and “regional emphasis program,” as it applies only in the jurisdictions of those two offices.

“The goal of this LEP,” the agency said, “is to identify and reduce or eliminate workplace incidences of health and physical hazards associated with cannabis processing, growing, cultivation and product manufacturing which are causing or likely to cause serious health or physical injury or death.”

On the outreach side, “activities will include training sessions with stakeholders and electronic information sharing activities through newsletters,” OSHA explained in the regional instruction, which took effect in July of this year and will remain in place into July 2029. “Enforcement activities will include, but not be limited to, the inspection and review of cannabis processing, growing, cultivation and product manufacturing activities, including the evaluation of working conditions, records, and safety and health programs to identify and obtain corrections of workplace hazards at applicable inspection sites.”

In addition to exposure to airborne irritants, solvents and other hazardous chemicals, the agency said, risks to workers in the cannabis industry also include electrical hazards and dangers from heavy machinery.

“The Denver and Englewood Area Offices have conducted 44 complaint, fatality, and referral inspections in the past 7 years, as well as several accident investigations including three fatalities at facilities in this industry,” the regional guidance notes. “Several of these investigations have involved fires and explosions that have occurred during the extraction process and other activities involving the handling of flammable liquids.”

More broadly, state OSHA plans, such as those in California and New Mexico, have helped officials identify some of the more common workplace hazards in the marijuana industry. They include, OSHA said, “violations of the hazard communication standard, respiratory protection, flammable liquid storage and handling, electrical hazards, fall hazards, and personal protective equipment.”

OSHA

“All of OSHA’s inspection activity for the cannabis industry has been the result of unprogrammed activity initiated by complaints, referrals, and accidents,” the new document says. “By targeting inspection activity to employers in the cannabis industry, OSHA hopes to reduce the exposure to hazards leading to injuries and fatalities experienced by employers who are engaged in the extraction and manufacturing of cannabis products for medicinal or recreational use.”

It also cites a 2017 survey of 214 workers in Colorado’s cannabis industry that found “that only 15% of workers received continuous, structured safety and health training and 23% of workers never received any safety or health training.”

A report on the regional program, first reported by the National Safety Council’s Safety and Health magazine, is expected to be issued “no later than midway through the life of the program”—meaning sometime around early 2027—as well as at the end of the program, in 2029.

At the event in April on workplace safety in the cannabis industry, OSHA doctor and medical officer Virginia Weaver said that better detection protocols at workplaces, referrals to appropriate specialists and robust research into cannabis-related risks are essential to improve health and safety in the industry.

“Importantly, we need research, because we need to know which exposures and job titles are the highest risk for these respiratory outcomes,” she said. “Because you can’t prevent what you aren’t able to identify.”

Separately, an OSHA official said last year that the federal government’s ongoing prohibition of marijuana makes the agency’s job “complicated” when it comes to ensuring the safety of workers in the cannabis industry.

Andrew Levinson, director of OSHA’s Directorate of Standards and Guidance, said at a late-May meeting of the National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health (NACOSH) that “the cannabis industry is a little bit complicated for federal agencies because cannabis is still illegal at the federal level.”

“So there’s kind of state activity going on. We still go out and deal with those issues, but the policy issues there are complicated,” he said, adding at the time that he wasn’t sure if there had been workplace fatalities in the marijuana sector.

As for the Massachusetts cannabis worker who died after collapsing at a facility operated by the multistate operator Trulieve, the company paid OSHA $14,502 to settle the case, also agreeing to conduct a study to “determine whether ground cannabis dust is required to be classified as a ‘hazardous chemical’ in the occupational setting,” according to a press release at the time.

At last year’s NACOSH meeting Levinson acknowledged the Massachusetts death and said that “we still go out when OSHA would normally go out, but from a policy perspective, the way that we develop materials for specific industries is a little bit complicated by the legal issues.”

In June of last year, the leader of one of the country’s largest labor unions is called on President Joe Biden to end federal marijuana prohibition—and he also urged the administration to allow OSHA to “immediately start work on a national workplace safety standard for legal cannabis business, using the regulations set by California as a model.”

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Photo courtesy of Chris Wallis // Side Pocket Images.