Something’s brewing again within the four walls of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). This time it concerns the proposed rulemaking on electric power generation, transmission and distribution work, as well as electrical protective equipment. But this process is not exclusive to OSHA members and officials.

The agency recently invited the public to take part in this rulemaking by sharing what they know about the subject. That is, they need public comments related to “how close an employee (or a conductive object that an employee is contacting) may get to an energized circuit part”.

The proposed rule was not published recently, though. On June 15, 2005, OSHA published the proposal, which included revisions on minimum approach distances (MADs). The revisions even came with MAD tables that can serve as tools in determining how close an employee or conductive object is to an energized part.

Unfortunately, after the rulemaking was finished, the technical committee responsible for developing the tables in the consensus standards (that served as bases of the proposal) discovered an error in their calculation of minimum approach distances for certain voltages.

This is the very reason why OSHA is reopening the rulemaking record for this topic. They are open to public comments until November 21, 2008. You may send them through e-mail at http://www.regulations.gov.