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Companies face two new workplace health and safety rules: one on food flavorings, another on combustible dust.

OSHA is establishing a Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act (SBREFA) panel to review a proposed rule on occupational exposure to food flavorings that contain diacetyl.

The SBREFA process allows small businesses to review the proposal and comment before it’s enacted.

Workers in microwave popcorn and candy plants have come down with a sometimes fatal lung disease, bronchiolitis obliterans, after working with diacetyl.

OSHA has also started the process of drafting a rule regarding combustible dust in the workplace.

The agency expects to issue an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to evaluate possible regulations.

Since 1980, more than 130 workers have been killed and more than 780 injured in combustible dust explosions, including 14 deaths at an Imperial Sugar Co. plant in Georgia on Feb. 7, 2008.

You can find more information about diacetyl here, and more about combustible dust here.

Tags: bronchiolitis obliterans, combustible dust explosions, diacetyl