New Federal Needlestick Safety Act

On November 6, 2000, President Clinton signed into law a federal needlestick safety bill aimed at reducing the risk of health care workers from accidental needlesticks. The bill directs modifications to OSHA's bloodborne pathogens standard in 29 C.F.R. §1910.1030 to require hospitals and other health care facilities to identify and provide safer "sharps" systems, which include disposal of needles and blades.

Specifically, the statute requires use of "sharps with engineered sharps injury protections." These are defined as "a nonneedle sharp or needle device used for withdrawing body fluids, accessing a vein or artery, or administering medications or other fluids with a built-in safety feature or mechanism that effectively reduces the risk of an exposure incident."

Such facilities will also be required to maintain a sharps injury log. It will be more detailed than the OSHA 200 injury log, and unlike that log, the sharps log shall be recorded and maintained to protect the confidentiality of the injured employee. It also requires the employer to record the type and brand of the device involved in the accident, the work area or department where it occurred and an explanation of how the incident occurred.

An employer is also required to involve health care workers in the selection of safer sharps technologies and to document that involvement in the Exposure Control Plan.

This statute represents an unusual congressional intervention into an agency's rulemaking process. Such modifications to OSHA's standard are to be made without regard to OSHA's normal rulemaking procedures or the Administrative Procedure Act which sets out the usual requirements for federal agency rulemaking.

Under the statute, OSHA is to publish the congressionally required amendments to the bloodborne pathogens standard within 6 months of the date of the enactment of the statute and those changes will go into effect 90 days later.

If employers have any questions about the statute, they should contact R. Henry Moore at 412-562-3939, moorerh@bipc.com or Darice McNelis at 412-562-1854, mcnelisd@bipc.com .