Never a Quiet Day on the EHS Front

As legendary sports journalist Jimmy Cannon used to say when starting a column touching on a bunch of unrelated topics: “Nobody asked me, but…”

n According to a recent Pie Insurance study of workplace employees at more than 1,000 small businesses (i.e., where most of the work in this country gets done), the top safety concern for workers today is mental health, not physical injuries or equipment safety. What’s more, employees say mental health is the greatest risk they face in the workplace as well as the most overlooked risk. And the gap between how well employers think they’re doing at addressing mental health issues, and what employees are actually experiencing, is wide and getting wider. Employees, you see, don't always feel heard by their senior managers. According to the survey, the top request from employees to improve their mental health is flexible work hours and remote work options; employers, take note.

n A survey of 1,250 corporate workers by human resources firm ResumeTemplates found that despite the promise of artificial intelligence lightening the load for workers, the opposite is often true. Nearly one-third (31%) of respondents said that their workload has actually increased since their company adopted AI, and that their bosses often expect employees to double or even quadruple their output now that they have AI at their disposal. It’s led to a condition known as AI fatigue, which is similar to burnout because it’s rooted in a feeling of being overwhelmed, explains Julia Toothacre, chief career specialist at ResumeTemplates. “Employees should watch for workload creep, when managers assume AI means you can take on more without providing the resources to support it.”

“Burnout rates are high and the threat of AI is triggering significant fear [among employees] about their relevance at work,” adds Scott Anderberg, CEO of Moodle, a provider of education technology. Many employees feel that they have more work to complete than time to do it, a situation which, as every safety professional knows, can often lead to unsafe behaviors by workers.

n Back in August 2025, President Trump sacked Erika McEntarfer, commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), claiming (with no actual proof) that the BLS was rigging the numbers in order to make Republicans, and especially Trump, look bad. At the time, the President was referring to economic numbers, rather than workplace safety numbers, but be that as it may, in the wake of McEntarfer’s departure, it’s taken the BLS a little extra time to report on workplace injuries and fatalities from the previous year (or actually, the previous previous year, since the BLS historically takes a full year to compile and then report the numbers).

Anyways, the BLS has finally released the numbers from 2024 (which reflect workplace conditions under President Joe Biden’s watch), and the good news is that workplace injuries and illnesses declined by 3.1% in 2024 to 2.5 million, which is said to be the fewest number of employer-reported injuries and illnesses since 2003. However, the main reason for the decline was a steep drop in respiratory illness cases (i.e., COVID). As far as fatalities, there’s more good news: the number of fatal occupational injuries in 2024 was down by 4% from 2023. Putting it another way, a worker died every 99 minutes in 2023, but in 2024 it was every 104 minutes.

n Finally, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has determined that climate change isn’t really a danger at all. In fact, in the words of President Trump, climate change is a “con job,” a conclusion that prompted the EPA to deregulate greenhouse gas emission (GHG) standards for highway vehicles. This deregulation will reportedly save Americans over $1.3 trillion (although it sounds like most of those savings will be to the benefit of vehicle manufacturers no longer having to adhere to the emissions standards). The move follows a previous EPA rollback of clean water and clean air standards that will make it easier for data centers to be built, the same data centers that will power the next generation of AI companies.

Somewhat ironically, the EPA actually repealed its own finding from 2009 that GHGs are harmful to humans, so the agency basically overruled itself, in the time-honored tradition of politics overruling science. And as you would expect, environmental and health groups immediately responded to the EPA’s deregulatory effort with legal challenges, pointing out that not only is the EPA’s move illegal, but that it will put lives in danger by harming public health. Legal experts predict the challenges will end up at the Supreme Court, so expect to hear a lot more about it in the days to come.