OSHA

OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, is the U.S. federal agency that sets and enforces the workplace safety and health standards employers must follow. Created under the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, it publishes the regulations covering hazards from fall protection to hazardous chemicals, and it requires employers to record and report work-related injuries and illnesses. For most organizations, “OSHA” is shorthand for the body of compliance obligations that govern a safe workplace.

• Enforceable standards - OSHA’s regulations carry the force of law, with inspections and penalties for non-compliance.
• Recordkeeping requirements - Employers must log work-related injuries and illnesses on forms like the 300, 300A, and 301.
• Electronic reporting - Covered establishments submit injury and illness data to OSHA through the Injury Tracking Application.
• Sector coverage - Standards span general industry, construction, maritime, and agriculture, each with its own rule set.

In API terms, OSHA shows up as a compliance and reporting surface: its Injury Tracking Application accepts electronic submission of injury and illness records, and I have written about that API-based reporting path before. For companies scored across the network, OSHA obligations sit alongside other regulatory regimes that shape how safety, HR, and operations data must be captured and transmitted. As reporting moves from manual forms to machine-readable submission, OSHA becomes one more government data contract that internal systems — and increasingly agents — must satisfy on a schedule.