It's a while back, but there is an nice history from Mike (Post #33) on NRTL and OSHA, which triggered a question or two.
I always thought the NRTL scope was the same as OSHAs, i.e. limited to workers and not patients. But according to that post (#33), this is not true.
For medical this is rather important since there are a lot of issues which are outside of OSHA's competence, like performance and clinical safety. For NRTL accreditation audits, this means OSHA's auditors would need to have a suitable background to verify that the NRTL's are competent, which is not practical for OSHA.
Although performance/clinical already existed in the 2nd edition, it's more obvious and broadly applied in the 3rd edition.
Perhaps this is the real reason OSHA is reluctant to take on the 3rd edition?
It's been reported that OSHA is slow to adopt the 3rd ed because it does not like risk management, but that does not ring true. I'm sure risk management is being adopted in many other areas (e.g. machinery) and OSHA would be happily engaging in this trend like many other agencies.
Rather, it seems far more likely OSHA is reluctant because the medical standards are growing beyond what they can practically handle in a laboratory accreditation scheme.
Anybody have any relevant information to share?