Workplace Toxin Rules To Change: Lawmaker will block PDF Print E-mail

Read how worker's rights to be protected from toxins are being undermined even more during the final months of the Bush administration. Can the citizens of this nation be sickened any more? Why is money and industry more important than life and health to these Bush appointees? (SMH) 

 

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Lawmaker Pledges to Block 'Secret Rule'

By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 25, 2008; 9:24 AM

A congressional leader pledged this morning to introduce legislation that would block an eleventh-hour effort by the Labor Department to make it more difficult to limit workers' exposure to chemicals on the job.

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, said he was determined to stop a "secret rule" that he described as a Bush administration effort to block the next president from trying to reduce worker deaths and illness caused by workplace toxins.

The Labor Department has refused to discuss or release the proposal, a copy of which was obtained yesterday by the Post. The proposed rulemaking would require that the department allow a new round of challenges to the risk assessments used to determine how much exposure to certain chemicals is unsafe, adding another step to the process of setting regulations for workplace chemicals.

Published reports about the effort have spurred anger and condemnation from unions, congressional Democrats and public health scientists. Critics claim the rule is a "midnight regulation" that political appointees quietly drafted without public disclosure and after overriding the objections of the agency's worker safety experts.

Miller's announcement that he will introduce legislation next week to block the measure comes two days after The Washington Post reported about the details of the draft rule to change how the agency measures chemical risks. The article revealed that political deputies began actively working on the idea in September 2007. The agency did not report its interest in this possible rule in either its December 2007 or May 2008 report on regulations it was considering -- although it was required to do so.

The regulatory effort first became public July 7, when a title of the proposal surfaced on a White House Office of Management and Budget Web site as a draft rule under review.

"This is all about making sure no new safety regulations do get out, " said Celeste Monforton, an occupational health expert at George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services who reviewed the draft. "It's not even a disguised or sophisticated effort."

Labor's Assistant Secretary Leon R. Sequeira said the criticism of the proposal and its content is "speculative" until OMB reviews and publishes the rule for comment.

The proposal also would increase the chances that future health standards would allow workers to come in contact with higher levels of chemicals on the job than previously allowed.

That is because the draft calls for the department to reconsider its long-standing assumption that lifetime exposure limits be set to protect even those who stay in the same kind of job for 45 years. The new proposal requires the agency, where possible, to set future limits based on industry-specific data for worker retention. The authors said the department believes " the standard 45-year working life model may not always be appropriate," because labor statistics show most workers don't stay with the same employer for more than five to seven years.

"There is no industry or occupation in which more than 5 % of workers remain with a single employer in the industry or occupation for a period of even 35 years," the authors wrote.

Peg Seminario, the AFL-CIO's safety and health director, called the draft "the most cynical and diabolical" effort to manipulate the rule-making process she has seen in her 31 years in workplace safety. She said that even when workers change companies, they often remain in the same industry and work around the same hazards throughout their career.

"People who really do work their whole lifetime don't get protected, it's as simple as that," she said of the draft rule.

The Bush administration has adopted only one regulation to limit exposure to a chemical, hexavalent chromium -- and that was under court order. This new proposal has become the department's top priority in the final months of the administration, although proposed worker-safety rules for limiting exposure to beryllium, silica and combustible dust remain works in progress after years of being under consideration.

On Wednesday, Miller and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate labor committee, demanded in a letter to Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao that she withdraw the proposal and turn over internal documents of communications with special interest groups relating to the rule. Sequeira said such a request was premature until the draft was public.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/22/AR2008072202838.html
U.S. Rushes to Change Workplace Toxin Rules
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 23, 2008; Page A01

Political appointees at the Department of Labor are moving with unusual
speed to push through in the final months of the Bush administration a
rule making it tougher to regulate workers' on-the-job exposure to
chemicals and toxins.

The agency did not disclose the proposal, as required, in public notices
of regulatory plans that it filed in December and May. Instead, Labor
Secretary Elaine L. Chao's intention to push for the rule first surfaced
on July 7, when the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB)
posted on its Web site that it was reviewing the proposal, identified only
by its nine-word title.

The text of the proposed rule has not been made public, but according to
sources briefed on the change and to an early draft obtained by The
Washington Post, it would call for reexamining the methods used to measure
risks posed by workplace exposure to toxins. The change would address
long-standing complaints from businesses that the government overestimates
the risk posed by job exposure to chemicals.

The rule would also require the agency to take an extra step before
setting new limits on chemicals in the workplace by allowing an additional
round of challenges to agency risk assessments.
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The department's speed in trying to make the regulatory change contrasts
with its reluctance to alter workplace safety rules over the past 7 1/2
years. In that time, the department adopted only one major health rule for
a chemical in the workplace, and it did so under a court order.

In an interview, Labor's assistant secretary for policy, Leon R. Sequeira,
said officials did not disclose their interest in the rule change earlier
because they were uncertain until recently whether they wanted to follow
through and pursue a regulation.

But the fast-track approach has brought criticism from workplace-safety
advocates, unions and Democrats in Congress. Some accuse the Bush
administration of working secretly to give industry a parting gift that
will help it delay or block safety regulations after President Bush leaves
office.

"It's an insult to America's workers for the Department of Labor to be
spending its time in the last year of this administration allegedly
fine-tuning the details of how to do these regulations when, other than
the one ordered by a court, they have issued no major worker-health
regulations," said Adam Finkel, a professor at the University of Medicine
and Dentistry of New Jersey who is a former health standards director at
Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration. "The reality is
there's a great need to light a fire under this moribund agency to do
something -- anything -- to protect workers."

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Education and Labor
Committee, said: "The fact that the Department of Labor seems to be
engaged in secret rulemaking makes me highly suspicious that some
high-level political appointees are up to no good. This Congress will not
stand for the gutting of health and safety protections as the Bush
administration heads out the door."

Sequeira said department policy prevents him from discussing the details
of a draft rule, how it was written and by whom, until it is reviewed by
the OMB. The public will have 30 days to critique the draft after it is
published.

"It's premature to comment," he said. "People appear to be making
assumptions about what's in the draft."

Last week, the proposal was defended in an opinion piece in the New York
Sun written by Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a fellow at the conservative-leaning
Hudson Institute. She wrote that it would bring a "rationalized approach"
to risk assessments and probably move away from the incorrect assumption
in current rules that workers stay in a job, with daily exposure to the
same chemicals or toxins, for as long as 45 years.

Furchtgott-Roth did not mention in the article that she was one of the
consultants who worked with Labor beginning in September 2007 on a
$349,000 outside study of the risk-assessment process.

The OMB has been trying to address the issue of risk assessment since
2006, when it attempted to set new standards governing how a host of
federal agencies reach their conclusions. That plan was withdrawn after
the National Academy of Sciences called it "fatally flawed" because it
lacked scientific grounding.

Early this year, Deborah Misir, a political deputy in Labor's office of
the assistant secretary for policy, worked with the OMB to draft a new
risk-assessment rule. A former ethics adviser to Bush, Misir had
complained that the department's assumption of a 45-year working life
overstated the risk of exposure.

Typically, before drafting a rule, agency officials consult with staff
members, lawyers and outside experts, and sometimes industry and other
interested parties. But Misir initially did not consult scientific and
workplace-risk-assessment experts in OSHA and the Mine Safety and Health
Administration, according to sources briefed on her work.

Charles Gordon, a recently retired Labor Department lawyer who worked on
regulations in OSHA's solicitor's office for 32 years, said the policy
office does not usually take the lead on rules involving risk assessments.
"Normally, issues of health science like risk assessment are performed by
OSHA and MSHA, that have statutory authority and expertise in the area,"
Gordon said.
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Misir waited until April to seek comments from the department's experts.
They objected to both the legality and substance of the proposal and
recommended that Chao not pursue such a rule, according to the sources.

A few weeks later, when the agency listed regulations "under development
or review" in its semiannual agenda, the risk-assessment proposal was not
included. But a draft was circulating among a small group of advisers,
according to a date-stamped copy obtained by The Post.

In spring 2007, the department listed 38 potential workplace-safety
regulations as works in progress. Among its priorities were a proposal to
reduce deaths and injuries from cranes and derricks, following a spate of
fatal accidents; a new rule to reduce illnesses from silica, which can
cause respiratory diseases; and a proposal to change regulation of
beryllium, a light metal that can harm the lungs of dental and metal
workers.

But virtually overnight, changing the risk-assessment process became the
agency's top priority for workplace regulations. The July submission of
its proposal broke a deadline set by White House Chief of Staff Joshua B.
Bolten, who had ordered that all agencies submit proposed regulations
before June 1 and "resist the historical tendency of administrations to
increase regulatory activity in their final months."

Nevertheless, the OMB agreed to work with Labor on the proposal. The July
7 posting on its Web site shocked many inside and outside the agency who
had been following the events.

"This is flat-out secrecy," said Peg Seminario, director of health and
safety policy at the AFL-CIO. "They are trying to essentially change the
job safety and health laws and reduce required workplace protections
through a midnight regulation."

Seminario said she was stunned that the administration would consider the
rule its top priority, when for years it has "slow-walked and stalled"
safety rules that would reduce worker deaths and injuries from diacetyl
and beryllium.

David Michaels, an epidemiologist and workplace safety professor at George
Washington University's School of Public Health, said the rule would add
another barrier to creating safety standards, in the name of improving
them.

"This is a guarantee to keep any more worker safety regulation from ever
coming out of OSHA," Michaels said. "This is being done in secrecy, to be
sprung before President Bush leaves office, to cripple the next
administration."

Research editor Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.

 
 
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