Silica

President Obama's regulatory czar said Monday he feels no “particular pressure” to put an eventual final OSHA silica rule on a fast track for completion before the swiftly approaching end of the administration, and does not take that view toward any other rule despite a generally recognized 90-day window for the White House budget office to review agency standards -- a period often extended for lengthy stretches to the ire of pro-regulation groups.

The national paving industry, with key union backing, is urging OSHA officials to reexamine a mandate for respirator use under some exposure conditions that the agency included in a proposed new standard for silica control measures in construction activities, saying a requirement triggered by more than four hours of possible exposure actually creates new and greater hazards for road workers.

Construction industry trade groups are mounting an informal challenge to OSHA's crystalline silica rulemaking that hinges on an argument that agency officials did not adequately consult with their construction advisory panel on details of the planned regulations as required by OSHA procedures before issuing the proposal last year.

Organized labor has launched an assault backed by economic expertise against the business community's assertion OSHA's planned rule on respirable silica would cost countless U.S. jobs, with unions arguing the regulatory scheme would actually yield more economic benefits and result in less costs than even OSHA estimates.

Labor Department lawyers are fighting back against industry complaints that OSHA set aside too short a time at its public hearings on silica to respond to stakeholder questions about the rule, citing procedures that govern the hearings and declaring that while OSHA will accept written queries as suggested by an administrative law judge (ALJ), the agency has not agreed to respond to any of them.

Worker health activists want to know why OSHA proposes that employers offer medical surveillance to workers when silica exposure levels reach the permissible exposure limit of 50 micrograms per cubic meter, TWA, rather than triggering such surveillance when exposures reach the action level, which is half the PEL's level.

Employer-side groups are in an uproar that OSHA allotted only two and a half hours for stakeholders to question agency officials at the opening of a roughly three-week series of hearings on agency's hotly contested crystalline silica rulemaking before moving on to testimony from various stakeholders, saying they had several more hours' worth of inquiries for regulators and pleading for a whole day to be set aside to interrogate OSHA.

The Small Business Administration is urging OSHA to work with industry to craft a “safe harbor” provision in the silica rule for construction employers who follow certain silica-safe work practices.

An industry with perhaps the most obvious of all possible stakes in OSHA's rulemaking to tackle crystalline silica hazards -- the brick-making business -- has started expressing serious apprehensions with the agency's regulatory approach, saying there are many unanswered questions about the technical feasibility of the rule, on top of concerns about its potential economic impact on companies that manufacture the building materials.

OSHA's proposed silica rule, even if eventually finalized, would be opened up to substantial legal challenges if the agency continues to refute a need for separate, formal avenues by the small business community to review and offer criticism of the proposal, a pair of GOP lawmakers suggested in a recent letter to OSHA chief David Michaels.