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.
OSHA has pushed until Feb. 11 the deadline for submitting comments on its proposed crystalline silica rule -- in what amounts to a 15-day extension -- due to an apparent posting error on the web-based regulations portal that Republicans say could have led some affected stakeholders to believe the window had already closed on putting comments in the record.
Studies have shown the evidence of lung cancer risks from prolonged exposures to crystalline silica dust to be “strong and consistent” and OSHA is taking “appropriate” steps in trying to reduce the health hazard through a regulatory effort, two cancer researchers say in a new American Cancer Society journal article.
Public Citizen was planning a lawsuit to force the Obama administration's hand on OSHA's long-sought regulatory proposal to clamp down on worker exposures to crystalline silica and probably would have gone forward with the suit if the agency had not recently issued a proposed rule tackling the issue, the consumer interest group's president tells Inside OSHA Online in an exclusive interview.