Fw: [PUBCIT_PRESS] Court Orders OSHA to Protect Workers Court Orders OSHA to Protect Workers

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----- Original Message -----

From: " Public Citizen Press Office " <pcpress@...>

<PUBCIT_PRESS@...>

Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2003 5:27 PM

Subject: [PUBCIT_PRESS] Court Orders OSHA to Protect Workers Court Orders

OSHA to Protect Workers

> Public Citizen Press Releases

> Providing the latest information about Public Citizen activities

> -------------------------------------------

>

> April 3, 2003

>

> Court Orders OSHA to Protect Workers

> From Dangerous Lung Carcinogen

>

> Federal Appeals Court Tells Government to Write Rule About Hexavalent

> Chromium; Order Is Culmination of Suit Brought by Public Citizen and

> PACE

>

> WASHINGTON, D.C. - The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has

> ordered the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to

> take the steps necessary to protect workers from hexavalent chromium, a

> dangerous lung carcinogen. The order, issued late Wednesday, came in

> response to a lawsuit filed last year by Public Citizen and the Paper,

> Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union

> (PACE). The suit was designed to force the agency - which for years has

> dragged its feet on the matter - to act.

>

> Under the order, OSHA must issue a proposed rule governing workplace

> exposure to hexavalent chromium no later than Oct. 4, 2004, and a final

> rule no later than Jan. 18, 2006.

>

> OSHA has acknowledged for nearly a decade that its current standard

> permits workers to breathe in hexavalent chromium at levels that pose an

> unacceptable cancer risk. Previously, in response to a 1993 petition

> from Public Citizen and PACE, the agency had promised to issue a

> proposed rule in 1995. Nonetheless, the agency repeatedly postponed

> action to tighten the standard. In 1997, Public Citizen and PACE filed

> suit in the Third Circuit to compel strengthened regulation of the

> chemical, but lost because the agency said it would issue a proposed

> rule by 1999.

>

> After three more years of agency inaction, Public Citizen and PACE

> filed suit last spring in the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, alleging

> that the agency had violated the law by unreasonably delaying action on

> hexavalent chromium. On Dec. 24, 2002, the court issued an opinion

> finding OSHA's delay " unreasonable. "

>

> In that order, the court decried OSHA's " indefinite delay and

> recalcitrance in the face of an admittedly grave risk to public health "

> and held that " OSHA's delay in promulgating a lower permissible exposure

> limit for hexavalent chromium has exceeded the bounds of

> reasonableness. " The court ordered OSHA to " proceed expeditiously with

> its hexavalent chromium rulemaking. " The court directed the parties to

> engage in mediation for 60 days in an effort to agree upon a schedule.

>

>

> In the mediation, OSHA took the position that it would need more than

> four years to arrive at a new final rule. Public Citizen countered with

> a schedule that would have yielded a final rule in two years. Senior

> Judge Walter Stapleton proposed that the parties agree on an

> approximately three-year schedule. Although OSHA objected, insisting

> that it be allowed another four years to take action, the court ordered

> the three-year schedule.

>

> " We would have liked the agency to move even faster, " said Dr.

> Lurie, deputy director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group. " But

> the important point is that the agency has now been told that it has to

> act, and that the leisurely schedule it wanted won't adequately protect

> workers' health. "

>

> Added Public Citizen attorney , who argued the case, " It's

> very unusual for a court to step in and order an agency to act by a

> specific date. The court's action here is a reflection of the agency's

> extreme delay in the face of a problem that even it has admitted for a

> decade is very serious. We hope this case will send a message that

> agencies can't expect to get away with neglecting their missions

> indefinitely. "

>

> Even with this order, the proposed rule on hexavalent chromium would be

> the first rule that OSHA has proposed for an industrial chemical in more

> than a decade.

>

> The text of the Court's order is available at

> http://www.citizen.org/documents/Order%20Regarding%20Schedule.pdf.

>

> ###

>

> Public Citizen is a national, nonprofit consumer advocacy organization

> based in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit

> www.citizen.org.

>

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