For Immediate Release OSHA ORDERED TO RELEASE TOXIC EXPOSURE DATABASE

[Guest guest]

For Immediate Release: July 2, 2007

Contact: Carol Goldberg (202) 265-7337

http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=882

OSHA ORDERED TO RELEASE TOXIC EXPOSURE DATABASE* — More than 25

Years of Workplace Sampling Yields Public Health Research Bonanza

Washington, DC — The U.S. Occupational Safety & Health

Administration (OSHA) has wrongfully withheld data documenting years

of toxic exposures to workers and its own inspectors, according to a

federal court ruling posted today by Public Employees for

Environmental Responsibility (PEER). As a result, the world's

largest compendium of measurements of occupational exposures to

toxic substances - more than 2 million analyses conducted during

some 75,000 OSHA workplace inspections since 1979 - should now be

available to researchers and policymakers. Each year, an estimated

40,000 U.S. workers die prematurely because of exposures to toxic

substances on the job.

The June 29, 2007 federal court ruling came in a Freedom of

Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by Dr. Adam M. Finkel, a former

chief regulator and Regional Administrator at OSHA from 1995-2003,

and now a professor of environmental and occupational health at the

University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, School of Public

Health, and a visiting professor at the Woodrow School at

Princeton University. His career at OSHA came to an end after

disclosing OSHA's secret decision in 2002 not to offer medical

testing to its own inspectors who had been exposed to beryllium

dust. Beryllium dust can cause a unique and often-fatal lung

disease, known as " chronic beryllium disease " or CBD.

In June 2005, Dr. Finkel filed a request under FOIA for release of

the entire contents of the OSHA database on toxic exposures, which

contains the concentration of each substance found (e.g., asbestos,

lead, benzene, silica dust), the company where the sample was taken,

and an encrypted code for the inspector who took the sample. He also

requested coded information about the results of beryllium

sensitization tests conducted on OSHA inspectors. OSHA denied both

requests, claiming that among the sampling results there may have

been trade secrets and that releasing the encrypted codes could

somehow compromise inspectors' privacy.

Judge L. of the Federal District Court in Trenton, New

Jersey, held that the rationales offered up by OSHA to justify

withholding the data lacked any merit. Moreover, she found that " the

public interest in disclosing information that will increase

understanding about beryllium sensitization and OSHA's response

thereto is significant. "

" OSHA forgot a long time ago that it exists to protect workers, not

to protect its own executives, " stated Dr. Finkel, noting his

gratitude to Dickson from the Princeton law firm of Potter &

Dickson who argued the case. " Ordinary citizens paid to collect

these data, and I look forward to analyzing this public database to

help OSHA find its way back to its original mission. " According to

Dickson, " This well-balanced and thoughtful decision is a

welcome brake on efforts by the government to prevent public

scrutiny of what agencies are doing, and more importantly in this

case, not doing. "

The validity of Dr. Finkel's disclosures has been confirmed in tests

showing an unexpectedly high incidence of blood abnormalities among

a small group of OSHA inspectors, who finally were offered the

medical tests in 2004, after settling his whistleblower retaliation

case against OSHA and returned to academia. This finding has serious

implications for the majority of current and former OSHA inspectors

who still have not been offered testing, as well as for an estimated

130,000 private-sector workers who are exposed to beryllium daily.

OSHA's permissible beryllium exposure limit was developed almost 60

years ago and has not been updated. Experts agree that the

equivalent of one day's exposure at the current limit can cause CBD.

" OSHA's perverse posture in this case fits its pattern of studiously

ignoring occupational health hazards ranging from popcorn lung

disease to the epidemic of pulmonary maladies among Ground Zero

workers, " stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, whose

organization helped represent Dr. Finkel in his whistleblower

case. " Congress should identify the officials responsible for this

fiasco before the Bush administration awards them bonuses. "

###

Read the court ruling

See a fact sheet summarizing key points in this case

Find out about Dr. Adam Finkel forcing OSHA to admit beryllium

exposure of its own inspectors

Look at the original FOIA request filed by Dr. Fink

[Guest guest]

Somehow in the current political climate, I just don't see them complying

with this order.

They will probably have a computer hard drive crash or something..

You know what I mean?