Bush administration rushes to weaken workplace safety regulations before election Washington Post article..

[Guest guest]

Just an addenda to the article on the changes to workplace toxin rules..

According to somebody on another list, this change will put the US in last

place among developed countries with

regards to protecting us from many toxic chemicals whose effects have been

discovered in the last ten years..

I don't know if that is true, but if it is, its terrifying.

*>U.S. Rushes to Change Workplace Toxin Rules

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/22/AR2008072202838.\

html

By Carol D. Leonnig

Washington Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, July 23, 2008; 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.

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. (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 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.

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.

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 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.

s, an epidemiologist and workplace safety professor at

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, " s 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.

*