BRIEF ASSIGNMENT 02

In the din of the recent press attention and Senate and House hearings on about the Occupational and Safety Administration’s (OSHA) failings, it’s easy to forget that OSHA has saved many lives, too. OSHA has implemented dozens of innovative and helpful programs, and without the threat posed by OSHA, some employers would do precious little to protect the lives of their workers.

Before the newly formed OSHA issued its first asbestos standard in 1971, uncontrolled asbestos exposure occurred in numerous workplaces across the country. OSHA subsequently strengthened the asbestos standards, forcing employers to implement controls that have saved countless lives.

Evidence of the impact of OSHA’s regulation of asbestos work comes from the national study of asbestos disease in sheet metal workers, in which 18,000 members of the Sheet Metal Workers International Union were screened for asbestos disease between 1986 and 2004: after controlling for age and smoking, the strongest predictor for chest X-ray sign of asbestos-related disease was the calendar year in which the worker began sheet metal work. Researchers concluded that the results suggest “that the efforts to reduce asbestos exposure in the 1980s through strengthened Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulation have had a positive public health impact.”

Asbestos is not OSHA’s only success, of course. The agency’s cotton dust standard eliminated byssinosis, a once common disease among U.S. textile workers, and the OSHA lead standard has no doubt prevented many cases of benzene, formaldehyde, and lead poisoning.

OSHA standards such as those concerning confined spaces, blood-borne pathogens, respiratory protection, fall protection, and other safety standards are truly state-of-the-art. The standards are flexible and performance-based, and provide employers with an infinite variety of compliance options that can be tailored to site-specific conditions.

These standards precipitate change and force technology. In other words, they get people to do things that they probably would not do otherwise and create opportunities for manufacturers to develop solutions to safety problems that have been with us for decades.

Take a quick look at the ads in any of the major safety and health magazines and you will see a dazzling array of new hardware: full-body harnesses, movable anchor points, engineered horizontal lifeline systems, blood-borne pathogen spill cleanup kits, signs, posters, labels and placards that can be used to convey hazard information, instrumentation for real-time analysis of airborne chemicals, and a host of other products that most likely would not have been created if not for OSHA regulations. Most of these products have clearly improved workplace safety.

OSHA annually makes $5 million available to nonprofit organizations and higher education institutions. The purpose of these grants, which average between $150,000 and $200,000, is to provide educational opportunities to traditionally underserved and at-risk populations such as immigrants, small-business employees, and workers in high-risk jobs.

OSHA's Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) recognizes that good safety management programs that go beyond OSHA standards can protect workers more effectively than simple compliance. Participation in OSHA's VPP requires companies to be committed to excellence and to establish comprehensive safety management systems that go beyond OSHA regulations. OSHA exempts VPP companies from routine inspections.

Unfortunately, although OSHA took on asbestos, lead, and cotton dust in the 1970s, it has issued few new standards for chemical hazards in the last decade. There are plenty of examples of OSHA’s failure to protect workers either through lack of resources or administrative resistance.

Among the regulations proposed by OSHA's staff but scuttled by political appointees was one meant to protect health workers from tuberculosis. Although OSHA concluded in 1997 that the regulation could avert as many as 32,700 infections and 190 deaths annually and save $115 million, it was blocked by opposition from large hospitals.

The agency also decided against moving further toward the regulation of crystalline silica, the tiny fibrous material in cement and stone dust that causes lung disease or cancer. OSHA promised a scientific peer review of the health risks by early 2005 and then by early 2007, but it never acted. Regulating silica exposures would have prevented an estimated 41 silicosis deaths and 20 to 40 lung cancers annually, according to OSHA.

Or take beryllium, a remarkable metal that is lighter than aluminum yet stiffer than steel. Its alloys and compounds exhibit a host of unusual technical characteristics. At some point in almost every production process involving beryllium, fine dust or fumes of the metal or its compound are released into the air. Breathing the tiniest amounts can cause disability and death from chronic beryllium disease. Even the beryllium industry has come around to the position that the current OSHA standard is not adequately protective – the industry’s experts recognize that workers get sick at exposure levels below the current OSHA standard.

OSHA currently enforces permissible exposure limits for only about 500 chemicals, a small fraction of the thousands of substances present in the American workplace, and it has been more than 35 years since OSHA has issued new standards for only about 30 substances and many of these exposure limits were already out of date when OSHA adopted them. As a result, OSHA’s standards for most hazardous chemicals are either inadequate or totally absent.

Chemical by chemical standard setting would be a painfully time- and resource-intensive process for any agency, much less an organization constantly under attack by those in favor of the free market. OSHA doesn’t have the staff to work on more than one or two standards at a time, and, with no judicial or congressional oversight to speed the process, each standard takes years to complete. Unless things change radically, only a handful of the thousands of chemicals in daily use in American workplaces will ever be the subject of an OSHA standard.

OSHA certainly deserves recognition and praise for the good things it does, and it does many things very well. But now is the time to begin to remedy the lack of funding and administrative resistance to worker safety, and to begin to discuss how we can begin to save human lives through simple and enforceable regulations.

Cite: Weil, David, If OSHA Is So Bad, Why is Compliance So Good?. RAND JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS, Vol. 27, No. 3.

David Weil is Professor and Associate Chairman in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services.

	OSHA Saves Lives David Weil Rand Journal of Economics Volume 27, No. 3, 2007 In the din of the recent press attention and Senate and House hearings on about the Occupational and Safety Administration’s (OSHA) failings, it’s easy to forget that OSHA has saved many lives, too. OSHA has implemented dozens of innovative and helpful programs, and without the threat posed by OSHA, some employers would do precious little to protect the lives of their workers. Before the newly formed OSHA issued its first asbestos standard in 1971, uncontrolled asbestos exposure occurred in numerous workplaces across the country. OSHA subsequently strengthened the asbestos standards, forcing employers to implement controls that have saved countless lives. Evidence of the impact of OSHA’s regulation of asbestos work comes from the national study of asbestos disease in sheet metal workers, in which 18,000 members of the Sheet Metal Workers International Union were screened for asbestos disease between 1986 and 2004: after controlling for age and smoking, the strongest predictor for chest X-ray sign of asbestos-related disease was the calendar year in which the worker began sheet metal work. Researchers concluded that the results suggest “that the efforts to reduce asbestos exposure in the 1980s through strengthened Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulation have had a positive public health impact.” Asbestos is not OSHA’s only success, of course. The agency’s cotton dust standard eliminated byssinosis, a once common disease among U.S. textile workers, and the OSHA lead standard has no doubt prevented many cases of benzene, formaldehyde, and lead poisoning. OSHA standards such as those concerning confined spaces, blood-borne pathogens, respiratory protection, fall protection, and other safety standards are truly state-of-the-art. The standards are flexible and performance-based, and provide employers with an infinite variety of compliance options that can be tailored to site-specific conditions. These standards precipitate change and force technology. In other words, they get people to do things that they probably would not do otherwise and create opportunities for manufacturers to develop solutions to safety problems that have been with us for decades. Take a quick look at the ads in any of the major safety and health magazines and you will see a dazzling array of new hardware: full-body harnesses, movable anchor points, engineered horizontal lifeline systems, blood-borne pathogen spill cleanup kits, signs, posters, labels and placards that can be used to convey hazard information, instrumentation for real-time analysis of airborne chemicals, and a host of other products that most likely would not have been created if not for OSHA regulations. Most of these products have clearly improved workplace safety. OSHA annually makes $5 million available to nonprofit organizations and higher education institutions. The purpose of these grants, which average between $150,000 and $200,000, is to provide educational opportunities to traditionally underserved and at-risk populations such as immigrants, small-business employees, and workers in high-risk jobs. OSHA's Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) recognizes that good safety management programs that go beyond OSHA standards can protect workers more effectively than simple compliance. Participation in OSHA's VPP requires companies to be committed to excellence and to establish comprehensive safety management systems that go beyond OSHA regulations. OSHA exempts VPP companies from routine inspections. Unfortunately, although OSHA took on asbestos, lead, and cotton dust in the 1970s, it has issued few new standards for chemical hazards in the last decade. There are plenty of examples of OSHA’s failure to protect workers either through lack of resources or administrative resistance. Among the regulations proposed by OSHA's staff but scuttled by political appointees was one meant to protect health workers from tuberculosis. Although OSHA concluded in 1997 that the regulation could avert as many as 32,700 infections and 190 deaths annually and save $115 million, it was blocked by opposition from large hospitals. The agency also decided against moving further toward the regulation of crystalline silica, the tiny fibrous material in cement and stone dust that causes lung disease or cancer. OSHA promised a scientific peer review of the health risks by early 2005 and then by early 2007, but it never acted. Regulating silica exposures would have prevented an estimated 41 silicosis deaths and 20 to 40 lung cancers annually, according to OSHA. Or take beryllium, a remarkable metal that is lighter than aluminum yet stiffer than steel. Its alloys and compounds exhibit a host of unusual technical characteristics. At some point in almost every production process involving beryllium, fine dust or fumes of the metal or its compound are released into the air. Breathing the tiniest amounts can cause disability and death from chronic beryllium disease. Even the beryllium industry has come around to the position that the current OSHA standard is not adequately protective – the industry’s experts recognize that workers get sick at exposure levels below the current OSHA standard. OSHA currently enforces permissible exposure limits for only about 500 chemicals, a small fraction of the thousands of substances present in the American workplace, and it has been more than 35 years since OSHA has issued new standards for only about 30 substances and many of these exposure limits were already out of date when OSHA adopted them. As a result, OSHA’s standards for most hazardous chemicals are either inadequate or totally absent. Chemical by chemical standard setting would be a painfully time- and resource-intensive process for any agency, much less an organization constantly under attack by those in favor of the free market. OSHA doesn’t have the staff to work on more than one or two standards at a time, and, with no judicial or congressional oversight to speed the process, each standard takes years to complete. Unless things change radically, only a handful of the thousands of chemicals in daily use in American workplaces will ever be the subject of an OSHA standard. OSHA certainly deserves recognition and praise for the good things it does, and it does many things very well. But now is the time to begin to remedy the lack of funding and administrative resistance to worker safety, and to begin to discuss how we can begin to save human lives through simple and enforceable regulations. Cite: Weil, David, If OSHA Is So Bad, Why is Compliance So Good?. RAND JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS, Vol. 27, No. 3. David Weil is Professor and Associate Chairman in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services.
BRIEF ASSIGNMENT 2
	This brief should be 5 paragraphs; a minimum of 2 sentences, no more than 5 sentences per paragraph. All sentence must be complete sentences. The first paragraph of this Brief will be the Introduction. The first sentence of this Brief will be the THESIS. The Thesis is a clear NORMATIVE (subjective) statement of the position the brief will take on the issue using the vocabulary and concepts from economics: Should there be strict safety standards for businesses regulated by the government, should businesses be allowed to set their own standards without government interference, or is there some other reasonable compromise? The second sentence in the Introduction will be the OUTLINE for the rest of the brief listing the three supporting topics which will be presented to back up the position supported by the Brief. The next three paragraphs will be Support paragraphs. Each support paragraph will begin with a Topic sentence, and will include at least one POSITIVE (objective) FACT taken from the online articles or the textbook which backs up the THESIS. For the brief, use facts from the video, online articles, and textbook, page 24; do NOT bring in outside facts. *All facts in this Brief MUST be cited using (author's name) format.* A bibliography using proper MLA format citations should be at the end of your brief. A Brief should NEVER be in first person. A Brief should ALWAYS be IN YOUR OWN WORDS (IYOW); you may NOT cut and paste from the internet or any other source or you will receive a zero and this will be reported to the Honor Council. Your brief should ALWAYS be printed out, not hand-written. Your Brief is due at the beginning of the class on the assigned due date; assignments turned in after class will be penalized one point per day late.