Asbestos Exposure Limit Ordered Slashed by 90%

Culminating a decade-long battle, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration ordered Friday that employers institute a 90% reduction in worker exposure to asbestos, a move that government and union officials estimate will save the lives of thousands of people exposed to dust from the material, which has been widely used as a fire retardant.

“The hazard of asbestos is well known and documented,” said Labor Secretary William E. Brock in a prepared statement announcing the change in Washington. Brock added that the new standards will “substantially increase protections for over 1.3 million workers and reduce their risk of cancer and other serious disease.”

2 Million May Die

The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health has estimated that between 8 million and 11 million Americans have been exposed to asbestos since World War II, and that more than 2 million of them are expected to die of cancer and other lung diseases.

Earlier this year, the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that asbestos dust annually causes from 3,300 to 12,000 new cancer cases, nearly all of them fatal within five years of the disease’s discovery, and most of them among workers exposed to the material on the job.

The tougher standards were welcomed by leaders of organized labor, who have been fighting for further restrictions on asbestos since the current standard was adopted by OSHA in July, 1976, although they were critical of the government for not acting sooner. Industry sources were more cautious in their appraisal.

The new standards cover general industry and the construction industry, where workers have been exposed to asbestos while removing it from old buildings.

For the first time, OSHA officials said, construction companies, garages and other businesses where workers are exposed to asbestos also will have to conduct programs alerting employees to the dangers of the material and telling them how to work with it safely.

‘The Magic Mineral’

Asbestos once was dubbed “the magic mineral” because it has more than a thousand industrial uses. But over the past two decades, the dangers of exposure to asbestos fibers have become more widely known. Inhalation of the fibers has been demonstrated to cause a wide variety of lung, esophagus, stomach, colon and rectal cancers as well as asbestosis, a lung ailment, and mesothelioma, a cancer of the lung linings.

Under the new regulations, scheduled to go into effect next month, the permissible occupational exposure ceiling will drop from 2 particles per cubic centimeter of air to 0.2 particles per cubic centimeter of air on the average over an eight-hour work period.

OSHA estimates that under the new standard, the excess risk of dying from cancer due to asbestos exposure will drop to 6.7 workers out of every 1,000, from the rate now of 64 workers out of every 1,000, according to agency spokeswoman Chriss Winston. She said the excess risk of developing “disabling and sometimes fatal asbestosis” will decrease from 50 workers per 1,000 to 5 per 1,000. The excess risk refers to cases beyond the expected norm.

Change Applauded

Scott Schneider, an industrial hygienist for the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, many of whose members are exposed to asbestos in their daily work, applauded the change, which he calculated would save about 74,000 lives. But he said OSHA should have acted sooner and gone further. “There’s a lot of improvements over the old standard, but clearly it’s not everything we hoped it would be.”

Labor unions had pushed OSHA to lower the exposure ceiling to 0.1 particle of asbestos per cubic centimeter of air. In a typical eight-hour working day, he said a worker would be exposed to 800,000 fewer fibers if the 0.1 standard was adopted. Schneider said there would continue to be “significant exposure” at the 0.2 particle level.

Schneider and an AFL-CIO spokesman also lamented the fact that the new standard does not set a short-term exposure limit to reduce peak exposures. “This means that workers who are involved with asbestos removal and maintenance operations can be exposed to high levels of asbestos in jobs of short duration with no protection required,” said Jim Ellenburger, deputy director of the AFL-CIO’s department of occupational safety, health and social security.

Industry Pleased

Kenneth Nyquist, governmental affairs counsel for the Asbestos Information Assn., an industry lobbying group, said the industry was pleased that OSHA had acted. However, he noted that the industry had advocated that OSHA lower the exposure level to 0.5 particles of asbestos per cubic centimeter of air, a significantly less-restrictive standard than adopted.

In 1983, OSHA had adopted an emergency order limiting exposure to 0.2 particles. But industry lawyers convinced a federal court in New Orleans to overturn the standard. The court said the government had not demonstrated that it had sufficient data to warrant an emergency standard.

The following year OSHA began the regulatory process that led to Friday’s action.

Asked if the industry might sue again, Nyquist responded, “We could conceive of that.” He said he could not make a more definitive statement because it would take some time for association officials to thoroughly review the 900-page document OSHA released Friday.

Economic Impact

The agency said it would cost American industry $460 million annually to comply with the new standards. The OSHA statement said that with the exception of secondary asbestos gasket manufacturing and renovation activities in construction, “the revised standards will not have a significant economic impact on the industries’ viability, nor will they have an adverse impact on small firms.”

OSHA’s action follows a proposal by the Environmental Protection Agency in January to ultimately ban use of asbestos entirely in the United States. Hearings on that proposal, which is strongly opposed by industry, are scheduled to begin next month.

In proposing the total ban, EPA administrator Lee Thomas said “no level of exposure is without risk.”

Sources in Washington said, however, that OSHA’s action Friday is likely to diminish the chances of a total ban. Still, a House of Representatives subcommittee is continuing an investigation into allegations that White House budget officials attempted earlier this year to thwart the proposed EPA ban by influencing the drafting of an OSHA standard.

‘Undermine EPA Effort’

“We conducted a number of interviews at the Department of Labor and OSHA this week,” said a staff member of the oversight and investigations subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “ . . . We are, in particular, looking at attempts to undermine the EPA effort.”

OSHA’s action Friday will prompt action by Cal/OSHA, the state job safety agency. Richard Stephens, a Cal/OSHA spokesman, said that California’s exposure limit had been the same as the federal standard, and that it would have to come into compliance with the new federal ceiling within six months.