OSHA Will Place New Limits on 402 Toxics

The Federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced Tuesday that it plans to enact tougher new standards on 402 toxic chemicals used in the workplace, giving greater protection to 3.7 million American workers.

OSHA estimated that the changed standards could save 500 lives a year, reduce the annual number of lost work days because of chemical exposure by 500,000 and reduce cases of cancer, cardiovascular and respiratory diseases by 50,000 a year. The agency said it would cost industry $900 million to comply with the new standards.

The standards deal with the amount of toxic chemicals workers come in contact with in a typical work day. The OSHA proposals lower exposure limits on 234 substances already subject to federal regulation and set standards for the first time on 168 other chemicals. Current limits are reaffirmed for 25 other chemicals. The exposure limit on one substance, fluorine, was increased, based on new safety data, the OSHA announcement said.

‘Technological Leap’

The standards typically are limits on the amounts of a hazardous chemical per million parts of breathable air in the workplace. Employers can conform to the standards in a variety of ways, from providing workers with breathing apparatus to filtering the offending material out of the workplace.

“This is a 20-year technological leap that brings this country’s health and safety exposure standards up to date,” John Pendergrass, assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health, said in Washington.

OSHA’s plan calls for reducing exposure limits for such widely used chemicals as ammonia, carbon monoxide, chloroform, hydrogen cyanide and trichloroethylene.

The AFL-CIO said the OSHA plan “does not go far enough,” while a spokesman for the Chemical Manufacturers Assn. generally praised the proposal.

Tuesday’s sweeping action represents a marked departure for OSHA, which in the past has updated standards for one chemical at a time. Over the last 17 years, the agency has adopted comprehensive standards for only 24 substances. The agency has been under severe criticism from labor and public health groups for setting so few standards.

And in many of those cases, such as standards for asbestos and vinyl chloride, the agency acted only after it was pressed to do so in lawsuits by unions.

Pendergrass acknowledged the problem of having so few standards in a formal statement in which he said that an estimated 550,000 hazardous chemicals are in use today. “The substance-by-substance approach cannot keep up with the number of chemicals in the market,” he said.

There will be a public comment period on the proposal and then OSHA will conduct hearings in July. Pendergrass said he hoped to have the final standards in effect by November.

Under the proposal, employers would be required to comply with the new standards within six months of final approval. Frank Kane, an OSHA spokesman, said most of the proposed standards could be achieved by issuing workers respirators.

However, employers would have up to four years to meet the new standards by using engineering and construction changes, such as installation of ventilation systems. Such controls are considered by union safety representatives and public health officials to be the most effective.

Diane Factor, an AFL-CIO industrial hygienist who was critical of the proposal, said it “would allow employers to force workers to wear respirators instead of requiring employers to immediately reduce exposures.”

Factor also was critical of several other aspects of the proposal. “It fails to cover millions of workers in maritime, construction and agricultural industries,” she said. “It also fails to require that employers monitor their workplace to prove that they are in compliance with the permissible exposure limits.”

She also criticized the agency for excluding from the proposal such toxics as silica, hydrazene and beryllium.

Randy Schumacher, director of health and safety for the Chemical Manufacturers Assn., said his organization supports OSHA’s approach but predicted that some proposals will be challenged by unions or companies. “But I think there will be a sizable number (of new limits) for which there will be no challenge,” he added.

Schumacher also said OSHA needs to update exposure limits more rapidly and routinely than it has in the past.

Most of the current federal exposure limits are based on standards established in 1968 by the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH), a private organization. The committee that set the standards included several representatives of industry and one labor representative. Since that time, the standards have been updated by ACGIH and the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). However, OSHA has not adopted all those changes.

On Tuesday, Pendergrass said that most of the proposed new exposure limits are based on data provided by the ACGIH in 1987 and 1988 with some backup by NIOSH. Frequently, NIOSH limits are more restrictive than those set by ACGIH. Factor said there were a number of instances in which OSHA was adopting the less-restrictive standards.