OSHA Issues Rules to Protect Workers From Asphyxiation in Confined Spaces

Almost 14 years after acknowledging that workers face serious dangers when they enter storage tanks and other confined spaces, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration this week published regulations that it said would protect 2.1 million workers who work in such spaces.

Every year, safety experts say, about 300 workers nationwide die in confined-space accidents, frequently by asphyxiation.

“It’s been 14 years and over 3,000 victims--it’s about time,” said John Moran, former director of safety research at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, who pushed OSHA for years to promulgate a standard, as did several labor unions.

“Full compliance” with OSHA’s proposed rules could prevent 80% to 90% of the injuries and fatalities in confined spaces, Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Hanford Dole said.

Definition of Areas

A “confined space” is described by occupational safety experts as a space with any of these characteristics: small openings for entry and exit, unfavorable natural ventilation or an area not designed for continuous worker occupancy.

Confined spaces include storage vessels, furnaces, boilers, railroad tank cars, oil refinery tanks, airplane wings and manholes.

Moran said the two most frequent hazards in confined spaces are oxygen deficiency and potentially explosive conditions created by the presence of methane. The deaths generally occur when a worker enters a confined space not knowing that there is a lack of oxygen or that the air is pervaded by toxic chemicals that can swiftly be fatal.

The most significant provisions of OSHA’s proposal include a system of written entry permits for high-hazard spaces and the stationing of a trained attendant outside the permit space at all times during work in the space. The proposal calls for two types of confined spaces: those requiring a safety attendant during any entry and those that could be entered without the presence of an attendant.

Help in Case of Emergency

“Requiring safety attendants for spaces with higher risks and giving those attendants sufficient training to respond to emergencies will ensure that workers inside the confined space have the backup help they need should evacuation be necessary,” said Alan C. McMillan, acting head of OSHA.

The vast majority of confined-space incidents involved multiple fatalities. Generally, at least one would-be rescuer perishes, as well as the original victim, according to government studies.

For example, last June, five young men died at Bastian Plating, a small company in Auburn, Ind. They were asphyxiated by hydrogen cyanide gas, which was created when one worker was cleaning a 5-foot-deep tank. Four of his colleagues died from the same fumes while trying to rescue him.

Diane Factor, an industrial hygienist with the AFL-CIO, said the labor federation was pleased that OSHA had finally proposed a standard, though she criticized the agency for taking so long to act, saying many deaths could have been prevented by earlier OSHA action.

Death Estimate Called Low

Factor and Moran also said the agency’s estimate of the number of yearly confined-space deaths--40 to 50--is much lower than figures recognized by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health and even some of OSHA’s own personnel who worked on the standard. An OSHA official told The Times earlier this year that there were about 300 confined-space deaths yearly nationwide.

A Labor Department source acknowledged in an interview Friday that the fatality figures in the proposal are “off base” and were the subject of controversy within OSHA. The source said a possible explanation for the understated number of deaths is the fact that OSHA does not have a computer coding system for confined-space fatalities.

There could be serious consequences from understating the fatalities, Moran said. In particular, he said he feared that the low number of deaths cited in the proposal would give critics in industry ammunition for saying that the costs of implementing the standard--estimated at $740 yearly per company covered--would be higher than is warranted, considering the number of lives that would be saved.

Factor also expressed concern about the fact that the standard did not cover employees in some key industries, such as public utilities and construction, in which workers had died in confined-space incidents.

“This is a standard that is very important to the labor movement,” Factor said. “We may be requesting a hearing on it.”