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.
U.S. Rushes to Change Workplace Toxin Rules
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.
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Wow, is there any question
Wow, is there any question that this administration and all of the department's are in the pockets of big business? Screw the workers, we just need to keep the bottom line as low as possible.
"...overestimates the
"...overestimates the risk..."
In other words, people are numbers and lives being lost only makes a difference if it exceeds a given percentage of the population.
One death. One crippling injury. One life destroyed. One too many.
Its not a question of accountability for businesses, its a question of statistics...
Pure evil
I used to think, "if there's a Hell, Dubya belongs there..."
Now I'm becoming more focused:
Will there every be any accounting of the misery caused by this band of thieves?
interesting... coming on the
interesting... coming on the heels of a new EPA report:
In May, the Environmental Protection Agency lowered its “value of a statistical life”
[...]
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/11/epa-says-the-value-of-an-american-life-has-decreased/?sortby=toprated
work place safty
I can belive the bush administration would do somethin like this do you think anyone in this administratio n would actually do an honest days work in a plant where the lack of worker safty standards can kill or maim you naw there fort'e is screwin the american people and the constitution and everythjng else they touch and with the help of the dems in congress still keep there hands clean..
Hand in glove stories
I, too, immediately thought of that "lower value of human life" story. When I first read the toxic chemical story, I wondered where the hell OSHA is in all this. A year or so ago, I worked with the building supervisor where I work to compile a book of MSDS sheets so we would be OSHA compliant. There were more than 100 sheets, and I work in a church! Now, I wonder if OSHA will even care anymore!