Dear Cass:
As you know, we picked a spat with the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) last week over Randy Lutter’s supposedly temporary detail appointment to your office. It’s not the first time we’ve criticized the workings of OIRA, and almost certainly won’t be the last.
I’ve spoken to a number of people in the media and elsewhere who have expressed surprise that progressive organizations like CPR are such relentless critics of a progressive Administration. I’m sure Administration officials feel this frustration as well. That dynamic is at work in OIRA’s case because you have a reputation as a progressive thinker on many issues.
I won’t try to speak for all progressives, but I can assure you that very few of us criticize the Administration lightly. Nor do we do it with any sense of pleasure. The Obama Administration inherited an absolute mess on every front and progressives are well aware of the herculean effort you are making to dig out. But while it is tempting to take refuge in the notion that if only a few things are better at the end of however many terms the voters give President Obama, that limited vision is not why you signed up to serve, nor is it why so many of us voted for your man.
Full textThe below item is written by Celeste Monforton and cross-posted from The Pump Handle.
The first regulatory agenda under OIRA chief Cass Sunstein was published [Monday] in the Federal Register (link to its 237 pages.) The document includes a narrative of Labor Secretary Solis’ vision for worker health and safety, mentioning these specific hazards: crystalline silica, beryllium, coal dust, airborne infectious agents, diacetyl, cranes and dams for mine waste. The document purports to “demonstrate a renewed commitment to worker health,” yet the meat of the agenda tells a different story for particular long-recognized occupational health hazards.
Take, for example, MSHA’s entry on respirable coal mine dust, a pervasive hazard associated with reduced lung function, chronic bronchitis, emphysema, progressive massive fibrosis, and more. Despite an announcement last week by Labor Secretary Solis and MSHA Asst. Secretary Joe Main saying they want to “end new cases of black lung among the nation’s coal miners,” they aren’t planning to PROPOSE any regulatory changes for 10 months. That’s a ”renewed commitment to worker health”? Hardly.
Since 1995, public health science tells us that reducing miners’ risk of coal dust-related lung disease and impairment will REQUIRE a substantially lower respirable coal mine dust limit. Period. Why then will it take MSHA 10 months to merely propose such a change?
Full textHow’s this for any irony? David Michaels, President Obama’s nominee to head the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), has written a book, published by Oxford University press, documenting how industry manufactures doubts that chemicals harm people by accusing regulators and plaintiff lawyers of relying of “junk science” instead of “sound science.” Now, after Michaels has exposed this effort as a public relations campaign that mischaracterizes how science actually works, he is being attacked on the grounds, you guessed it, of favoring junk science. And, because he favors “junk science,” he must be, you guessed it, a “radical.”
Michaels, an epidemiologist and research professor at the School of Public Health and Health Services at George Washington University, notes that the “sound science” campaign originated with the tobacco industry’s efforts to stave off regulation and tort suits by attacking the science indicating that smoking kills you. It has since been taken up by anyone with a financial interest in avoiding regulation or being sued for exposing people to toxic substances.
The sound science campaign depends on three ideas that appear reasonable enough on their face, but constitute sophisticated sabotage in their operation.
Full textThe Chemical Safety Board released its report Thursday on the 2008 explosion at the Imperial Sugar plant in Georgia, finding that the incident was "entirely preventable" (Reuters article, full report). Ken Ward Jr. gave helpful context for the announcement and followed up afterward with the criticism from unions for the Chemical Safety Board's "decision to not repeat its previous recommendations that the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration write tough standards regulating combustible dust in America’s workplaces." Celeste Monforton applauded Georgia Senators Chambliss and Isakson for calling on OSHA to issue regulations on combustible dust.
Also on Thursday, a study by PEER announced that "Workplace Exposures Rise as OSHA Health Inspections Fall" --
The U.S. Occupational Safety & Health Administration is doing fewer health inspections despite more workplace exposures to toxic and hazardous substances, according to an analysis released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). While workplace exposures are linked to the premature deaths of 10 times more workers than all workplace accidents combined, OSHA now spends less than 5% of its limited resources on workplace health protection.
Last but not least, another item from Monforton, "Dispelling an OSHA Myth," tells the story of a plant in North Carolina that is laying off 300 workers in the wake of a June explosion that killed three people. So much for the story line that jobs are lost because OSHA rules are too strict.
Full textGranite, like most natural stones, contains radioactive material. While this isn’t much of a concern for a person who spends a few hours in a kitchen with granite countertops every day, new research by David Bernhardt, Linda Kincaid, and Al Gerhart suggests that the workers who fabricate those countertops might have reason to worry.
When they cut granite slabs to fit a room and to have nice edges, corners, and cut-outs for sinks and appliances, workers’ saws can create a lot of dust, and that dust can contain uranium, thorium, and other radioactive materials. If the dust isn’t properly controlled and the workers are not wearing the right protective equipment, they can inhale the dust, where it can cause real damage to the vulnerable tissues in their lungs. Based on limited sampling and some conservative assumptions about control equipment and exposure duration, Bernhardt, Kincaid, and Gerhart suggest that stone cutters could potentially be exposed to radiation levels many times greater than recommended exposure levels for the general public.
Granite’s radiation problem is not new, and the Marble Institute of America, one of the industry’s main trade associations, was quick to commission its own study to challenge the worker exposure research. The MIA-commissioned study questioned Bernhardt et al.’s sampling techniques and statistical analysis. And the MIA, for its part, argued that it is standard practice within the industry to use wet-cutting techniques (which would limit dust but weren’t used when Kincaid and Gerhart did their sampling). But by the MIA’s own account, over 25 percent of stone fabricators don’t use those techniques.
Full textCPR's Sid Shapiro is interviewed in this week's edition of Living On Earth, the environment-focused public radio show heard in 300 markets around the nation. The subject is David Michaels's nomination to head the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Says Shapiro: "David Michaels has his job cut out for him. I think it's fair to say that OSHA is one of the most dysfunctional agencies in Washington. For example, Congress had a plan how to regulate toxic chemicals in the workplace. And OSHA has been almost unable in the last ten years or so to fulfill that plan. In fact, it's only issued three health regulations in roughly the last 10 to 15 years."
Text of the interview is here. It's downloadable, here. And streamed, here.
Full textOn Tuesday, the White House announced the appointment of Dr. David Michaels to head the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). An epidemiologist and a professor at George Washington University’s School of Public Health and Health Services, Michaels will bring substantial expertise and experience to the job. Besides being an active health research – he studies the health effects of occupational exposure to toxic chemicals – he has also written impressively on science and regulatory policy. His book, Doubt Is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health, offers extensive evidence of how regulatory entities spend millions of dollars attempting to dismantle public health protections using the playbook that originated with the tobacco industry’s efforts to deny the risks of smoking. He is also an experienced public health administrator, having served as the Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environment, Safety and Health in the Clinton Administration.
The appointment is good news because OSHA can use all of the help it can get. In 1993, Tom McGarity and I published Workers at Risk: The Failed Promise of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which explained how OSHA has fallen short of its statutory responsibility to protect American workers. I wish that I could say that the situation has improved since then, but, if anything, OSHA is in worse shape today than in the early 1990s.
Workplace injuries and fatalities have declined since OSHA has been in business, but the rate of decline has leveled off and the absolute number of injuries and fatalities remains high. Consider, for example, that in 2005, employers paid $48.3 billion in “direct costs” for workplace injuries -- that is, payments for medical expenses and lost wages -- according to the Liberty Mutual Insurance Company, the nation’s largest workers' compensation insurer. This number, of course, does not measure the additional havoc wrought on individuals and their families when a worker is seriously injured or killed in a workplace accident.
American workplaces are dangerous for a number of reasons, including too few OSHA inspectors and a statute that authorizes only small penalties even for more egregious violations. For example, penalties are capped at $70,000 per incident even for “willful violations,” which involve situations where an employer demonstrates “plain indifference to the law.” Plus, OSHA has been way too willing to cut deals and let employers off the hook. The average penalty for enforcement cases involving fatalities in FY 2007 was just $10,133. That’s right, employers paid an average of $10,000 in fines for an accident in which an OSHA violation led to a workers’ death.
Full textMichael Livermore is right to suggest that environmentalists should be focused on Cass Sunstein’s first official day as regulatory czar for the Obama Administration. After months of delay over the Harvard professor’s eclectic and provocative writings, he will eventually take office if he can placate cattle ranchers concerned about his views on animal rights. Whatever their level of paranoia about Sunstein’s ability to grant animals standing to bring lawsuits, the likely character of his reign was more accurately predicted by the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, which applauded Sunstein’s devotion to cost-benefit analysis, the major weapon of Presidents Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II to smother health, safety, and environmental protections.
Livermore, an advocate of kinder, gentler cost-benefit analysis that he hopes will lead to regulatory controls more palatable to conservatives, offers a depressing list of priorities for Sunstein on his first day. They boil down to continuing the mission of George W. Bush’s regulatory czars: using number-crunching of “costs” and “benefits” (e.g., a life saved by regulation is worth anywhere from $1-10 million) as the transcendent tool in making decisions on climate change, public health protections, worker safety, and sustainability. I cannot help but remember many economists’ awesome failure to predict and avoid the global economic meltdown and wonder why their predictions in the health and safety arena should be even more essential these days.
Many progressives fear that, despite Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner’s claims that they are interested in “true” reform of a fatally corrupt banking system, the two men have essentially missed the opportunity of this generation to overhaul it—and the recent comebacks of the largest firms seem to underscore these fears. In a similar vein, we should be very disappointed if Sunstein does not deliver on the president’s promise of “change we can believe in.” To do that, he should:
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This post is co-written by CPR President Rena Steinzor and Policy Analyst Matt Shudtz.
Just as the traditional media finished a breathless cycle of reporting on how prospective Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor had renounced her claim that a “wise Latina” would make different decisions than a white man, an article in USA Today reminded us of the need for many more wise Latinas in the corridors of power in Washington. According to data compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, workplace deaths of Hispanics have increased by 76 percent since 1992, even though total fatalities in all jobs nationwide dropped by almost 10 percent.
What explains these tragic figures? Admittedly, there are simply more Hispanic workers in the United States today.
And the jobs involved are the meanest and the dirtiest. In 2003, 42 percent of workers in the meat and poultry industry, which includes dangerous meatpacking jobs, were Hispanic. These jobs also attract undocumented immigrants with few other options for employment. Twenty-six percent of workers in the meat and poultry industry were foreign-born noncitizens in 2003. BLS data show that other dangerous industries such as construction, transportation and warehousing, natural resources and mining, and agriculture are where the most Hispanic workers are dying on the job. And, while companies are required to provide employees with safety training, they often fail to make adequate efforts to deal with language barriers. OSHA has some materials available online in Spanish, but workers laboring for a subsistence wage are unlikely to look these instructions up on their Blackberries from the job site. Undocumented workers are far less likely to complain to federal and state officials about job dangers, further isolating them from outside intervention to correct workplace hazards.
Under the leadership of Labor Secretary Hilda Solis—a wise Latina if there ever was one--the Obama Administration is beginning to address these problems. The President’s FY 2010 budget requested $564 million for OSHA, which is $51 million, or 10 percent more than that agency received in FY 2009. This funding will pay for 160 new enforcement staff, many of whom will be bilingual. Overall, the Department of Labor expects to hire nearly 1,000 new employees, restoring worker protection staffing to FY 2001 levels. Unfortunately, however, this comparison omits the depressing context that OSHA funding has remained essentially flat in constant dollars since the agency was created in the early 1970’s. A strong trend away from heavy manufacturing and toward safer service industry jobs has translated into a steady reduction of workplace injuries and deaths despite OSHA’s steadily weakening capacity to enforce the law. Hispanic workers have not benefited as much as the average worker in terms of decrease in fatality rate.
Full textThe Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel continued its impressive BPA reporting Sunday with disturbing revelations about former FDA political appointees' utter disregard for the agency's career scientists. Using the Freedom of Information Act, the Journal-Sentinel uncovered e-mails showing that high-level officials went to industry lobbyists for advice about new research on bisphenol A (BPA) before asking FDA career staff.
In one instance, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's deputy director sought information from the BPA industry's chief lobbyist to discredit a Japanese study that found it caused miscarriages in workers who were exposed to it. This was before government scientists even had a chance to review the study.
"I'd like to get information together that our chemists could look at to determine if there are problems with that data in advance of possibly reviewing the study," Mitchell Cheeseman, deputy director of the FDA's center for food safety and applied nutrition, said in an e-mail seeking advice from Steven Hentges, executive director of the trade association's BPA group.
BPA is a chemical used to make clear and rigid plastics -- everything from water bottles to dental fillings to DVDs. Its ubiquity in commerce translates to pervasive levels of human exposure: it is found in the urine of 93 percent of Americans.
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