Our Descent Into Madness

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, responsible for inspecting safety standards for businesses and workplaces and protecting workers’ health, is relaxing their responsibilities, to say the least-

…to limit new rules and roll back what it considered cumbersome regulations that imposed unnecessary costs on businesses and consumers.

Across Washington, political appointees — often former officials of the industries they now oversee — have eased regulations or weakened enforcement of rules on issues like driving hours for truckers, logging in forests and corporate mergers.

OSHA is simply not doing its job.

Since George W. Bush became president, OSHA has issued the fewest significant standards in its history, public health experts say. It has imposed only one major safety rule. The only significant health standard it issued was ordered by a federal court.

The agency has killed dozens of existing and proposed regulations and delayed adopting others. For example, OSHA has repeatedly identified silica dust, which can cause lung cancer, and construction site noise as health hazards that warrant new safeguards for nearly three million workers, but it has yet to require them.

Maybe a major lawsuit is in order here…after the recent victory of the EPA vs. Massachusetts case which ruled that the EPA was not doing its duty by refusing to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant, this seems like a viable option that could warrant some real results.

The issue has recently come to the public’s attention because of OSHA’s reluctance to take action against things like “popcorn worker’s lung”- a rare and very serious lung disease suffered by laborers of microwave popcorn plants. The illness has been linked, by scientists and doctors, to one of the food additives used in these plants (which says some scary things about that popcorn, but that’s a different post). OSHA has yet to take any action.

Without an OSHA standard, which would establish the permissible level of exposure for workers, companies can set any limit of exposure they want.

Instead of regulations, Mr. Foulke and top officials at other agencies favor a “voluntary compliance strategy,” reaching agreements with industry associations and companies to police themselves.

Right, because that ALWAYS works. This reminds me of a comment that fitnessfortheoccassion left on another recent post that prompted a humble discussion about the steps that must be taken for improvement: we need a worker’s bill of rights. We need to establish that worker’s HAVE rights and make sure that those who violate them face serious consequences. Including OSHA.