Fwd: Court Orders OSHA to Protect Workers from Carcinogen.

[Guest guest]

Hi everyone...

 

OSHA has to be court ordered to protect workers from a carcinogen?

 

In light of information like this I think it is very appropriate to ask

ourselves if it is in our own best interest to rely on big business/big

government (or any self vested entity) to safeguard our health for us... As

well as the ramifications of doing so.

 

Be Well, Misty

 

http://www..com

 

 

 

Court Orders OSHA to Protect Workers From Dangerous Lung Carcinogen

 

Federal Appeals Court Tells Government to Write Rule About Hexavalent

Chromium; Order Is Culmination of Suit Brought by Public Citizen and PACE

 

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has

ordered the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to

take the steps necessary to protect workers from hexavalent chromium, a

dangerous lung carcinogen. The order, issued late Wednesday, came in

response to a lawsuit filed last year by Public Citizen and the Paper,

Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union (PACE).

The suit was designed to force the agency - which for years has dragged its

feet on the matter - to act.

 

Under the order, OSHA must issue a proposed rule governing workplace

exposure to hexavalent chromium no later than Oct. 4, 2004, and a final rule

no later than Jan. 18, 2006.

 

OSHA has acknowledged for nearly a decade that its current standard permits

workers to breathe in hexavalent chromium at levels that pose an

unacceptable cancer risk. Previously, in response to a 1993 petition from

Public Citizen and PACE, the agency had promised to issue a proposed rule in

1995. Nonetheless, the agency repeatedly postponed action to tighten the

standard. In 1997, Public Citizen and PACE filed suit in the Third Circuit

to compel strengthened regulation of the chemical, but lost because the

agency said it would issue a proposed rule by 1999.

 

After three more years of agency inaction, Public Citizen and PACE filed

suit last spring in the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, alleging that the

agency had violated the law by unreasonably delaying action on hexavalent

chromium. On Dec. 24, 2002, the court issued an opinion finding OSHA's

delay " unreasonable. "

 

In that order, the court decried OSHA's " indefinite delay and recalcitrance

in the face of an admittedly grave risk to public health " and held that

" OSHA's delay in promulgating a lower permissible exposure limit for

hexavalent chromium has exceeded the bounds of reasonableness. " The court

ordered OSHA to " proceed expeditiously with its hexavalent chromium

rulemaking. " The court directed the parties to engage in mediation for 60

days in an effort to agree upon a schedule.

 

 

In the mediation, OSHA took the position that it would need more than four

years to arrive at a new final rule. Public Citizen countered with a

schedule that would have yielded a final rule in two years. Senior Judge

Walter Stapleton proposed that the parties agree on an approximately

three-year schedule. Although OSHA objected, insisting that it be allowed

another four years to take action, the court ordered the three-year

schedule.

 

" We would have liked the agency to move even faster, " said Dr. Peter Lurie,

deputy director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group. " But the

important point is that the agency has now been told that it has to act, and

that the leisurely schedule it wanted won't adequately protect workers'

health. "

 

Added Public Citizen attorney Scott Nelson, who argued the case, " It's very

unusual for a court to step in and order an agency to act by a specific

date. The court's action here is a reflection of the agency's extreme delay

in the face of a problem that even it has admitted for a decade is very

serious. We hope this case will send a message that agencies can't expect

to get away with neglecting their missions indefinitely. "

 

Even with this order, the proposed rule on hexavalent chromium would be the

first rule that OSHA has proposed for an industrial chemical in more than a

decade.

 

The text of the Court's order is available at

http://www.citizen.org/documents/Order%20Regarding%20Schedule.pdf.

 

###

 

Public Citizen is a national, nonprofit consumer advocacy organization based

in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.citizen.org.

 

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Sandy Mintz

http://www.vaccinationnews.com

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" Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. " - Wendell Phillips (1811-1884),

paraphrasing John Philpot Curran (1808)

 

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