Under Bush, OSHA Mired in Inaction

[onehandle]

Source: Washington Post

In early 2001, an epidemiologist at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration sought to publish a special bulletin warning dental technicians that they could be exposed to dangerous beryllium alloys while grinding fillings. Health studies showed that even a single day's exposure at the agency's permitted level could lead to incurable lung disease. After the bulletin was drafted, political appointees at the agency gave a copy to a lobbying firm hired by the country's principal beryllium manufacturer, according to internal OSHA documents. The epidemiologist, Peter Infante, incorporated what he considered reasonable changes requested by the company and won approval from key directorates, but he bristled when the private firm complained again.

"In my 24 years at the Agency, I have never experienced such indecision and delay," Infante wrote in an e-mail to the agency's director of standards in March 2002. Eventually, top OSHA officials decided, over what Infante described in an e-mail to his boss as opposition from "the entire OSHA staff working on beryllium issues," to publish the bulletin with a footnote challenging a key recommendation the firm opposed.

Current and former career officials at OSHA say that such sagas were a recurrent feature during the Bush administration, as political appointees ordered the withdrawal of dozens of workplace health regulations, slow-rolled others, and altered the reach of its warnings and rules in response to industry pressure.

The result is a legacy of unregulation common to several health-protection agencies under Bush: From 2001 to the end of 2007, OSHA officials issued 86 percent fewer rules or regulations termed economically significant by the Office of Management and Budget than their counterparts did during a similar period in President Bill Clinton's tenure, according to White House lists.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/28/AR2008122802124.html

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This had better change on January 20th.

[SpiralHawk]

1. Why do republicons hate Americans who work for a living?

yet more evidence...

[jmowreader]

2. Please edit this by removing everything after "Americans"

Because consider this: if grinding fillings exposes the grinder to high levels of beryllium, it's got to expose the person whose mouth the fillings are in to it too.

[Best_man23]

3. The headline should be

Under Bush: (Insert name of government department here) Mired in Inaction

Suggest the following:

Department of Interior
Department of Education
Department of Mines
Environmental Protection Agency
NOAA
Securities and Exchange Commission
Treasury Department
Health and Human Services

I can go on.

[Captain Hilts]

4. K&R because folks here don't care enough.

Too obsessed with politics rather than policy.

[bertman]

5. No doubt the Bushies have been anti-worker protection but I question using the

"percentage of rules or regulations termed economically significant" as the benchmark for OSHA's effectiveness. That sounds like the ultimate bureaucratic standard to me. Are we at the point where we judge an agency's effectiveness based on the OUTPUT of rules and regulations, instead of whether the rules and regulations are effective? Personally, I'd be much happier if we were looking at quality not quantity of regulation.