'This is flat-out secrecy. They are trying to essentially change the
job safety and health laws and reduce required workplace protections
through a midnight regulation.' -- Peg Seminario, director of health
and safety policy, AFL-CIO.
"Some accuse the Bush administration of working secretly to give
industry a parting gift that will help it delay or block safety
regulations after President Bush leaves office."
'It's an insult to America's workers for the Department of Labor to be
spending its time in the last year of this administration allegedly
fine-tuning the details of how to do these regulations when, other
than the one ordered by a court, they have issued no major worker-
health regulations.' -- Adam Finkel, professor, University of Medicine
and Dentistry of New Jersey.
----------------------------------------
"U.S. Rushes to Change Workplace Toxin Rules"
By Carol D. Leonnig
Wa****ngton 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
Wa****ngton 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 *****sments.
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.
In an interview, Labor's assistant secretary for policy, Leon R.
Sequeira, said officials did not disclose their interest in the rule
change earlier because they were uncertain until recently whether they
wanted to follow through and pursue a regulation.
But the fast-track approach has brought criticism from workplace-
safety advocates, unions and Democrats in Congress. Some accuse the
Bush administration of working secretly to give industry a parting
gift that will help it delay or block safety regulations after
President Bush leaves office.
"It's an insult to America's workers for the Department of Labor to be
spending its time in the last year of this administration allegedly
fine-tuning the details of how to do these regulations when, other
than the one ordered by a court, they have issued no major worker-
health regulations," said Adam Finkel, a professor at the University
of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey who is a former health
standards director at Labor's Occupational Safety and Health
Administration. "The reality is there's a great need to light a fire
under this moribund agency to do something -- anything -- to protect
workers."
Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Education and
Labor Committee, said: "The fact that the Department of Labor seems to
be engaged in secret rulemaking makes me highly suspicious that some
high-level political appointees are up to no good. This Congress will
not stand for the gutting of health and safety protections as the Bush
administration heads out the door."
Sequeira said department policy prevents him from discussing the
details of a draft rule, how it was written and by whom, until it is
reviewed by the OMB. The public will have 30 days to critique the
draft after it is published.
"It's premature to comment," he said. "People appear to be making
assumptions about what's in the draft."
Last week, the proposal was defended in an opinion piece in the New
York Sun written by Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a fellow at the
conservative-leaning Hudson Institute. She wrote that it would bring a
"rationalized approach" to risk *****sments and probably move away
from the incorrect assumption in current rules that workers stay in a
job, with daily exposure to the same chemicals or toxins, for as long
as 45 years.
Furchtgott-Roth did not mention in the article that she was one of the
consultants who worked with Labor beginning in September 2007 on a
$349,000 outside study of the risk-*****sment process.
The OMB has been trying to address the issue of risk *****sment since
2006, when it attempted to set new standards governing how a host of
federal agencies reach their conclusions. That plan was withdrawn
after the National Academy of Sciences called it "fatally flawed"
because it lacked scientific grounding.
Early this year, Deborah Misir, a political deputy in Labor's office
of the assistant secretary for policy, worked with the OMB to draft a
new risk-*****sment rule. A former ethics adviser to Bush, Misir had
complained that the department's assumption of a 45-year working life
overstated the risk of exposure.
Typically, before drafting a rule, agency officials consult with staff
members, lawyers and outside experts, and sometimes industry and other
interested parties. But Misir initially did not consult scientific and
workplace-risk-*****sment experts in OSHA and the Mine Safety and
Health Administration, according to sources briefed on her work.
Charles Gordon, a recently retired Labor Department lawyer who worked
on regulations in OSHA's solicitor's office for 32 years, said the
policy office does not usually take the lead on rules involving risk
*****sments. "Normally, issues of health science like risk *****sment
are performed by OSHA and MSHA, that have statutory authority and
expertise in the area," Gordon said.
Misir waited until April to seek comments from the department's
experts. They objected to both the legality and substance of the
proposal and recommended that Chao not pursue such a rule, according
to the sources.
A few weeks later, when the agency listed regulations "under
development or review" in its semiannual agenda, the risk-*****sment
proposal was not included. But a draft was circulating among a small
group of advisers, according to a date-stamped copy obtained by The
Post.
In spring 2007, the department listed 38 potential workplace-safety
regulations as works in progress. Among its priorities were a proposal
to reduce deaths and injuries from cranes and derricks, following a
spate of fatal accidents; a new rule to reduce illnesses from silica,
which can cause respiratory diseases; and a proposal to change
regulation of beryllium, a light metal that can harm the lungs of
dental and metal workers.
But virtually overnight, changing the risk-*****sment process became
the agency's top priority for workplace regulations. The July
submission of its proposal broke a deadline set by White House Chief
of Staff Joshua B. Bolten, who had ordered that all agencies submit
proposed regulations before June 1 and "resist the historical tendency
of administrations to increase regulatory activity in their final
months."
Nevertheless, the OMB agreed to work with Labor on the proposal. The
July 7 posting on its Web site shocked many inside and outside the
agency who had been following the events.
"This is flat-out secrecy," said Peg Seminario, director of health and
safety policy at the AFL-CIO. "They are trying to essentially change
the job safety and health laws and reduce required workplace
protections through a midnight regulation."
Seminario said she was stunned that the administration would consider
the rule its top priority, when for years it has "slow-walked and
stalled" safety rules that would reduce worker deaths and injuries
from diacetyl and beryllium.
David Michaels, an epidemiologist and workplace safety professor at
George Wa****ngton University's School of Public Health, said the rule
would add another barrier to creating safety standards, in the name of
improving them.
"This is a guarantee to keep any more worker safety regulation from
ever coming out of OSHA," Michaels said. "This is being done in
secrecy, to be sprung before President Bush leaves office, to cripple
the next administration."
[Research editor Lucy Shackelford contributed to this re****t.]
http://www.wa****ngtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/22/AR2008072202838.html
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