OSHA Grilled on Capital Hill

Things didn’t go well for OSHA this week as their Administrator Edwin Foulke Jr. testified at a hearing on workforce protections.  The subcommittee chair, Rep. Lynn Woolsey, grilled Foulke on why OSHA has been “dragging its feet” in issuing safety and health standards.

“This is not a time to slow down on protecting worker safety,” Woolsey said.  “But yet that is what [the Bush] administration had done.” 

Committee members wanted to know why the agency has been concentrating more on building its alliance programs as opposed to creating more enforcement initiatives.  They charged that the agency’s focus on compliance assistance has been ineffective.

Foulke contended that the administration has not been soft on enforcing standards and that its “four-pronged approach” has lowered the workplace injury and illness rate by more than 13% since 2002.

However, the committee was not satisfied and demanded that OSHA step up its enforcement standards, similar to what the California OSHA system.  For example, the state of California limits occupational exposure to carbon monoxide to half of what OSHA allows.  Expsoure to perchloroethylene -- a dry cleaning chemical -- is limited to one quarter of what OSHA allows.