UAW to Congress:
Make OSHA set mandatory standards for chemical exposures
On the eve of Workers Memorial Day, Georgia Republican Charles Norwood convened
the House Workplace Protections subcommittee to hear management complaints that
OSHA was listening to professional organizations recommending limits for chemical
exposures which were stricter than OSHA’s outdated standards.
UAW Health and Safety Department Director Frank Mirer, the sole labor witness,
told the subcommittee the real problem was that the Occupational Health and Safety
Administration’s failure to set new, mandatory standards was allowing workers
to get sick.
Mirer described the problems at the TRW brake systems plant in Mt. Vernon,
Ohio, where dozens of members of UAW Local 1939 suffered respiratory problems
such as hypersensitivity pneumonitis, a serious disease that can lead to respiratory
failure, occupational asthma and bronchitis. Some were hospitalized.
Chronic illness from long-term exposure at work accounts for 90 percent of known work-related mortality.
– UAW Health and Safety Department Director Frank Mirer (retired)
OSHA investigated and found management in compliance with the oil mist standard. “So
where was OSHA during the TRW outbreak? As workers were being hospitalized, an
OHSA inspector was giving a clean bill of health to the plant,” Mirer said.
In June 2001 TRW and the union called for a National Institute for Occupational
Safety and Health (NIOSH) study. Five months later, 107 workers (out of 400)
had been placed on restriction and 37 remained on medical leave. NIOSH identified
14 with occupational asthma, 12 with hypersensitivity pneumonitis and three with
occupational bronchitis.
The UAW worked closely with TRW and NIOSH to improve ventilation. Eleven
months after the first case, new cases stopped appearing, but some victims were
still unable to return to work and some workers and former workers still suffer.
Mirer told lawmakers OSHA needs to set mandatory standards for a host of
chemicals because chronic illness from long-term exposure at work accounts for
90 percent of known work-related mortality.
“Few of these victims are named on Workers Memorial Day, and many are
not aware of the chemical cause of their illness,” he said.
OSHA has issued standards for only 17 chemical agents or groups of agents
since 1968. These rules helped protect workers, transform industries and largely
avoided high costs projected by industry doomsayers. But, Mirer said, OSHA should
have issued rules for dozens more chemicals.
The UAW has negotiated exposure limits lower than OSHA for metalworking fluids
and other chemicals with the auto industry and other employers. Without a union
contract to protect them, millions of other workers are left with OSHA’s
outmoded rules, and that’s why the UAW continues to fight for every worker’s
health.
Vince Piscopo
