WASHINGTON D.C. – The process of adopting a new OSHA standard for reducing worker exposure to silica drags on, and on and on….

Within the building trades, getting a new, more stringent silica exposure standard is easily the top safety priority. OSHA finally got clearance from the White House and published the proposed new silica standards in September 2013, and then held three weeks of extensive public hearings in March and April. There, building trades workers and leaders testified in favor of a plan to cut lifetime worker exposure to crystalline silica to 50 micrograms per cubic meter of air, down from 250 micrograms.

Then, nothing.

“OSHA’s efforts to update its silica standards have dragged on for so long largely because of a ponderous culture among rulemaking staff, who engage in excessively thoroughgoing economic and technical analysis,” said a new report by the Center for Progressive Reform.

The group also ripped the Obama Administration for inaction, saying it “apparently lacks the courage or the vision to explain that the rules that have been put in place will protect people and the environment from frightening harms.” Silica exposure can lead to renal disease, silicosis and lung cancer.

Much of OSHA’s scientific and economic research on silica was complete by February 2011, when OSHA sent its draft proposal to the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for Executive Order 12866 review. Even though reviews are supposed to last no longer than four months, the proposal languished there for more than two and a half years.

As we reported last April, Steelworkers Local 593 member Alan White, a now-disabled foundry worker from Buffalo, told OSHA what it’s like, after 16 years on the job, to learn his job made him sick from silicosis. About 700 silicosis deaths could be prevented every year with the new standards, OSHA estimates.

“I worked with or around silica containing products without knowing the dangers or any precautions to make a safer environment for myself,” White said.  “I learned that a dust mask was hardly, if ever, needed to do most jobs there. An employee who wore a respirator…in the foundry was repeatedly called crazy,” he added.  “Never were there any warnings and no information was freely available about the products we worked with.”

Other witnesses and experts, from the Bricklayers, Operating Engineers, Laborers, AFSCME, AFGE and the Auto Workers, told similar stories to OSHA.

“It’s been four decades. Four decades. Workers are still getting sick and dying from silicosis and there is no denying it anymore. Enough is enough. Workers in the construction trades are counting on us to enact the new standards. They need protection.  Now!” Bricklayers President James Boland, leading a five-man delegation, testified.

Although AFL-CIO Safety and Health Director Peg Seminario said the cut to 50 micrograms still leaves exposure too high, there is a strong pushback against the new proposed silica standard from employer groups in such industries as sand and gravel, brick, fracking where silica dust is prevalent, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other corporate groups. Their main beefs are costs to implement the new standard and concerns over whether they will work as intended.

The Center for Progressive Reform said part of the slow rulemaking culture at OSHA is “overreaction” to various Supreme Court decisions and Executive Order requirements that could upend OSHA rulemaking, which OSHA has acknowledged.

In October, OSHA chief David Michaels told the Construction Labor Report that the agency was reviewing the public hearing comments and pledged that a final rule would be issued before Obama’s term expires.