A workplace hazard at popcorn plants, of all places, was used to illustrate OSHA's agonizingly slow process of setting safety standards on the job.

Speaking on behalf of workers and safety conscious employers across the United States, the Laborers Health and Safety Fund of North America attacked the standard-setting shortcomings of OSHA during April testimony before the House Education and Labor Committee, Subcommittee on Workplace Protections.

Calling OSHA's standard-setting process "broken," LHSFNA Occupational Safety and Health Division Director Scott Schneider urged Congress to set time limits to speed the agency's consideration and adoption of standards.

To correct OSHA's meandering process, Schneider stressed the importance of Congressional prodding to ensure results. "After Congress imposed deadlines, we got an OSHA standard for lead and another for hazardous waste within six months. Without deadlines, we get regular re-statements of OSHA's intention to establish standards, but we do not get any new standards," he said.

His comments were made at a House hearing held in conjunction with a similar hearing on the Senate side. The twin hearings, scheduled the week before Workers' Memorial Day on April 28, were designed to lay the groundwork for workplace safety legislation introduced by Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA).

Schneider asked Congress to push OSHA to renew use of its dormant Emergency Temporary Standards (ETS) authority. Such use might have prevented the wave of serious lung injuries incurred over the last decade by workers exposed to diacetyl, a flavoring agent, at popcorn plants across the country. One of these workers, Eric Peoples, also testified at the House hearing, saying he now faces a double-lung transplant.

Peoples began work at a popcorn plant in Missouri in 1997, but was soon ill with bronchiolitis obliterans, an often-fatal lung disease. Doctors in the area quickly realized that other current and former workers at the plant had similar symptoms. The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health visited the plant and issued a bulletin in 2001, saying "a work-related cause of lung disease" had occurred there. NIOSH is not empowered to develop standards or to issue safety and health citations. The agency followed up with an alert recommending safeguards to more than 4,000 businesses.

OSHA, however, took a different tact, Schneider said. It sent an inspector who concluded that the plant was in compliance with existing rules and closed the case. Sixteen months later, sick workers filed a complaint with OSHA, but after another inspection, the agency said it could not do anything because no safety standard exists to establish a level beyond which exposure to diacetyl is unacceptable.

Meanwhile, the lawsuits have been piling up. Peoples, himself, recently won a $20 million claim against the flavoring's manufacturer.

"This is exactly the kind of situation where OSHA should step in and issue an ETS," said Schneider. "No one knows the extent of exposure to diacetyl that is safe, but everyone knows it should be minimized. OSHA should have stepped in and required the plants to reduce exposures through ventilation or closed processes and required workers to wear respirators on a temporary basis until a safe, permanent solution could be devised."

Also testifying was OSHA Director Edwin Foulke, who offered a rosy assessment of the agency's performance under the Bush Administration. He cited data that shows all-time lows in occupational injury, illness and fatality rates.

"His testimony was misleading," said Schneider, discussing his and others' remarks in a follow-up interview. "His data is inherently flawed because some of the most common and most significant health concerns in construction" - Schneider highlighted silicosis and hearing loss in his testimony - "are chronic conditions, often missed by doctors and almost never recorded in OSHA logs."

Construction workers are victims of OSHA's waiting room. Discussion of an improved excavation standard began in 2001; six years later, it is still in the pre-rule stage. A possible silica standard also remains in the pre-rule stage four years after it was first considered and more than 60 years after the Department of Labor promised to eliminate the threat of silicosis from American worksites.
The long-awaited Hearing Conservation Program for Construction Workers has been in OSHA's hopper since 1983. There has since been little movement on a new standard since then - and the date of the agency's next action officially remains "undetermined."

(Adapted from an article by the Laborers Health and Safety Fund of North America).