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Archived News Release--Caution:
information may be out of date.
For more information call: (202) 219-8151.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)
today identified 18 priority safety and health hazards in need of either
regulatory or nonregulatory action.
Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and
Health Joseph A. Dear and Linda Rosenstock, director of the National Institute
for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), presented results of OSHA's
priority planning process at a meeting of the National Advisory Committee for
Occupational Safety and Health (NACOSH).
"OSHA has had substantial success in fulfilling its
mission of preventing deaths, injuries and illnesses in the workplace, but
important gaps remain," Dear said. "Our resources are scarce and expected to
remain so. Therefore, we must focus national attention and agency efforts where
they are most needed and will be most useful."
"NIOSH is pleased to have made important scientific and
technical contributions to the OSHA planning process," said Rosenstock. "This
is a wonderful example of NIOSH and OSHA working together."
OSHA's priority planning process expresses its intent to
fill many of the gaps by identifying unmet safety and health needs and
establishing plans to deal with them through rulemaking and by leveraging the
private sector to undertake voluntary interventions.
These new priorities supplement rather than replace OSHA's
on-going activities. They involve preventable problems that are responsible for
a large number of injuries and illnesses (or in some cases that pose
particularly high risk to a small group) but currently receive inadequate
attention from government agencies or organizations in the private sector.
Five of the new priorities have been chosen for
rulemaking. They are:
- noise/hearing conservation in construction and other noncovered
industries permissible exposure limits for air contaminants (continuation of
activity) electric power transmission and distribution in construction
metalworking/machining fluids crystalline silica
These priorities will be added to OSHA's regulatory
calendar as other standards now on the calendar are completed and resources
become available.
For all the other priorities, OSHA will work with
business, labor, the professional community and its state plan partners to
encourage worker protection without developing new rules at this time. In some
cases interventions may involve OSHA's use of its existing authority, as well
as program initiatives recently announced by President Clinton that provide
incentives to employers who effectively find and fix hazards. In most cases,
the current approaches to the new priorities will be voluntary and
informational.
The priorities for such nonregulatory action are:
- asphalt fumes
commercial diving safety
crane hoist
safety
diesel exhaust
hazardous medications
motor vehicle
safety
occupational asthma (including an emphasis on latex allergy)
oil
and gas well drilling and servicing
reproductive
hazards
solvents
synthetic mineral fibers
welding, cutting, and
brazing
workplace violence
OSHA's priority planning process was initiated in 1994. It
included work by a priority planning committee with experts in safety and
health from OSHA, NIOSH, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the
Department of Labor's Office of the Solicitor, Office of the Assistant
Secretary for Policy and the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA).
The committee reviewed available information on
occupational fatalities, injuries and illnesses and held an extensive dialogue
with stakeholders such as representatives of labor, industry, professional and
academic organizations, state plan designees, voluntary standards organizations
and the public. The committee also received recommendations from NACOSH and the
Advisory Committee on Construction Safety and Health (ACCSH).
More than 125 hazards were nominated by individual
stakeholders and agency staff. The committee adopted a combined qualitative and
quantitative approach in selecting the hazards that should be given the
greatest priority.
The committee first applied four major criteria to the
various hazards:
- the seriousness of the hazard
- the number of workers exposed or the magnitude of the risk
- the quality of available risk information
- the potential for risk reduction
These criteria were then supplemented with three others so
the committee could consider whether rulemaking is appropriate. The additional
criteria are:
- administrative efficiency or feasibility
- legal feasibility
- other public policy considerations (such as intensity of public
concern and public perception of the hazard)
The 18 hazards were selected because they best met the
combination of criteria for designation as priorities. When the new priorities
are combined with issues being addressed by existing programs they cover many
of the nation's leading occupational safety and health threats.
Dear and Rosenstock jointly reviewed and approved the
final list. Because many of the OSHA priorities will affect and depend on NIOSH
research, OSHA has invited NIOSH to take a leadership role in developing
research-related activities which will augment the action plans for these
priorities. The results of the priority planning process will be an important
consideration as NIOSH works with its stakeholders to develop the national
occupational research agenda, a project designed to set priorities for
workplace research over the next decade.
OSHA will convene another stakeholder meeting to discuss
the 18 priority hazards as well as to identify the six priority issues the
agency should address in the initial implementation phase, and the ones that
should be addressed in subsequent phases.
After these discussions, OSHA will draft action plans for
the first six issues and will convene a symposium with interested stakeholders
to discuss the draft action plans before final revisions and implementation.
Archived News Release--Caution:
information may be out of date.
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