SKAPP :: Newsroom :: Scientists Urge Department of Labor to Withdraw Risk-Assessment Rule

Scientists Urge Department of Labor to Withdraw Risk-Assessment Rule

August 14, 2008 – A group of 80 scientists and occupational health experts sent a letter to Department of Labor (DOL) Secretary Elaine Chao today, urging her to withdraw the proposed rule “Requirements for DOL Agencies’ Assessment of Occupational Health Risks,” which is pending review at the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The proposed rule would create new hurdles for efforts by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) to protect workers from harmful substances.

“I was concerned as soon as I saw the title for this rule,” says Celeste Monforton, a researcher with the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy (SKAPP) at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. “It sounded very similar to a previous proposal from OMB, which was only halted after a National Research Council panel condemned it.”

Monforton noticed the title of the proposed rule on the White House Office of Management and Budget website, and was the first to report on it, with a post on the public health blog The Pump Handle. She pointed out that Secretary Chao never indicated her intention to propose such a rule in the Department of Labor’s semi-annual regulatory agenda (published on May 6, 2008 in the Federal Register), which suggested that senior officials in the Labor Department were trying to keep it secret.

Shortly after Monforton published her blog post, Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Congressman George Miller (D-CA) demanded details from Secretary Chao, and later introduced a bill that would prohibit Chao from issuing the proposed rule. The Washington Post’s Carol Leonnig secured a copy of the proposed rule and published three articles on it.

The public health experts who have signed the letter to Chao cite three main concerns about the proposed rule:

It alters the definition of a working life from 45 years to an average number of years, which would result in inadequate protection for the many workers who engage in the same trade for several decades.
It calls for uncertainty analysis but provides no clear guidance on how to conduct one – the same flaw that the National Research Council (NRC) panel criticized in its assessment of the OMB’s earlier Risk Assessment Bulletin.
It limits regulatory action to hazards associated with “clinically apparent adverse health outcomes;” this, too, was something the NRC criticized in the Risk Assessment Bulletin, noting that it ignores the reality that effects occur along a continuum.

“By oversimplifying the risk assessment process, demanding an unachievable quantification of uncertainty, and defining adverse effects in a narrow manner that overlooks medical reality, the Department has created a proposed regulation that will hamper the OSHA and MSHA in their Congressionally-mandated duties to protect workers’ health from toxic agents,” the letter to Chao explains.

“We’d like to see the Department of Labor put its resources into some of the many hazards that have already been identified, like construction cranes, silica, and diacetyl,” explains Monforton. “Instead, they’re pushing a deeply flawed rule that will make it harder to safeguard the health of US workers in the future.”