National Council for Occupational Safety and Health is calling on the Obama Administration to push through the long-delayed standard on occupational exposure to crystalline silica. The rule has been languishing in the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) for two years.
“American workers cannot afford to wait for the federal government to enact this commonsense rule,” says Tom O’Connor, executive director of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health. “Each day that the federal government stalls, workers are needlessly exposed to dangerous levels of silica dust, which is one of the oldest known causes of work-related lung disease.”
In 2011, ASSE urged OIRA to move the rulemaking forward. In its letter to the agency, ASSE called particular attention to the fact that the continued delays is preventing OSHA from engaging ASSE members and all stakeholders in a meaningful and fully open discussion about how best to advance a new silica standard.
Find additional information on occupational exposure to silica from NIOSH here and from OSHA here.
A Blog From the American Society of Safety Engineers