NOTE: Confined Space is back after a short 10-year break and can now be found at: Confined Space.
WHAT IS THIS?
Workplace issues, Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA), Workplace Safety, Public Health, Environment and Political Information that everyone should know.
What happens inside the Beltway matters outside the Beltway.
That's why they try to keep it secret.
Wednesday, April 09, 2003
Too Busy Writing Weak Ergonomics Guidelines and, uh, umm Homeland Security. And Stuff...
New OSHA Chemical Exposure Limits Ordered
04/03/2003
WASHINGTON (AP) A federal appeals court has ordered the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to issue regulations to set a new limit on work exposure to the industrial chemical hexavalent chromium. The order by the U.S. Appeals Court for the 3rd Circuit gives the agency until January 2006 to issue a final rule with new exposure limits for the chemical, which has been shown to cause lung cancer if inhaled at certain levels. A proposed rule must be issued by Oct. 4. The court order was in response to a lawsuit filed last year by Public Citizen and the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union. The lawsuit claimed that OSHA was aware that its current exposure limit posed a cancer risk to workers, but has continually delayed any action. The groups have urged OSHA to lower the limit for more than a decade.