Spring 2007
- Message from the Co-Chairmen (Spring, 2007)
- Health Promotion: Help for Laborers and their Health & Welfare Plans
- Help for Laborers and their Health & Welfare Plans
- Nutrition and Fitness for Laborers
- Helping Laborers Get the Substance Abuse Treatment They Need
- Drug-Free Workplace initiatives
- LaboreRx - Lower Drug Costs and Better Service
- Get That Annual Check-Up
- Occupational Safety & Health: Safety Consultants for Labor and Management
- 'Best Practice' Seminars Reach Out to Contractors
- Laborers' True Stories
- Regulatory Work
- OSHA May Address Portland Cement Hazard
- ANSI to Adopt Hearing Conservation Standard
- Preventing Backovers in Work Zones
- LIUNA Funds, Allies Target Work Zone Safety
- Safety Committees: Safer Workplaces and Reduced Workers Comp Premiums
- Health and Safety in Canada
- www.LHSFNA.org: The Fund's Communications Hub
Published: Spring, 2007; Vol 9, Num 1
Regulatory Work
Regulatory work is painstakingly slow. It generally takes years – years! – for OSHA to adopt a new safety standard, no matter what its apparent need or urgency. For example:
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It has been 16 years since work began on the still unfinished fall protection standard. In the meantime, 9149 workers have been killed in falls, more than 700 per year.
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OSHA adopted a confined space standard for general industry in 1993 and agreed to develop one for construction as well. Thirteen years later, the best that can be said is that the agency promises a notice of proposed rulemaking this spring.
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Trench collapses are a minor epidemic in construction. Five years ago, OSHA said it would look into an excavation standard. It’s still in the prerule stage.
Which brings us to hexavalent chromium (Cr(VI)) in Portland cement and noise, two construction hazards long ignored by OSHA.