Dudley's Disturbing Views on Worker Health and Safety - Safety - RegWatch

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Friday, August 25, 2006

Dudley's Disturbing Views on Worker Health and Safety

Former OSHA and MSHA policy analyst Celeste Monforton blasted OIRA nominee Susan Dudley in yesterday’s Courier-Journal for her “disturbing” position on worker health and safety. Dudley recently wrote a law review article on OSHA’s regulation of respirable crystalline silica, a breathable dust that causes silicosis, an irreversible and potentially fatal lung disease. According to the CDC 1.7 million U.S. workers in occupations such as construction, sandblasting and mining are exposed to crystalline silica. Despite this evidence, Dudley claims that more information is needed before OSHA can regulate silica exposure to protect workers. Says Monforton:

Despite the authors' assertions, physicians, toxicologists and other experts have known for nearly a century that microscopic particles of SiO{-2} (silicon dioxide, or quartz), when inhaled, can penetrate deep into the lung's alveoli. The body's natural defense mechanisms attack the tiny silica particle, thereby creating scar tissue -- and with too much exposure and too much scar tissue, silicosis develops. . . . This is all well-known, indisputable science.
Dudley and her co-author are following the script first popularized many decades ago by the tobacco industry: When faced with regulation to protect the public health, always raise doubt and manufacture uncertainty about the scientific evidence.
Instead of cigarette smoking, the topic is now silica. The authors assert that a workplace regulation to prevent silicosis would be premature because "we do not know whether particular forms of silica are harmful" and the scientific evidence "comes from extremely limited sources."
Not true. The American Thoracic Society's 1997 official statement on the health effects of exposure to respirable crystalline silica includes more than 140 references, and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health's health hazard review lists nearly 500 scientific papers and documents to support its findings. Claims of scientific uncertainty by two law professors do not make it so.

15 miners have died in Kentucky in 2006. As Monforton points out, Dudley’s approach of questioning the underlying science could be used to delay needed protections for mine workers. “[S]tranger things have happened when ill-qualified ideologues are appointed to decision-making posts for the sole purpose of delaying or stopping all regulations,” says Monforton.