Putting Trivia Ahead of Safety

Each year literally millions of U.S. workers are killed or crippled by job-related injury or disease. Six years ago, Congress created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to solve this pressing industrial problem. But progress has been slow, if measurable at all. Last year 12,400 workers were killed in industrial accidents, not a very significant improvement over the 13,700 who died in 1971, OSHA's first year; another 2.1 million suffered disabling injuries. The Public Health Service in 1973 estimated that there were 390,000 new cases of occupational disease in the U.S. every year, and as many as 100,000 deaths; it believes that the figures are no better today.

Justifiably, OSHA is widely regarded as one of the biggest debacles in Washington. It draws fire from businessmen, union chiefs, lawyers, Ralph Nader and an assortment of politicians, including President Ford, who attacks OSHA for "unnecessary and unjustified harassment of citizens." The most serious charge is that OSHA has got snarled up in enforcement of petty rules to the neglect of more important matters.

Foot and Ankle. Granted broad powers to protect 50 million workers in 4 million workplaces, OSHA got off to an unwieldy start by immediately promulgating as law almost all safety regulations then on the books at federal agencies and organizations like the National Fire Protection Association. The result: an encyclopedic collection of do's and don'ts, 7 ft. thick if stacked together and packed with dizzying minutiae. Six pages of regulations deal with wooden ladders. Sample: "Knots, if tight and sound and less than one half inch in diameter, are permitted ... provided they are not more frequent than 1 to any 3 feet of ladder length."

OSHA recently has trimmed its rule books a bit, plucking out such anachronisms as a prohibition against ice in factory drinking water (a throwback to a time years ago when ice was cut from polluted rivers). Last week OSHA's director, Assistant Secretary of Labor Morton Corn, said that some of the agency's hoariest regulations soon would be revised and businessmen would get a louder voice in changing them.

But many of the agency's regulations still are paradigms of impenetrable prose that lawyers waste precious time interpreting. In one safety-shoe case, lawyers wrangled over the word extremity; did it mean toes, the entire foot or the foot and ankle? Such procedures consume vast quantities of time and money, even when OSHA has no case at all. One airline was cited for noise violations, only to prove after days of investigation that OSHA'S inspector had read his decibel meter incorrectly.

"OSHA is floundering in trivia," says James D. ("Mike") McKevitt, former Colorado Congressman and current Washington lawyer for the 440,000-member National Federation of Independent Business. A Nader study reports that through the first four years of OSHA's activity, more than 98% of its citations involved nonserious cases and fines averaging a mere $19. Meanwhile, after five years, OSHA has produced a grand total of three comprehensive health standards for industry: one governing the amount of asbestos that can be present in factory environments, another for carcinogens, a third for vinyl chloride. It has yet to specify limits and control procedures for such toxic substances as ammonia, sulfur dioxide, beryllium and lead--the last a known danger since the Middle Ages.

Why is OSHA so inefficient? One reason is lack of money. While OSHA'S budget has ballooned from $36 million in fiscal '72 to about $117 million now, the agency's scientific research effort has languished because of underfunding. Average salaries in OSHA'S research unit are about $13,000, equal to the pay of a good Washington secretary and hardly enough to lure top talent.

There are indications that the agency has been hobbled by politics. The White House tried to use OSHA to raise funds from employers during Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign. Recently, OSHA postponed issuing several new health codes until next year. Reason: the Administration insisted that it file statements on the potential inflationary impact of its proposed codes. Such statements can run hundreds of pages and cost up to $100,000 each. OSHA'S supporters see the requirement for the statements as an Administration ploy to postpone until after the election regulations that would be costly to Big Business. Labor Secretary W.J. Usery, whose department includes OSHA, denies that the delay is politically motivated.

Director Corn, a respected professor of occupational health at the University of Pittsburgh, who was appointed to head OSHA late last year, is determined to make the agency more effective. Corn is moving to hire 250 new inspectors and expand the agency's training program to focus more on worker health. Of 1,200 OSHA inspectors, only 135 are industrial hygienists. "OSHA has taken a hell of a rapping for petty enforcement," says Corn. "It was deserved. We've concentrated far too much on safety and not enough on health."

But Corn is under no illusion that his task will be easy. Already bills are piling up in Congress that would weaken the original OSHA act. One would essentially exempt from regulation businesses employing 25 or fewer workers. OSHA has tangled with other federal agencies over who has jurisdiction in safety matters involving aircraft, railroads and interstate trucking. And recently in Texas, a federal court ruled that OSHA inspectors cannot enter a workplace without a search warrant.

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