Expensive Dustup

Jimmy Carter has often promised that he would cut down on the Mickey Mouse regulations that inflate production costs, but in the first major test last week, he caved in to the regulators.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration insisted that textile plants install elaborate ventilation and dust-control systems to reduce cotton dust, which causes brown lung, an occupational asthma that afflicts from 2,300 (by industry estimate) to 35,000 (by OSHA estimate) of the nation's 233,000 cotton textile workers. But the Council on Wage and Price Stability calculated that the bill for the industry would be $625 million for new equipment plus $200 million in annual costs to meet the OSHA standards. Alarmed, Carter's inflation fighters, led by Chief Economic Adviser Charles Schultze, opposed OSHA'S demands. As a health-preserving but noninflationary alternative, they even came forth with a prototype of a battery-powered mask that appeared to be straight out of Star Wars. It costs only $200 and filters out 99.9% of the harmful particles in the air of a textile plant. OSHA turned it down, arguing that the masks were not really that effective and workers would not wear them.

After wavering for nearly one month between the advice of the conflicting camps, Carter finally overrode his team of inflation fighters.

He supported OSHA's rejection of those masks, but he gave the textile industry four years to put in expensive ventilation and dust-control systems to comply with OSHA's super-stringent standards.

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