Workplace Safety Quotes

I can assure you from my experience, it’s going to cost us jobs.

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Thacher Longstreth president of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce and former Republican city councilman.

[The right-to-know bill would be] a serious case of overkill….[and] would make it very difficult to maintain a business in the city of Philadelphia.

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Thacher Longstreth president of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce and former Republican city councilman.

It would require us to mail out forms and get information on 450 or more chemicals from 7,500 firms. We think that would require another 15 people [and $300,000 more in costs].

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William Reilly, head of the Philadelphia Health Department’s Air Management Services. Argues the costs would outweigh the benefits.

Adding another layer of government regulations onto these federal programs which provide substantially similar protection to employees and the public as those proposed in the bill is wasteful, inflationary and unnecessary.

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Robert Vogel, chief regulatory counsel of the Rohm and Haas Company.

Then without regard for exposure concentration in the air, City Council is being asked to make it against the law to ‘receive, store, use manufacture or transport’ any substance on that list without first burdening the citizen and the City Administration with more red tape.

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Richard Kiefer Jr., corporate safety director of the McCloskey Varnish Company.

[The right-to-know law] would make it very difficult to maintain a business in the community.

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Thacher Longstreth, president of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce

We think the message here is that legislation that is punitive toward business and heedless of the impact on the economy of this City adds to the flight of business investment. The results of this are greater economic stagnation, fewer jobs, and deterioration in the public health and welfare.

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President of the W.N. Stevenson Company and representative of the Northeastern Chemical Distributors Council.

To me it is just damned incompetent to consider legislation without knowing what the cost is going to be. In business we couldn’t do this. We couldn’t have jobs if we ran our business that kind of way.

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Russell Hurst, president of VIZ Manufacturing Company. President of the W.N. Stevenson Company and representative of the Northeastern Chemical Distributors Council.

We must all be aware of one very basic fact: all, absolutely all, chemicals are potentially toxic substances….The key, as I have previously stated, is the quantitative level, the concentration at which any chemical substance is present. Thus anything, I repeat anything, present in an excessive amount is a toxic substance. You cannot legislate against every conceivable chemical substance and therefore, the need for a truly meaningful definition for a toxic substance should be evident.

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Richard Kiefer Jr., corporate safety director of the McCloskey Varnish Company.

Council Bill 270 sets up rules of the game which do not apply anywhere else. The members of this committee, as well as the many others in this room concerned with Philadelphia’s economic well-being, know that we already have a major problem in attracting industry to our city as well as a problem in maintaining our basic industrial job-base.

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Anthony F. Visco, Senior Vice President of the Northeast Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce

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