Workplace Safety Quotes

I think you know as well as I do that when you get legislation like this, you very often feel this is the nose of the camel. Okay, they start off with this and then they expand it a little further, and then the next thing you know they are taxing industry to pay for the cost of the regulatory apparatus that’s being established. And the first thing you know, you’re really being asked to preside at your own funeral.

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Thacher Longstreth, president of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce

You are going to ruin our business. And I think that’s pretty serious.

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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.

There already has been too much public hysteria over half-truths concerning nuclear energy, PCBS (polychlorinated biphenyls), industrial wastes, etc. What we do not need is for the City Council of Philadelphia to help in the slightest to create even more public hysteria.

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

We do not believe that merely furnishing a list of the ingredients of our products to the general public will enable the general public will enable the general public to intelligently decide which, if any, are liable to endanger the environment. What such a list can and will do, is enable our competitors to learn something about the nature of our products. With competition in the market place as it is today, we certainly do not need the City Council to help our out-of-town competitors.

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

[W]e all probably use salt, sodium chloride, on our food….Salt has been included in the Registry of Toxic Effects of Chemical Substances (published by NIOSH). The toxic dose of salt needed to kill half the test animals is about 1/8 ounce of salt for each 2.2 pounds of weight of the animal. Does this mean that the City of Philadelphia should regulate table salt?

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Roy. S. Anderson Ph.D’s testimony before the Philadelphia City Council.

So that a bill like the Right to Know Bill is not in itself definitive; it would not drive all of these businesses away. It will bear more harshly on some than others, and may expedite their rate of closing or leaving or – and very often it’s not even a question of driving a company away, they just don’t expand here. They go and expand somewhere else.

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Thacher Longstreth, president of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce

[S]mall business today is struggling to swim upstream against today the constantly increasing current of restriction and regulation. I suggest that adding to this burden should be only done with the greatest of considerations for the benefits to be achieved, since each addition to the pressure will result in some businesses either giving up or changing their location.

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

[T]he expansion of government’s role in the marketplace has, in many cases, impaired the performance of our economy…That the trend toward accelerating inflation has been aggravated by the expansion of government expenditure programs…and by regulatory policies that reduce productivity.

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

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. We’re dealing with an enormously technical matter that the public doesn’t understand at all, that I don’t understand at all.

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

The moment you get either people or lawyers apprised of the fact that a company has a toxic material on their premises, they’re going to bring a lawsuit.

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

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