Workplace Safety Backgrounders & Briefs

Issac Shapiro and John Irons, Economic Policy Institute, April 2011.

A chief priority of the new House Republican majority in Congress is to curtail government regulation. In the first months since the new Congress convened, the House has held dozens of hearings designed to elicit criticisms of regulations, introduced legislation that would dramatically alter the regulatory process by requiring congressional approval of all major regulations, and passed a spending bill that would slash the funding levels of regulatory agencies and restrict their ability to enact rules covering areas such as greenhouse gas emissions.

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Lisa Heinzerling, Frank Ackerman, and Rachel Massey. Georgetown Law Journal. April 2010.

“Applying Cost-Benefit Analysis to Past Decisions: Was Environmental Protection Ever a Good Idea?” challenges the reigning dogma of cost-benefit analysis by asking two simple questions. “If this analytical device had been applied in the 1970s and earlier, would it have endorsed the early successes of health and environmental regulation? Or would it have resulted in negative judgments wherever and whenever it was applied?”

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Office of Management and Budget. 2010.

“2010 Report to Congress on the Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulations and Unfunded Mandates on State, Local, and Tribal Entities” is a major review of all the federal government's regulations. The report chronicles the costs and benefits of all federal regulations between 1999 and 2009. The agencies found that the average annual cost of their regulations are between $43 and $55 billion, while the annual benefits are between $128 and $616 billion.

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U.S. Chemical Hazard and Safety Board. November 2006.

This important study from the  looks at dust explosions, which are a danger in any industry that creates a fine, dusty byproduct (candy, cotton, grain, coal, various metals).