Prior to the passage of this legislation [the OSH Act], certain special-interest groups (i.e. unions) testifying in support of punitive legislation attempted to describe American business management as irresponsible and unsympathetic to safety on the job….We continue to maintain that standard setting should be carried out by an independent board of experts who are not subject to the pressures of special-interest groups.
One month [after the law took effect] a special edition of the Federal Register was published containing close to 250 pages of safety and health standards. Businessmen were given three months to familiarize themselves with these standards before the majority of them were to be effective.
If these label requirements are adopted in their proposed form, they will in our opinion destroy large amounts of the industry and eliminate thousands of jobs. and they will do this without any significant evidence that the proposed types of labels are necessary.
We firmly believe that if we are required to label our pipe as has been proposed, we will be unable to sell our product and would be out of business within two years.
To the extent that it makes the manufacture of asbestos materials in the United States technologically unfeasible or uneconomic, it will force the purchase abroad of products for which there is no-asbestos substitute, with consequential losses in profit, increases in unemployment, and deterioration in the nation’s balance of payments.
To destroy or seriously cripple the asbestos industry in this country through hastily developed or unnecessarily severe regulations will benefit neither the employee, the industry, nor the country as a whole, and could quite possibly have serious economic, social, and other consequences both now and in the future.
Any such warning label we might be required to use in connection with our products containing five percent or more asbestos content by weight would be unnecessary, inappropriate, ineffective and potentially damaging to the sales of the products and thus to the job security of employees engaged in their production.
I am sure that there is no one here who would wish to increase the margin of safety in our dust standards so far beyond the point at which employee health is adequately protected that, as a consequence, we deprive of their means of livelihood the very persons whom we are trying to benefit. This would be an action foolish as it is absurd.
In summary, then, the proposed regulation could have a very serious adverse impact on my company, an impact which cannot be justified by any demonstrable benefit to our employees, to the employees of our customers, or to the general public.
Achieving a standard of [5 fibers] will cost millions of dollars and cause a significant number of American jobs to be shifted to foreign workers. Requiring a more stringent standard and requiring unnecessarily frightening labels can have a catastrophic effects on the very people OSHA’s and the industry are attempting to protect, without really solving the human problem.
