I can assure you from my experience, it’s going to cost us jobs.
[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.
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].
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.
[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?
[The right-to-know law] would make it very difficult to maintain a business in the community.
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.
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.
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.
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.
