OSHA Hazard Communication Standard

OSHA Hazard Communication Standard

The OSHA’s Hazards Communications Standard of 1983 only applied to workers in the manufacturing sector. It explicitly preempts state laws. Container labels are mandatory. Chemical manufacturers and importers may decide the exact label wording, as long as they provide employers with more detailed information in the form of a material safety data sheet. Employers must provide adequate safety training to their workers. It only preempts state law where the laws cover the same issues: toxic safety in the manufacturing sector workforce.

Cry Wolf Quotes

[The proposed OSHA right-to-know regulation will be] an enormously expensive and unnecessarily burdensome regulation.

-
From a letter to the Reagan Administration from Robert A. Roland, president of the Chemical Manufacturers Association.

[The OSHA right-to-know regulation would create] virtually unmanageable burdens on small manufacturers….workers would be just as safe without this regulation.

-
Ralph Engel, Chemical Specialties Manufacturers Association official.

We’ll do everything in our power to have it defeated. All these attorneys have to do is grab these records, and they can play all kinds of games with them. Just about anything that happens to a person can be connected to his work.

-
William R. Willberg, vice-president of operations for the Wisconsin Association of Manufacturers & Association.

[The proposed OSHA standard would force employers to follow] overly simplistic procedures...which differ markedly from well-established hazard warning practices….[creating] in favor of potentially confusing over-labeling [and] “excessively detailed hazard evaluation procedures.

-
Robert A. Roland, president of the Chemical Manufacturers Association.

Backgrounders & Briefs

Dying To Know: A Historical Analysis of the Right-To-Know Movement

This survey provides a sweeping analysis of the right-to-know movement in America.