Solis Set to Announce Two Key Job Safety and Health Rules

by Mike Hall, Apr 28, 2009

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis will announce today that the Labor Department is moving forward to develop two new major workplace safety rules to protect workers from combustible dust explosions—such as the one that killed 13 workers at a Georgia sugar plant last year—and from a dangerous chemical that causes “popcorn lung,” according to the Associated Press (AP). The rules could take up to a year or two to finalize.

Solis will make the announcement at a Workers Memorial Day ceremony this afternoon at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Md. We will bring you a report from the event, that includes breaking ground for a new national workers memorial later today. 

The new rules mark a major departure from the Bush Department of Labor’s refusal to address serious workplace safety issues. As the AFL-CIO’s just-released report “Death on the Job” points out:

For eight years, the Bush administration failed to take action to address major safety and health problems. Many [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] OSHA and [Mine Safety and Health Administration] MSHA rules were withdrawn or blocked.

Dangerous levels of combustible sugar dust at the Imperial Sugar refinery in Port Wentworth, Ga., fueled the Feb. 7, 2008, blast that killed 13 workers and seriously injured dozens of others.

More than 130 workers have been killed and hundreds more seriously injured in combustible explosions in the United States since 1980. In 2006, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) urged OSHA to adopt combustible dust standards. But the Bush administration’s OSHA did not move on a rule to set dust level standards. The new rule is expected to set those standards.

Diacetyl is the chemical flavoring additive in microwave popcorn that causes a severe and sometimes fatal lung disease known as “popcorn lung” and other respiratory illnesses.

The Bush administration’s OSHA refused in September 2007 to issue an emergency standard setting diacetyl exposure limits for workers. And in a last-minute move before leaving office, the Bush administration used a procedure known as an advance notice of proposed rule that could have,  say safety experts, added two years to the diacetyl standard-setting process.

In March, OSHA announced it was withdrawing the Bush order and fast-tracking a diacetyl standard.

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