Group urges OSHA to amend asbestos stance.The Safe Buildings Alliance (SBA SBA abbr. Small Business Administration Noun 1. SBA - an independent agency of the United States government that protects the interests of small businesses and ensures that they receive a fair share of government ), in comments to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), U.S. agency established (1970) in the Dept. of Labor (see Labor, United States Department of) to develop and enforce regulations for the safety and health of workers in businesses that are engaged in interstate (OSHA OSHA n. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a branch of the US Department of Labor responsible for establishing and enforcing safety and health standards in the workplace. ), urged the agency to "avoid imposition of inordinate compliance costs on building custodial, maintenance and repair activities' involving in-place asbestos. In a document prepared for the agency's reopened asbestos rulemaking, SBA asked OSHA to amend its proposal because it would achieve little, if any, benefit in worker health protection and would impose costs "well in excess Coillions of dollars per theoretical cancer avoided) of any other health and safety standard ever issued by the agency." SBA did, however, support OSHA's proposal for asbestos inspections and worker notification, training and protective measures. Specifically, OSHA's 1990 Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA (Rich Internet Application) A Web-based application that approaches the speed and elegance of a local application. An RIA may refer to a browser-based application that uses AJAX or another enhanced coding technique. ) failed to analyze the true costs imposed by requiring all asbestos maintenance activities - even small-scale, short-duration tasks - to be 'regulated areas.' As OSHA itself found in 1984, such maintenance work poses 'negligible occupational health risks to any potentially exposed populations;' thus, given existing low exposures, the imposition of new requirements would impose immense costs on building owners for little health benefit. "We urge OSHA to develop a performance standard for building maintenance and repair," said John Welch John Welch (October 28, 1805 - August 5, 1891) was a U.S. Representative from Ohio. Born near New Athens, Ohio, Welch received a liberal schooling and was graduated from Franklin College. He moved to Athens County in 1828 and settled in Rome Township. , president, Safe Buildings Alliance. 'Such a standard will assure worker protection in the most cost effective manner; it will assure low employee exposures while giving building owners the flexibility they need to achieve these low levels by a variety of proven means." SBA comments also included a study by Dr. Robert W. Crandall of the Brookings Institution Brookings Institution, at Washington, D.C.; chartered 1927 as a consolidation of the Institute for Government Research (est. 1916), the Institute of Economics (est. 1922), and the Robert S. Brookings Graduate School of Economics and Government (est. 1924). which analyzed an·a·lyze tr.v. an·a·lyzed, an·a·lyz·ing, an·a·lyz·es 1. To examine methodically by separating into parts and studying their interrelations. 2. Chemistry To make a chemical analysis of. 3. the costs and benefits of the proposed rule. Dr. Crandall's study, using OSHA's own exposure estimates, concluded that the proposal's costs would exceed $1 billion per theoretical cancer avoided - an amount unprecedented for health and safety rule compliance. SBA comments, as demonstrated by the study, argued that the costs imposed by OSHA's proposal would be completely out of proportion to any benefits. Additionally, these costs would largely be imposed on the already troubled commercial real estate industry. |
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