Wood dust not on OSHA's regulatory hit list review.

Wood dust is not among the first group of respirable air contaminants whose Permissible Exposure Levels will be considered by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. In the Jan. 24, Congressional Federal Register, OSHA listed 20 chemicals whose PELs will be considered for regulation. Wood dust was not included on that list, despite being reclassified a human carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. (See W&WP Oct. 1995.)

It has not been determined when or if wood dust will be debated, but wood-workers should not "worry at this point" about wood dust exposure limits being considered, according to Julia Pesak, a spokesman for OSHA, who is coordinating the meetings.

The next meeting on establishing PELs is scheduled for Feb. 22. This meeting will only discuss the past efforts and current strategies for updating PELs, and how to determine risk methodologies and define what is a significant risk. Pesak said wood dust will not be discussed at this meeting.

The PELs for the following 20 chemicals will be the first to be addressed: carbon disulfide, carbon monoxide, chloroform, dimethyl sulfate, epichlorohydrin, ethylene dichloride, glutaraldehyde, n-hexane, 2-hexanone, hydrazine, hydrogen sulfide, manganese and compounds, mercury and compounds, nitrogen dioxide, perchloroethylene, sulfur dioxide, toluene, toluene diisocyanate, trimellitic anhydride, vinyl bromide. Some of these chemicals, such as toluene, are present in some wood finishes.

These 20 chemicals were selected based on their inherent toxicity, the number of workers exposed to the substance, uses of the substance, prevailing exposure levels, severity of the resulting health effects, the availability of information and quality of the data, and the potential for risk reduction.

OSHA has been forced to review PELs for selected individual chemicals since the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the agency's comprehensive 1989 air contaminant standard for 428 different chemicals and substances, including federal regulations for wood dust emissions, in 1992.

Most states are following the OSRA's nuisance dust levels of 15mg/[m.sup.3] for total dust and 5mg/[m.sup.3] for respirable dust set by OSHA in 1971. Other states such as California, Washington, New Mexico, Minnesota, Michigan, Tennessee, Virginia, Vermont and Connecticut have adopted the 1989 levels of 5mg/[m.sup.3] and 2.5mg/[m.sup.3] for western red cedar.

Susan Snider of the American Forest and Paper Association said that, even though the 1971 limits are in effect, her group and other industry associations involved in the InterIndustry Wood Dust Coordinating Committee recommend that woodworkers continue to strive to meet the 1989 levels of 5mg/[m.sup.3].

It may have come as a surprise to some that wood dust was not included in the initial list of PELs to be researched. Wood was classified a human carcinogen by the International Agency for Research in October 1994. In the summer of 1995, IARC released a monograph, citing 350 studies, mostly European, indicating that wood dust caused a higher than expected occurrence of nasal adenocarcinoma - a rare nasal cancer - in wood furniture industry workers.

This cancer classification caused two initial reactions. It forced the inclusion of a cancer warning label on Material Safety Data Sheets and led the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists to propose in its 1995-96 Threshold Limit Values pamphlet that hardwood dust be given a rating of A1 for carcinogenicity. An A1 rating is a confirmed human carcinogen.