Word: osha
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...LAST weeks of 1970, Congress created a new governmental agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). OSHA was charged with the task of safeguarding the lives and health of over 63 million American workers. In signing the bill into law, President Nixon called it "an example of the American system at its best." In the years since its establishment, however, OSHA has been a major disappointment to many of its original backers. In a 1974 interview, Sen. Harrison Williams (D-N.J.), then chairman of the Senate Labor and Public Welfare subcommittee and one of the co-sponsors...
Since 1971, the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has recommended, but barely enforced, a maximum of 90 decibels-the sound of a heavy truck-throughout an eight-hour workday. OSHA wants to keep to that level. The Environmental Protection Agency and the labor unions want the limit reduced to 85, the din of a busy street. Many industries are strongly opposed to such regulation and claim it would be ruinous. The noise level now registers about 105 decibels next to the looms in a textile mill, and 115 close to an automobile factory...
Hearing Loss. On the opposing side of the OSHA hearings, the EPA has worked out statistics to show that the risk of hearing loss is twice as high at 90 decibels as at 85. Both the EPA and the unions argue that noise can also cause cardiovascular problems, partial loss of vision and mental disturbance...
Aside from the effects of noise, there is sharp disagreement on how those damages should be prevented. OSHA recommends that industry provide acoustical shielding and other engineering changes, and that it rotate work shifts to limit the number of hours an employee can work in a noisy area. Industry argues that a far easier and more economical method would be to require workers to wear earplugs or muffs. Labor retorts that "personal protection," as it is called, can be dangerous. Says the AFL-CIO's Sheldon W. Samuels: "There is a documented case of a man killed...
...final rulings will probably not be issued until this fall, and real results may take years longer. But if OSHA has its way, workers will have one protective measure fairly soon. Among the agency's top priorities is a regulation that workers exposed to more than 85 decibels be given periodic hearing tests...