my point of view…

HazCom Rule Creates Lots of Paperwork, But Not a Safer Working Environment

Worker safety is an issue that every executive, plant manager and health and safety professional in the aggregate industry should be passionate about. It impacts our reputation with workers, workers’ families, local communities and regulatory agencies. Most of all, it affects the way we look at ourselves in the mirror.

During the last two years, safety professionals have been inundated with regulations on how to better educate and train their workers. Part 46. Noise. Diesel. And now, HazCom. With Part 46, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) worked with the aggregate industry in what I hoped would be a precedent-setting partnership. The result was a rulemaking, unlike previous efforts, that actually fit the audience for which it was intended.

One step forward and two steps back

Before Part 46 has really had a chance to make an impact, however, MSHA is busy trying to find other ways—redundant ways—to improve worker safety. Although that may be a noble goal, the way the agency is going about it is likely to have just the opposite effect.

While MSHA is still trying to complete Compliance Assistance Visits (CAVs) on Part 46, industry safety and health professionals are implementing new training programs, dealing with new paperwork and documentation requirements, and evaluating compliance strategies for other rulemakings. And in the middle of this chaos, the agency tries to resurrect the decade-old HazCom rule despite the lack of statistical justification for doing so.

Even more disturbing is the fact that the “interim final” rule is based on OSHA’s Hazard Communication Standard—a regulation that has been misinterpreted by its own staff, inconsistently enforced and used to create the regulatory equivalent of a highway speedtrap.

Is this proposed rule about improving safety or generating revenue for the agency?

The right moves

Before promulgating a new rule, MSHA should step back and evaluate how to best utilize safety resources, both theirs and ours. HazCom is a burdensome rule that would require a significant amount of time and has limited applicability in the aggregate industry. There are only a handful of chemicals used in most operations: fuel, lubricants, welding fumes, degreasing solvents and battery acid.

If MSHA looks at aggregate industry statistics, it will find that 60 percent of chemical accidents involve lime dust in the eyes. Those incidents should be eliminated by the use of personal protective equipment as detailed in Part 46 without the need for another rulemaking.

If the agency feels the need to address other chemicals via a rulemaking, it should do so through the vehicle already designed for aggregate industry safety training, Part 46, not a separate regulation. Any rulemaking that pulls safety personnel from their core responsibilities is a safety detriment, not an improvement. If we want to improve our record, safety people need to be training the workforce, not the filing cabinet.