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SCIENTISTS, ENGINEERS, AND THE BURDENS OF OCCUPATIONAL EXPOSURE: 72 THE CASE OF THE LEAD STANDARD original typesetting files. Page breaks are true to the original; line lengths, word breaks, heading styles, and other typesetting-specific formatting, however, cannot be About this PDF file: This new digital representation of the original work has been recomposed from XML files created from the original paper book, not from the retained, and some typographic errors may have been accidentally inserted. Please use the print version of this publication as the authoritative version for attribution. equitable. Without rate retention, workers would refuse to participate in medical surveillance programs so crucial to the standard. Without rate retention, workers with elevated blood lead levels would be forced to bear the economic burdens of toxicity (OSHA, 1977, p. 1035). "A worker with excessive blood lead levels should not have to suffer the additional indignity of being unable to support a family" (OSHA, 1977, p. 2967). Labor's representatives were mindful that an adequate standard of protectionâone that would include medical removal protection with rate retentionâwould create added social costs in the production of lead. But from their perspective it was wrong to ask workers to bear the burden of disease so that the cost of lead products could be kept down. "We just cannot expect a group of employees to be put on a sacrificial table because we happen to need lead and because it is a vital metal and we cannot do without it" (OSHA, 1977, p. 2971). THE FINAL LEAD STANDARD When at last OSHA issued its final standard in November 1978, the result was a set of regulations far stricter than those initially prepared and indeed stricter than many advocates of reform had anticipated. The acceptable limits for blood lead levels were reduced from 60 µg to 40 µg/100 g (OSHA, 1978a, p. 52954); the permissible air lead level was reduced from 100 µg to 50 µg/m3 (OSHA, 1978a, p. 52963). Medical removal protection with rate retention was mandated (OSHA, 1978a, p. 52973). Based on a model of the interaction of blood lead levels and air exposure developed by the Center for Policy Alternatives at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, OSHA believed it had resolved the issue of scientific uncertainty that had plagued the hearings on the proposed lead standard (OSHA, 1978a, p. 52963). That formulation, an adaptation of the Bernard model, provided a mathematical basis for asserting that protection of workers required not only reduction of the prevailing 200 µg standard but that the initially proposed 100 µg standard be reduced by half. But even that very strict standard represented a compromise between the demands posed by the goal of worker health and the economic and technological feasibility of modifying the production process. OSHA's model indicated that, at a 50 µg lead level, 29.3 percent of exposed workers would have blood lead levels above the 40 µg/100 g established as providing the necessary margin of safety (OSHA, 1978a, p. 52963). Despite its commitment to engineering controls, OSHA recognized that to achieve the mandated reduction in blood lead levels it would be necessary, for an interim period, to rely on protective equipment for workers and a
SCIENTISTS, ENGINEERS, AND THE BURDENS OF OCCUPATIONAL EXPOSURE: 73 THE CASE OF THE LEAD STANDARD original typesetting files. Page breaks are true to the original; line lengths, word breaks, heading styles, and other typesetting-specific formatting, however, cannot be About this PDF file: This new digital representation of the original work has been recomposed from XML files created from the original paper book, not from the retained, and some typographic errors may have been accidentally inserted. Please use the print version of this publication as the authoritative version for attribution. variety of administrative devices to limit exposure of workers to airborne lead. Massive investments over an extended period would be needed to achieve the necessary reduction in air lead levels. Extended periods would be required for redesign of the production process. The primary lead industry was given 10 years to achieve the engineering controls necessary to reach the mandated air lead levels, and the secondary lead smelter and lead battery industries were given five years (OSHA, 1978a, p. 53008). Even the implementation schedule for the medical removal protection was to reflect the limits imposed by the complex tasks involved in the modification of lead production (OSHA, 1978a, p. 52974). Rejecting the counsel of those who argued that the lead industry could not so radically transform itself, OSHA asserted that its commitment to the health of workers required it to act as an agent of technological change. Thus, in the primary lead smelting industry, OSHA believed that the health of workers ultimately would make it necessary to replace pyrotechnology by hydrotechnology (OSHA, 1978b, p. 54480), although there was only limited evidence to suggest the feasibility of such a transformation. From a societal perspective, the demands that were to be placed on the lead industry and ultimately on the consumers of its products could be defended on both moral and economic grounds. The toll that would be generated by a failure to impose stringent controls would create private burdens on those least able to bear themâworkers and their families. The most elemental principles of equity thus could be called on to redistribute those burdens by increasing the social costs of lead production. Furthermore, a failure to control the intoxication associated with exposure of workers to lead, and even the risks of such intoxication, would generate medical and social costs that would not be reflected in the costs of lead production. The OSHA standard thus could be justified as entailing the internalization of the negative externalities associated with work in the lead industry. From the point of view of the industry, however, and especially of those firms that might be forced to close because of inability to meet the costs associated with implementing the OSHA standard, the new regulations appeared not only unfair but also irrational. The inherent tension between the private sector and the public is thus acutely underscored. It is not surprising, therefore, that engineers speaking on behalf of the industry and particular firms would find the final OSHA lead standard unacceptable and infeasible. Nor is it surprising that the LIA sought to thwart the OSHA decision by appealing to the courts where it charged OSHA with failing to meet the administrative requirement that standards be based on a rational consideration of scientific evidence and the feasibility of implementation. When the District of Columbia Court of Appeals delivered its decision on
SCIENTISTS, ENGINEERS, AND THE BURDENS OF OCCUPATIONAL EXPOSURE: 74 THE CASE OF THE LEAD STANDARD original typesetting files. Page breaks are true to the original; line lengths, word breaks, heading styles, and other typesetting-specific formatting, however, cannot be About this PDF file: This new digital representation of the original work has been recomposed from XML files created from the original paper book, not from the retained, and some typographic errors may have been accidentally inserted. Please use the print version of this publication as the authoritative version for attribution. August 15, 1980, it upheld the OSHA lead standard with minor exceptions involving the adequacy of some of the feasibility studies upon which decisions were based for marginal elements of the industry. The court acknowledged the difficulty in reviewing standards that require the application of a ''substantial evidence test" to regulations that it viewed as essentially legislative. Agencies were compelled, the court held, to make "inferences from complex scientific and factual data," and ''such determinations necessarily involved highly speculative projections of technological development in areas wholly lacking in scientific and economic certainty" (United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO v. Marshall). Faced with such uncertainty, it was for OSHA and not the court to weigh the potential burdens associated with alternative policy options. Despite legal delays and variances granted in recent years for political and technological reasons there already is clear indication that the lead standard has begun to reduce the burden of lead in the bodies of workers. In a report prepared for the Office of Technology Assessment on the impact of the standard (Goble et al., 1983), four broad conclusions were reached: 1. Blood lead levels of workers have declined in primary and secondary smelters and in battery plants. Thus, the number of workers with blood lead levels over 40 µg/100 g had been reduced by about one-third. Blood levels over 80 µg/100 g, which had been found in earlier studies in 16 percent of workers in the secondary smelting industry, 6 percent of workers in battery plants, and 2 percent in primary smelters, were practically unobserved in workers in the post-standard period. Finally, dramatic changes in the proportion of workers found to have blood lead levels in the 60â80 µg/100 g range had also been observed. 2. Although air lead levels in plants had dropped, a 50 µg/m3 level had not been reached in either secondary or primary smelters or in battery plants. Indeed, in primary and secondary smelters compliance with the 200 µg level had not yet been achieved. 3. Interestingly, the reduced body burden of lead that had been found in workers was not solely a consequence of OSHA's efforts. Between 30 percent and 50 percent of the observed reduction in blood lead levels could be attributed to the impact of regulations adopted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). 4. The costs of medical removal protection, by forcing an internalization of the costs associated with elevated blood lead levels, had been a driving force for change, creating an economic incentive for the reduction in air lead levels. How far change will progress in the current political and economic climate is unknown. Efforts by industry representatives to force a reopening of the issue of the health effects of lead exposure have been resisted by the professional staff of OSHA, although it has come to believe that the feasibility of developing engineering controls to attain a 50 µg level is increasingly remote, especially given the financial structure of the lead industry.
