mark cowan pat boggs

<p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">===</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/how-radical-republicans-and-the-trump-administration-are-killing-american-workers/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/how-radical-republicans-and-the-trump-administration-are-killing-american-workers/</a></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">dc report</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; font-size: small; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Reuters reporters Julia Harte and Peter Eisler have assembled a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-beryllium-rule/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">powerful investigative article</a> on how “the Trump administration’s plan to weaken the beryllium rule offers a case study in the renewed power businesses can wield in the regulatory process.”</b></font></p><div class="p1_38" style="font-size: small; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">OSHA’s standard to protect workers from the disabling and deadly effects of beryllium exposure was <a href="https://www.osha.gov/berylliumrule/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">issued</a> in the waning days of the Obama administration. Exposure to beryllium <b>dust causes chronic beryllium disease and lung cancer. </b>Symptoms include difficulty breathing/shortness of breath, weakness, fatigue, loss of appetite, weight loss, joint pain, cough and fever. Over time it may lead to disability and death.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>OSHA had been working on a new standard to update its seriously outdated beryllium standard for 20 years, and it was an agreement between the main beryllium producer Materion and the United Steelworkers that enabled OSHA to push the new standard over the line before Trump took office.</b> The labor-industry agreement reduced the Permissible Exposure Limit, added “ancillary provisions” requiring exposure monitoring, training, medical surveillance and other provisions, and covered general industry (e.g. manufacturing) worker. OSHA also added protections for construction and maritime workers who are mainly exposed during the process of abrasive blasting using ground coal slag to remove rust and paint from ships and other structures.</font></p><div class="p3_38" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; position: relative; line-height: 1.7; overflow: hidden; background: rgb(245, 245, 245); border: none !important;"><p style="margin: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Trump administration’s plan to weaken the beryllium rule offers a case study in the renewed power businesses can wield in the regulatory process.</font></p><div class="p4_38" style="font-style: italic; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /></blockquote><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Exposure to beryllium dust has devastating health effects on exposed workers like Wardell Davis who was an abrasive blaster with a Norfolk, Va., shipbuilding contractor:</font></p><div class="p5_38" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Then 24 years old, with no high school diploma, Davis had for years bounced between part-time jobs. The contractor, he says, promised better pay for the grueling labor of blasting the hulls of U.S. Navy ships with coarsely ground coal particles to remove rust and paint. He recalls the fog of dust created as workers fired the crushed coal – a residue from coal-fired power plants – against the ship bottoms from high-powered hoses, moving through the tented blasting area in respirators and protective suits.</font></p><div class="p6_38" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="teadsNative" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A year later, Davis found a better job with a plumbing and heating company. He became a father, but still found time to hit the YMCA most days for a swim, a lifelong passion. Then, in 2011, he began struggling to hold his breath under water; soon, he couldn’t hold it at all. He was dogged by a persistent cough, sweats and nausea.</font></p><div class="p7_38" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2014, doctors at Norfolk’s Sentara Hospital found a “black foreign material” in his lungs. Davis successfully filed a disability claim for “pneumoconiosis/silicosis and/or interstitial fibrotic disease caused by exposure to abrasive blasting dust.” Four years and three biopsies later, Davis survives on a single lung.</font></p><div class="p8_38" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Unable to work, he lives on disability payments, and has brought suit against abrasives manufacturers and safety equipment providers he alleges failed to protect him. They deny responsibility for his failing health.</b></font></p><div class="p9_38" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“If I ever would have thought that this would have happened to me, I would’ve never ever worked there,” he told Reuters, his words punctuated by coughs. “Ever.”</font></p><div class="p10_38" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Reuters article describes the fierce industry opposition to the part of the standard that covered construction and maritime industries, not because the regulated industries themselves had strong objections (they could use safer alternatives to coal slag), but because the sellers of coal slag feared devastating effects on their sales as shipyards and construction sites moved to safer alternatives for abrasive blasting.</font></p><div class="p11_38" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In June 2017, OSHA <a href="https://jordanbarab.com/confinedspace/2017/06/23/osha-rollback-beryllium-protections/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">issued a proposal</a> rolling back protections for construction and maritime workers. As I wrote then:</font></p><div class="p12_38" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Today’s <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/06/27/2017-12871/occupational-exposure-beryllium-and-beryllium-compounds-in-construction-and-shipyard-sectors" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">proposal</a> keeps the new PEL, but removes the “ancillary provisions” for construction and shipyard workers. The ancillary provisions would have required employers to provide exposure monitoring, regulated areas (and a “competent person” in construction), a written exposure control plan, personal protective equipment (PPE), and work clothing, hygiene areas and practices, housekeeping, medical surveillance, medical removal, and worker training for construction and shipyard workers exposed to beryllium from abrasive blasting using coal slag compounds that contain beryllium.</font></p><div class="p13_38" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; position: relative; line-height: 1.7; overflow: hidden; background: rgb(245, 245, 245); border: none !important;"><p style="margin: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Without the benefits of the air testing and health monitoring requirements, the exposure limits for beryllium – are meaningless.</b></font></p><div class="p14_38" style="font-style: italic; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /></blockquote><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the Reuters article explained, the new proposal ignored the benefits of the rule and significantly weakened protections:</font></p><div class="p15_38" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The protections would cost affected industries nearly $12 million a year, or about $1,000 per worker, according to the 2016 cost-benefit assessment. That analysis, a mandated component of the rule-making process, put the savings to society from averted deaths and illnesses at nearly $28 million, yielding a net economic benefit of about $16 million a year.</font></p><div class="p16_38" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Without the benefits of the air testing and health monitoring requirements, the exposure limits for beryllium “are meaningless,” said David Michaels, who headed OSHA for seven years under Obama.</font></p><div class="p17_38" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“If there’s no air testing or disease surveillance, there’s no way to know how much exposure workers are getting or who may be getting sick,” said Michaels, who now teaches at the George Washington University School of Public Health.</font></p><div class="p18_38" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The changes were unprecedented in OSHA’s almost 50-year history. According to Deborah Berkowitz, OSHA’s former chief of staff, now working for the National Employment Law Project, a nonprofit workers rights group, “Never in OSHA’s history has the agency decided to roll back worker protections for a carcinogen.”</font></p><div class="p19_38" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And as I explained in the article, OSHA’s “argument ran against decades of OSHA protocol, which held that if significant risk of exposure to a hazardous substance cannot be completely eliminated, “ancillary provisions” are necessary beyond existing protective equipment, said Jordan Barab, former deputy assistant secretary of OSHA under Obama.”</font></p><div class="p20_38" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.3em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Who Was Behind The Attack on Worker Protections?</font></h3><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All of the above is fact. But why did OSHA decide to upend these protections? And here we get to the ability of powerful business concerns to reduce badly needed worker protections.</font></p><div class="p21_38" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Leading the charge to weaken worker protections was Congressman Bradley Byrne (R-Ala.), chair of the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections until Democrats took over the House of Representatives this month. Byrne had met with two abrasive manufacturers Mobile Abrasives Inc and Harsco Minerals, who were members of an industry group, the Abrasive Blasting Manufacturers Alliance (ABMA). Byrne wrote to the White House Office of Management and Budget, asking them to weaken the worker protections.<b> Much of Byrne’s letter was taken word-for-word from comments submitted by the ABMA’s lobbying firm, Squire Patton Boggs.</b></font></p><div class="p22_38" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The plot thickens further:</font></p><div class="p23_38" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>A former Former Patton Boggs senior partner Mark Cowan, a lobbyist who served on Trump’s Labor Department transition team, also became involved.</b> On March 7, Cowan, who served as deputy head of OSHA under former President Ronald Reagan, attended a meeting at the Labor Department, where Squire Patton Boggs lobbyists asked agency lawyers about OSHA’s plans for the beryllium rule. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Cowan later wrote an essay arguing that, thanks to existing safety rules, the workers “were never threatened by beryllium exposure to begin with.”</span></font></p><div class="p24_38" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On May 15, Harsco employees and Cowan attended another meeting at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. Seventeen days later, OSHA announced a second delay in the rule’s implementation. And on June 27, OSHA announced its proposal to revoke the safety requirements entirely.</font></p><div class="p25_38" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Both Byrne and Robert Wittman (R-Va.), then-chairman of a House subcommittee overseeing Naval programs and infrastructure had received significant campaign contributions from the Shipbuilders Council of America and the Associated Builders & Contractors.</font></p><div class="p26_38" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The abrasive blasters and the other industry associations argue that existing protections are sufficient, and no abrasive blaster has ever been diagnosed with beryllium-related disease.</font></p><div class="p27_38" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>But not so fast, say Harte and Eisler. It turns out that:</b></font></p><div class="p28_38" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>No one is officially checking for such illnesses, say dozens of occupational health specialists and worker safety advocates interviewed by Reuters</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>....</b></font></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>