 In 1968, at the height of the war in Vietnam, 14,000 Americans were killed and 46,000 were wounded. That same year, another 14,000 Americans were killed. But those lives were lost right here in the United States, because those American men and women were killed at work on the job. Another 2.5 million American workers suffered disabling injuries. That's 54 times the number of people we had wounded in Vietnam that year. In an effort to stem this tide of injury, disease and death, Congress created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in 1970. In creating OSHA, Congress affirmed the right of every working man and woman to safe and healthful working conditions. They have not only the right to expect, it's the law that they should be able to go to their work in the morning, give the employer so many hours for so much money, and be able to go home to their family that night the same way they walked in the door that morning. As an employee, you have a responsibility to your employer to give him an honest day's work and to make money for that employer. That's what you're paid for. The same token that employer has a responsibility to you. Not only to give you a salary, but to ensure that you don't get killed on the job. It's his premises. It's his responsibility. Nobody else's. If I feel the job's unsafe, I won't do it. Would you sell me your legs for $10,000? You know, it comes down to that, which is more important. Money or your health? Health and safety hazards are found throughout American industry in virtually every occupation. One of every four American workers is exposed to known health hazards, and it's been estimated that one-third of all cancers are work-related. Dust, gases, and fumes found in the workplace cause skin and lung diseases, heart problems, nervous disorders, and can even cause workers to become sterile or to have children with birth defects. One out of six Americans is exposed to hazardous noise levels on the job, noise which can cause permanent hearing loss. I mean, you never realize what's happening to you. You can start loosing your hearing and never realize it. When you go home, I start, I know myself now, I turn my television set up louder than what I did when I was, wasn't even working in the middle when I was just going to college. I turned up a lot louder now than what I did then. When you come out of the mail, you go into work in there, and you get on the outside, you can't hear for two hours. You can lay down and hear them looms are running at home, you know, when you lay in our bicep, if everything gets quiet, you can actually hear the looms running and keep 10 miles away from it. Once OSHA has learned of a workplace health or safety problem, it often turns to NIOSH, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, to do the scientific research necessary to control the hazard. This research provides the groundwork for OSHA's standards, which are formal regulations that specify safe working procedures or limit the amounts of dangerous chemicals to which workers can be exposed. After NIOSH has completed its work, OSHA makes its proposed standard available to the public for comment and revision. Then one of the more dramatic parts of standard setting occurs. There is usually a public hearing. These public hearings provide an important opportunity for individuals concerned about the issue the standard deals with, affected industries, employers, label groups, public interest groups to come before the agency and offer their views. The record of that public hearing is an important part of the information that OSHA ultimately relies upon in deciding what is the appropriate standard to set dealing with that hazard in the industries in which it arises. After the public hearings, OSHA sets a final standard, which all affected employers must obey. OSHA has a staff of compliance officers in the field to inspect workplaces and make sure they meet the standard. Accompanied by representatives of both the employer and the workers, the inspector observes work practices and material handling, takes noise measurements, and may attach instruments to workers to measure their exposure to airborne substances. The inspector tries to get an accurate understanding of the workplace by talking with both the employer and individual workers. We do have the right to interview employees privately, and we do insist on that. We like to talk to the employees to get a good feeling of what the employee feels are the hazards there, what types of processes may be going on at a different time than we're there, whether the employee has any health problems. OSHA's work doesn't end with the completion of the inspection. The point is not simply to find hazards or to penalize employers who violate OSHA standards, but to work with employers and workers to correct dangerous conditions. That's exactly what happened at the Canton Textile Mill in Canton, Georgia. In the textile industry, the major health hazard is cotton dust. Cotton comes into the mill in big 500-pound bales. Now, unfortunately, this bale consists of not just the raw cotton, which has to be spun into yarn, but leaves and dirt that's accumulated in the harvesting process. And these leaves and dirt break into very fine dust in the process of opening the bales and the early operations of carting the fine fibers and spinning the yarn. As a result, there's a very fine dust emitted and that exists in the air in the Cotton Mill. It causes people to cough and it causes breathlessness. And eventually, after long exposure, it causes total disability due to what is popularly known as brown lung disease, technical name being bisonosis, the disease of the lungs which is crippling and ultimately can cause early death. The cotton had adopted a standard to protect workers from brown lung disease by limiting the amount of cotton dust in the air. But in 1973, some Canton workers felt their plant wasn't meeting the standard. The cotton dust was bad and you couldn't see when you opened the doors. It all falls down your face and you can't breathe in it. I go in there, when I come out, you can tell it, you can feel the tighten of your chest, you know, and it takes you a while to breathe, you know, get you breathing back normal. You worked in there a while to feel like you'd been eaten dirt or something. One of those workers complained to the local OSHA office and asked for an inspection of the mill. We were there as a result of a complaint about these conditions and found them to be true and cited them for these and gave them a period of time to abate. We felt like that they could come into it in a relatively short period of time by approving ventilation and we gave them six months to correct the first violation on cotton dust but they were unable to do that. Our first attempt at dust removal equipment was one where we spent about $200,000 and it didn't bring the dust level down. Since the company couldn't meet the OSHA standard in the time permitted, they asked for and OSHA granted a series of extensions. Each of our abatement period, as I remember them, was for a year's extension from the original. I think we were granted a one-year abatement to take corrective steps and we moved as rapid as we could. We were not able to meet conditions. We asked for another one and so forth. About this time, the workers union challenged these delays. The OSHA did approve an additional extension of one year for the company to meet the standard, making it the fall of 76. Before that fall of 76 came around, we were determined to see to it that no additional delays occurred. The disagreements between the company, the workers, OSHA, and the union were finally resolved when the company came forward with a new plan to meet OSHA's standard. This plan was different from the old in that they specified exactly what machinery they had intended to buy. They provided a guarantee by the machinery manufacturer that if this equipment were installed, the cotton dust standard would be met. The installation of the new equipment produced dramatic results. As a result of what we've done, it appears that we can conservatively say that we have improved our dust conditions by 10-fold or possibly 15-fold. This case is important in that it demonstrates what can be done when you have an active local union that is aware of its rights under the law and the coordination of the international union and the local union to assure that the workers get the rights vindicated. OSHA made all the difference in the world. If these companies didn't have someone to set standards, they have to go by. They would just do what they want to. That's the best thing that happened to the working people when OSHA came in, Bob. It cost Canton Mills almost a million dollars to reduce the levels of cotton dust and meet OSHA's regulation. But by doing so, the company has protected the health of its workers for many years to come. Very often in concentrating on the apparent cost of achieving the regulation, we lose sight of the cost of not regulating at all. In the case of cotton dust, for example, there are 40,000 documented cases of respiratory disease caused by exposure to cotton dust in the textile industry. That is a tremendous expense, not only to those workers and their families, but to society as a whole. Workers are being injured. Workers are being diseased. They're losing their livelihood, they're having to have medical exams, medical care, which is very expensive. These costs are being borne by the workers who are the victims of occupational injuries and diseases, and society in providing medical care and relief for these people who are impoverished as a result of their victimization. Certainly the Congress decided as a matter of national policy it's more appropriate to place the cost of protection on the employers who give rise to the exposure in the first place than to depend upon society to bear the cost of illness and injury. We have here at United Foundries made every effort to try to clean the foundry up. We got a great deal of money invested, but now that the investment's there, it really doesn't take that much to operate it. A lot of companies recognize that a safe and healthy working environment makes good business sense and make every effort to comply with OSHA regulations. In the foundry industry, workers face a number of health hazards, including airborne dust and dirt, which can cause severe breathing problems. In general, the foundry industry is an extremely dirty industry. We deal with sand and moisture, all the things that make dust and dirt, and of course the molten metal which makes heat. We used to farm on a four-hour floor, and now we have what we call econ machines. They're automatic to go on trades, the trades go around inside the machine, then they have an acid pollution that kills the smoke and also a bank house which collects the dust. Pollution also takes some of the dust into it, way down the dust compared to what we used to have. We used to have a real tick on the floor. Probably the foundry industry ran the greatest portion of 5,000 years without any basic changes. With the advent of OSHA, the majority of foundries were forced into a compliance situation as far as pollution control goes. We chose to make that change at the time that this compliance was required, and we are in compliance now. It keeps us legal, it makes us a better neighbor, and it certainly improves the environment in the plant. And in doing so, we have literally reduced our turnover, our labor turnover to zero. This has probably been the largest and then the best side effects of the money that we have spent, and our absenteeism is virtually nothing. And as such, we are not constantly retraining people and we don't have to carry much larger staff to substitute for the absenteeism. The Dana Corporation in Reading, Pennsylvania manufactures and assembles automobile and truck frame parts. Before the parts get to this welding operation, they are shaped by these stamping machines, machines that can easily crush a hand or cut off a finger. Such injuries are often blamed on the workers themselves for having their hands in the machine at the wrong time. But OSHA regulations have required the use of redesigned machinery that has virtually eliminated these kinds of injuries. Well, when I was a kid, I used to hear they used to call this the butcher shop. People used to lose fingers, hands, and there's quite a few people who walk through the shop down there that are missing fingers. Well, they just hit the button and the press come down and went up and the man on the other side of the press, he took the piece out, but you never know when it was going to repeat or the guy on the other side of the press, he may forget what the other guy is doing. He might hit the button and his hands are in the press. He had two buttons and the only way the press should get on, if every man working that person, he'd hand each button. To encourage the kind of solutions to problems we've seen at Dana and United Foundries, OSHA has established a consultation program that's provided free of charge. While the consultants are funded by OSHA, they work directly with the employer at his place of business, pointing out hazards present in the workplace and offering advice on correcting them. The consultants' files and report to the employer are kept confidential. This information is never disclosed to OSHA enforcement personnel unless the employer refuses to correct a serious hazard. I've used them many times for consulting purposes and it's a way of getting an answer. Why wait if you have a problem now, you want to get it solved now, you don't want to wait until somebody gets hurt or you get cited for it. We have worked with OSHA and made a real effort to draw on their knowledge and their background and their approach so that when we do something, we do it once. There's no sense of doing something and then finding out you're not in compliance because you intend to spend the money anyway. If in a nutshell, there's anything we're trying to do is to get you a basic understanding of occupational health, the terms, the jargon, so that you can know to ask good questions and to know when you're getting bad answers. OSHA also funds education and training programs for workers, like this class at the New York City Central Labor Council. Many people have described the Occupational Safety and Health Act as primarily a piece of worker rights legislation. There is the right to file a complaint about safety and health hazards in the workplace and to remain anonymous to minimize the possibility of reprisals or discriminatory activity as a result of exercising that right. There are specific protections against discriminatory action being taken against employees for exercising their rights under the Act. There is the right to accompany OSHA inspectors on the walk-around of a plant. We believe that there are also rights of the employee to know what the hazards are in the workplace and the effects of those hazards. When you think of an example of something that's breathed and causes a cancer or a serious illness somewhere else in the body, what? Carbon tetrachloride, chlorinated solvents like trichlorethylene, perchlorethylene, carbon tet... Most of the health standards which OSHA has issued since 1971 have dealt with substances which pose a cancer risk to workers. Particularly since World War II, there's been thousands and thousands of chemicals put on the marketplace, most of which have not been tested as to their hazardous nature. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health puts out a registry of such chemicals and have listed over 20,000 as being toxic. Keep on was very thick in here. You couldn't see, let's see, it was more like a fog. Keep on was all over the working area, all over the break area. I was asked to assist in the investigation of the keep-on incident in Hopewell, Virginia. It was just virtually impossible for anybody to walk in the plant and go straight through and come back out without getting keep-on all over. As part of the investigation, I interviewed those employees who were affected. I don't know medications to try to help the tremor, the tremor of my voice and the tremor of my hands and limbs and things like this, but this is the only thing they can treat is symptomatic treatment. I came to realize how important our work was, the industrial hygienist work was, by looking at the employees, realizing that when we're talking about illnesses and hazardous substances, we're really talking about real people. All that, I'm sterile. I have an increased chance of cancer and I've had some damage to my liver, my eyes and some brain damage. I would wash those clothes, his keep-on clothing and then right after that I would put a load of my little girls clothes in and my clothes. Well, it was still in the washing machine and the water wasn't dissolving it and as a result we both would break out into a rash. I had an occasion to meet their wives and children and all the time knowing that they had been exposed to the hazards, that they were suffering from the diseases and no one knew what the problems were, no one knew if they'd get better, no one knew if it would cause cancer. As it later developed, it was identified as a carcinogen. Benzine is another one of those industrial chemicals that has come into widespread use since World War II. Welders and workers in the petrochemical, rubber and pharmaceutical industries are regularly exposed to it. It's a highly flammable liquid and for years the danger of benzine explosions has been known but only recently has it been disclosed that benzine causes cancer. Recently there's been a lot of information coming out through OSHA and a lot of information in the chemical magazines about benzine and its possible cause of leukemia. OSHA has put up an emergency standard on benzine and specifically connected benzine and leukemia. That emergency standard didn't exist in 1965 when George was working in an industrial laboratory in Iowa City where his job required him to use benzine to analyze soil samples. It was about that time that he met his wife, Mary. We met when we were both in high school. I was a junior and he was a senior in high school. Then while we were going together he was working in the lab. I remember him doing these tests and saw us familiar with the kinds of work that he did. You could smell the benzine all through the lab. It was even to the point where it could be smelled in the offices, in our offices on the next floor, above. It was impossible for anyone to use that piece of equipment with benzine and not be exposed. It was just so designed that there was going to be exposure. It also, I think, was intrinsically unsafe in terms of the open element at the bottom which allowed benzine vapors to come around underneath it and ignite. I ended up being engulfed in a pillar of benzine flame from the floor to the ceiling. At that point I ran and grabbed a throw rug which was on the floor of the lab and wrapped myself up in the rug and was able to put out the flame. I thought I was lucky because I got out of the accident with just singed hairs on my arms and singed eyebrows. I feel now that at the moment I felt lucky, but I now feel there's longer term effects that I wasn't aware of that has caused my current situation having leukemia. It has been known, it's been reported in the literature before that time, all the way back to 1928, that benzine was associated with leukemia and that I think the manufacturers of benzine knew it at the time but was not generally known by the public or people such as George and myself. I feel strongly, I don't want what's happened to me to happen to someone else. I think being aware of the hazards and being protected from them as best possible is something that should be taken care of so that you don't cut off a man's life at 33. What is the value? What is the price of a man's life? How much is a finger worth? How much is an eye worth? How much is not being able to hear someone call your name or listen to music? How much is that worth? I think we owe it to the next generation to make it better for them than what we have to go through. It's not 100% now, but work has been done and I think if we keep this attitude and fight and make it better for the other generation, they're going to appreciate it.