Environmental

Crystalline Silica

OCMA and its members are national leaders in effort to educate policymakers about the ramifications of more restrictive crystalline silica exposure standards. OCMA led the battle against OSHA efforts to promulgate a more restrictive crystalline silica standard during the Clinton Administration. OCMA attended the stakeholder meetings, spearheaded a fly-in to OSHA headquarters for the stakeholder meeting at DOL, and recruited leaders from Congress to warn OSHA about the potential devastating impact the proposed regulation would have on small, medium and large foundries and their suppliers. OSHA was considering lowering the Personal Exposure Limit (PEL) to one-half of its present level. A standard this low would have imposed monumental compliance costs on all foundries. The White House & OSHA decided to forego this punitive standard and foundries in Ohio at that time and foundries throughout the industry benefited from OCMA's leadership.
However, the Obama-led OSHA is intent upon revisiting the crystalline silica issue again. With unemployment at more than 9% one would think this would be the last item on the "jobs creation agenda", however, the labor-backed Obama Administration has put the industry on notice that a more restrictive standard is forthcoming. According to the agency's semi-annual regulatory agenda, OSHA intends to publish a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for silica in July 2012.
OCMA intends to join with the American Foundry Society (AFS) to again educate the OSHA staff about the drastic ramifications of a significant reduction in the Personal Exposure Limit (PEL). There was not scientific support for reducing this standard more than ten years ago and there is even less reason to reduce it today. The number of modern day workers contracting silicosis from working in a foundry has declined to modest levels and the cost of eradicating all possible threats of silicosis in the foundry environment would put both large and small foundries in America out of business resulting in huge economic “tsunamis” throughout our country.

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