OSHA is going to try again. Four years after a federal appeals court ruled that regulators used a "flawed process" to develop new workplace permissible exposure limits (PELs) for 376 air contaminants (and reaffirm limits for another 52), OSHA has begun work to update the PELs once more. The agency is starting over in a small way: targeting 20 substances for an end-of-summer rulemaking proposal (see table on next page). And this time industry and labor -the same camps whose lawsuits killed the PELs in '92- want to chip in. In fact, the Chemical Manufacturers Association says OSHA could avoid getting bashed again by letting interested parties help set the limits. The trade group, with Organization Resources Counselors (ORC), American Petroleum Institute, and Synthetic Organic Chemical Manufacturers Association backing, is advocating a new PEL standard-setting process that would revolve around industry, labor and government cooperation.
The plan, presented to OSHA last November, would establish a tripartite panel of occupational health and safety advisors who would collect and analyze scientific and economic data on substances selected by an OSHA "priority planning process." Two subcommittees would make recommendations to a PEL Advisory Committee which would then propose consensus-based exposure limits to the agency:
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