OSHA is moving on ergonomics rule

Nation's Business, August, 1997 by David Warner

Business says the agency's evidence is insufficient to justify new health-related requirements for firms.

For eight hours a day, a worker places part A on part B at the local widget factory. After work, he goes bowling, plays softball, or just sits on his couch and watches television. One day, he develops pain in his shoulder. Is the pain a work-related, repetitive-motion injury? Or is it the result of too much bowling, too many long throws from third to first base, or, perhaps, too little exercise?

The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration says that work activities are causing musculoskeletal disorders, such as carpal tunnel syndrome, tendinitis, and other severe muscle pains.

Gregory Watchman, acting director of OSHA, maintains that the evidence that certain job tasks cause "repetitive-stress injuries" is sufficient to require a regulation. "Repetitive-stress injuries are the biggest workplace health problem in the country today," he says.

OSHA is working on a standard on ergonomics--the relationship between workers and the work environment--that could be ready for public comment later this year or early next year, according to Watchman.

If that standard resembles a 1995 draft proposal, as indications suggest, business will be facing new mandates to design workplaces that are ergonomically correct--that is, workplaces that are comfortable for workers.

"This [standard] could cause a lot of companies to shift resources to address ergonomics," says Laurie Baulig, co-chair of the National Council on Ergonomics, a coalition of businesses and organizations including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, that oppose a federal ergonomics standard.

The degree to which firms might have to use resources to comply with an ergonomics rule is not known. OSHA estimated that its 1995 draft proposal would have cost businesses $4.5 billion annually

However, a study conducted by National Economic Research Associates in San Francisco for the American Trucking Associations found that the regulation would have cost the trucking industry alone $6.5 billion a year.

Risks And Limits

OSHA's draft standard, stymied by congressional opponents in 1995 and 1996 when lawmakers denied the agency funds to implement the proposed ergonomics rule, included as its cornerstone a set of risk factors with corresponding limits that employers would have been required to identify in their workplaces. The risk factors and limits included:

* Performing the same motion or pattern of motions for more than two hours at a time.

* Using for more than two hours a day tools or machines that cause vibrations.

* Handling manually more than once in a work shift an object that weighs more than 25 pounds.

* Working in fixed or awkward postures for more than two hours a day.

* Performing for more than four hours at a time work that is mechanically or electronically paced.

Under the 1995 draft proposal, if certain factors were present in the workplace, employers would have been required to redesign-jobs that had those identified risks to fall within limits that OSHA deemed acceptable. Ergonomic education and training for employees also would have been required.

OSHA's Watchman says the agency has scrapped the 1995 draft proposal, but he acknowledges that any standard likely will include the risk factors.

Some critics of OSHA's draft rule expect the agency either to act in a very proscriptive manner--setting maximums on repetitive motions, for example--or to take a programmatic approach, simply requiring employers to minimize or eliminate what OSHA calls "recognized" ergonomic hazards, such as repetitive motions, awkward postures, and heavy lifting.

The problem with a proscriptive rule, says Robb Mackie, vice president of government relations for the American Bakers Association, is that OSHA cannot answer the questions of how many repetitions are too many or how much vibration will cause musculoskeletal pain. Until the agency has those answers, he says, "it will be very difficult for OSHA to come up with a standard."

The bakers' association, which includes 350 companies with more than 500,000 workers, is part of the National Council on Ergonomics.

A programmatic approach probably would be unconstitutionally vague, says the ergonomics council's Baulig. "You would leave tremendous discretion in the hands of an OSHA inspector to determine whether or not an employer has fixed a problem."

Questions Of Evidence

Regardless of the approach OSHA takes in writing a standard, business argues that there is no evidence that work-related activities cause major musculoskeletal disorders, if any Says Baulig: "There are a lot of things we don't yet understand about repetitive-stress injuries. All we are saying is let's understand the science before we jump into a regulation."

Much of the medical community agrees. Dr. Dean S. Louis, chief of orthopedic hand surgery at the University of Michigan Hospitals in Ann Arbor, says there is little or no scientific evidence that work-related activities cause musculoskeletal disorders.