Subjects:

OSHA Issues New Rule About Asbestos

As of January 12, 2009, a new rule governing asbestos training and equipment for safety will take affect according to OSHA. This new rule comes in light of so many companies putting workers and the public in danger of asbestos exposure by not being properly trained for asbestos removal or not being given the proper safety equipment.

Why did OSHA have to add the rule and make it a standard condition? Here is the reason.

Erik Ho, a Texas businessman, was cited for multiple violations of the construction asbestos standard’s respirator and training provisions. Ho’s conduct was particularly flagrant. He hired eleven undocumented Mexican employees to remove asbestos from a vacant building without providing any of them with appropriate protective equipment, including respirators, and without training them on the hazards of asbestos. Ho persisted in exposing the unprotected, untrained employees to asbestos even after a city building inspector shut down the worksite, at which point Ho began operating secretly at night behind locked gates.

The citations charged Ho with separate violations for each of the eleven employees not provided a respirator. …Ho was also charged with separate violations for each of the eleven employees not trained… …A divided OSH Review Commission vacated all but one of the respirator and one of the training violations. According to the majority, the requirement to provide respirators and ensure their use involved the single act of providing respirators to the employees in the group performing the specified asbestos work. 17 O.S.H. Cas. (BNA) at 1372. Thus, the majority concluded, ‘the plain language of the standard addresses employees in the aggregate, not individually.’ The majority reached this conclusion despite acknowledging that various subparagraphs immediately following the cited provision required particularly employee-specific actions, such as fit-testing individual employees. The majority adopted an equally narrow interpretation of the [training] requirement.

Anyone that feels they may be affected by this new rule can contact OSHA for more information. The asbestos abatement must be done correctly to protect everyone.