Public Policy
Cancer and chemicals—continued In the Jan. 16 issue, C&EN presented two views of the issue of chemicals and cancer—one from government, one from industry. Here we are continuing the debate with part of a statement released earlier this month by the American Industrial Health Council—an industry group formed late last year with the specific purpose of responding to standards for protecting workers from carcinogens proposed on Oct. 4,1977, by the Occupational Safety & Health Administration. Under these proposed standards OSHA would abandon its old substance-by-substance approach to regulating workplace carcinogens. Instead, substances would be placed into one of four categories depending on their known or suspected carcinogenic potential. This classification would trigger a specific course of action, including fill-in-the-blank standards to limit worker exposure. Hearings on the proposal are planned for April. But industry—working through AIHC—apparently wants to get a thorough discussion of the issues started early. The full AIHC
statement includes some alternatives to the OSHA proposals—alternatives that apparently represent a consensus of the majority of the 70 companies and trade associations participating in the council (C&EN, Jan. 23, page 6). The key suggestion is the establishment of a nine-membered ((substance categorization' board, to be selected by the National Academy of Sciences. AIHC is saying that identification and regulation of carcinogens are too important and too complicated to be left to government regulators alone. Industry's concern is heightened because other federal agencies are considering patterning their regulation of carcinogens on the standards OSHA finally adopts. OSHA, in effect, is developing national standards. Presented here, essentially verbation, is the first third of the AIHC statement. It gives much of the philosophy behind the AIHC suggestions and puts the issue of industrial chemicals and cancer into what industry views as (
