GOVERNMENT
House Passes Worker Notification Bill in Face of Strong Opposition Proponents believe measure will help those at risk from occupational diseases, but opponents fear raft of lawsuits from alarmed employees To its supporters it closes a wide gap in occupational health laws and in the long run will save the coun try millions of dollars. To its oppo nents it's an open invitation to an avalanche of unjustified lawsuits. It is the High Risk Disease Notifica tion & Prevention Act of 1987, which the House passed last month by a slim 39-vote margin. According to Rep. Joseph M. Gaydos (D.-Pa.), the bill's original sponsor, H.R. 162 is designed to ad dress a p r o b l e m that Congress thought it had solved when it cre ated the Occupational Safety & Health Administration some 17 | | δ °
Gaydos: gian t step
years ago. "We believed," he ex plains, "that we would substantial ly reduce the number of deaths and injuries arising from occupational accidents and diseases. Unfortunate ly, it hasn't worked out that way. Each year, 100,000 American work ers die from occupationally related diseases. Another 400,000 become disabled." In its report on the bill, the House Committee on Education & Labor noted that occupational diseases cost the U.S. at least $7.1 billion to $9.7 billion in 1985. The cost to private business ranges from $1.7 billion to $4.3 billion a year for medical care, insurance, and training new work ers. An additional $5.4 billion in costs is incurred by the federal gov ernment for such things as disabili ty income, medicare, and medicaid payments. Gaydos contends that H.R. 162 "will take a giant step toward solv ing this serious national occupation al health problem" by addressing it in three distinct ways. First, it identifies populations of workers who are at high risk of contracting an occupational disease. Second, it personally notifies those workers that they are at an increased risk of developing a work-related disease. Third, it establishes a system of med ical monitoring, counseling, and sur veillance for workers who have been notified that they have been exposed to excess levels of hazardous sub stances. Specifically, the bill would estab lish a nine-member Risk Assessment Board at the National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health. It would be charged with determin ing which jobs or occupations ex pose, or have exposed, workers to substances, agents, or processes that place them at particular risk of a specified disease. Those determina
tions are to be based on current epidemiological and clinical stud ies that meet accepted and recog nized scientific standards. Members of the Risk Assessment Board are to include two occupa tional physicians, two epidemiolo gists, an occupational health nurse, a biostatistician, a toxicologist, an industrial hygienist, and the NIOSH director. All except the last would be selected from a list of nominees submitted by the National Acade my of Sciences. Once a target population is iden tified, it would be up to NIOSH to notify past and present workers of their exposure, the disease associ ated with it, the most appropriate medical monitoring, and the name and address of the nearest health center able to do the monitoring. Initially 10 such centers would be set up under the bill with the ex pectation that within five years each state would have at least one center. The costs of the monitoring pro gram would be borne by a notified worker's current employer if any part of the exposure resulting in the notification occurred while the employee was working for the com pany. If the exposure occurred pre viously, the current employer must still provide for medical monitoring but may pass the costs on to the employee. The government's part of the program would be funded at a level of $25 million per year for five years. Floor amendments to the bill pro vide an exemption from notifica tion requirements for companies that show that they have operated exceptionally effective health and safety programs; require the board to designate, as a population at risk, health and emergency care workers who may be exposed to the virus associated with acquired immune November 2, 1987 C&EN
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Federal Alert— new legislation This C&EN listing highlights legis lation introduced between Sept. 9 and Oct. 23. House and Senate bills are listed under subject area by bill num ber, primary sponsor, and commit tee^) to which they were referred. HOUSE Drugs. H.R. 3349—-Waxman (D.-Calif.). Pro hibits FDA, once it has approved manufac ture of orphan drug, from approving appli cation of another manufacturer for same drug to treat same disease for seven years; Energy & Commerce. Nuclear. H.R. 3285—Udall (D.-Ariz.). Re places Nuclear Regulatory Commission with Nuclear Energy Regulatory Agency headed by single administrator; Interior & Insular Affairs. H.R. 3499—Jones (D.-N.C). Encourages research on subseabed disposal of nuclear waste; Interior & Insular Affairs, Energy & Commerce, Science, Space & Technology. Pesticides. H.R. 3504—Dingell (D.-Mich.). Requires FDA to establish computerized data management systems to track and evaluate pesticide residue monitoring of domestic and imported food, issue guide lines for laboratory analyses of residues; Energy & Commerce. Waste. H.R. 3300—Boxer (D.-Calif.). Di rects Office of Technology Assessment to prepare report on hazardous waste reduc tion and management, EPA to prepare plan for reducing and managing such waste; Energy & Commerce, Merchant Marine & Fisheries, Public Works & Transportation. H.R. 3467—Rinaldo (R.-N.J.). Directs EPA to conduct study on management of infec tious and pathological wastes; Energy & Commerce. H.R. 3515, 3516—Luken (D.-Ohio). Re quire EPA to regulate disposal of infec tious waste, interstate shipments of solid waste; Energy & Commerce. SENATE Environment. S. 1767—Burdick (D.-N.D.). Establishes task force charged with reduc ing levels of agricultural nitrogen in sur face and groundwater; Agriculture, Nutri tion & Forestry. Health. S. 1692—Murkowski (R.-Alaska). Provides disability compensation for veter ans who were exposed to herbicides in Vietnam and subsequently developed nonHodgkins lymphoma; Veterans' Affairs. S. 1787—Daschle (D.-S.D.). Compensates Vietnam veterans suffering from diseases resulting from exposure to agent orange, other toxic herbicides; Veterans' Affairs. Nuclear. S. 1770—Simpson (R.-Wyo.). Companion bill to H.R. 3285; Environment & Public Works.
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deficiency syndrome (AIDS); and di rect the board to give priority con sideration, in designating groups for notification, to individuals who have been exposed to "dioxin" (2,3,7,8tetrachlorodibenzo-/?-dioxin). The Chemical Manufacturers As sociation and a number of chemical companies including Ciba-Geigy, Eastman Kodak, Rohm & Haas, and Union Carbide, are among the bill's supporters, perhaps because a num ber of major chemical companies already have worker notification and medical monitoring programs in place. The bill is also the top legis lative priority of organized labor. Among those who don't think the bill is a good idea is Rep. James M. Jeffords (R.-Vt.), the ranking minor ity member on the Education & La bor Committee, who led House op position to H.R. 162. He says that "contrary to the claims of its spon sors, this legislation will not do much to prevent disease. That's the problem with after-the-fact risk no tification. The mechanism set up un der the bill would issue a notifica tion after an exposure has occurred, not before. . . . In my opinion, we should focus our resources on pre vention rather than risk notifica tion." And Jeffords sees another prob lem with the bill. He points out that "to be effective, to get you to see a doctor, that notice has to scare you. And if it scares you enough to see a doctor, it may very well scare you enough to see a lawyer." He notes that NIOSH's only previous notification effort, involving 850 workers in Atlanta, Ga., who were at risk of bladder cancer because of exposure to β-naphthylamine, led to one out of every five of the notified workers suing their employ er for a combined $335 million in damages. The National Association of Man ufacturers agrees with Jeffords and says it intends to wage an all-out fight to defeat the bill in the Sen ate. Even if the Senate does pass it, the bill's future is quite dim. At least four Cabinet members have said they will urge President Reagan to veto the bill, and there aren't enough votes for it in the House to override a veto. Janice Long, Washington
Group decries dearth of pesticide toxicity data Consumers Union has joined the battle over Congress' current efforts to rewrite the basic law—the Fed eral Insecticide, Fungicide & Rodenticide Act—that controls pesticide use in the U.S. It recently issued a study that charges the federal gov ernment with failing to protect the health of millions of consumers who use home pesticide products. Con sumers Union is a nonprofit mem bership organization and publisher of Consumer Reports. Consumers Union's study of the data used to support the registra tion of 50 active ingredients used in consumer pesticide products finds that 66% of home pesticide ingredi ents have been inadequately tested for carcinogenicity, 72% for muta genicity, 62% for teratogenicity, 64% for adverse reproductive effects, and 98% for neurobehavioral toxicity. It also finds that the Environmen tal Protection Agency does not have even minimal test data on chronic effects of more than half of the 50 ingredients and lacks vital informa tion about exposure to pesticides, especially resulting from home use. That exposure—from products such as bug bombs, roach sprays, weed killers, insecticides, and flea and tick collars—can be substantial, accord ing to Consumers Union. Consumers Union contends that the law is fundamentally flawed and recommends that Congress: • Give clear direction to EPA's efforts to reregister older pesticides by imposing mandatory deadlines for completing the job. • Require automatic cancellation of those pesticides that have not been reregistered when the dead lines have been reached. • Require EPA to collect neces sary information on each ingredi ent's neurobehavioral effects and levels of consumer exposure. • Repeal the current requirement that EPA pay manufacturers for un used stocks of canceled pesticides so that the agency can remove haz ardous products from retail shelves without depleting its scarce bud getary resources. Janice Long, Washington
