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“REQUIRING OSHA TO RECOGNIZE THAT ELECTRONIC FORMS AND PAPER COPIES PROVIDE THE SAME LEVEL OF ACCESS TO INFORMATION” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Labor was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H7008-H7011 on Aug. 4, 1998.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
REQUIRING OSHA TO RECOGNIZE THAT ELECTRONIC FORMS AND PAPER COPIES
PROVIDE THE SAME LEVEL OF ACCESS TO INFORMATION
Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 4037) to require the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to recognize that electronic forms of providing Material Safety Data Sheets provide the same level of access to information as paper copies and to improve the presentation of safety and emergency information on such Data Sheets, as amended.
The Clerk read as follows:
H.R. 4037
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. ELECTRONIC ACCESS.
In the administration and enforcement of the regulation on Hazard Communication, published at 29 C.F.R. Sec. 1910.1200, the Secretary shall provide that an employer complies with the requirement of maintaining and making readily accessible to employees material safety data sheets (MSDS) for each hazardous chemical if such employer makes the MSDS available through electronic access, so long as--
(1) the electronic system for retrieving MSDS's is reasonably and readily available to employees in their work areas throughout their work shifts and to representatives of the employees upon reasonable request;
(2) the electronic system is capable of providing a paper copy of a retrieved MSDS without unreasonable delay;
(3) employees are adequately trained in the use of the electronic system for retrieving MSDS's; and
(4) the electronic system provides a means of retrieving information contained in MSDS's in case of a temporary power or equipment failure or other emergency.
SEC. 2. DISPLAY OF SAFETY INFORMATION.
(a) General Rule.--Under the regulation on Hazard Communication, published at 29 C.F.R. Sec. 1910.1200, each chemical manufacturer, importer, or distributor shall prominently display worker safety information described in subsection (b) by either--
(1) attaching to the first page of each material safety data sheet a container label (or facsimile thereof) which includes, at a minimum, the information described in subsection (b); or
(2) attaching to the first page of each material safety data sheet the information described in subsection (b).
(b) Information.--The information required by subsection
(a) shall include--
(1) the manufacturer's, importer's, or distributor's name, address, and emergency telephone number (including the hours of operation);
(2) the identity of the chemical, using the trade name or chemical name and potentially hazardous ingredients of the chemical;
(3) appropriate hazard warnings, with immediate hazards listed first;
(4) instructions for safe handling and precautionary measures to avoid injury from hazards; and
(5) first aid instructions in case of contact or exposure which require immediate treatment before medical treatment is available.Information required under paragraph (5) should be targeted to the technical level of the audience and information required by this subsection shall be presented with the least technical language appropriate.
(c) Effective Date.--The requirements of subsection (a) shall apply to material safety data sheets for new or reformulated chemicals beginning 18 months after the date of the enactment of this Act and shall apply to all other material safety data sheets beginning 36 months after such date.
SEC. 3. STUDY.
Not later that 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Labor shall initiate a study that assesses and measures the comprehensibility of hazard warnings to industrial workers. Upon completion of the study, the Secretary shall prepare a report and make it available to chemical manufacturers and importers which prepare material safety data sheets.
SEC. 4. REPORT ON AGREEMENT.
The Secretary of Labor shall report to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and the Senate Labor Committee upon United States entry into any international agreement regarding the format or contents of material safety data sheets or labeling of hazardous chemicals with recommendations for changes to the requirements of this Act.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Ballenger) and the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer) each will control 20 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Ballenger).
Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
First let me acknowledge and commend the two sponsors of H.R. 4037, the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Granger) and the gentleman from Indiana
(Mr. Roemer). I appreciate the work that both of them and their staffs have done in making this a bipartisan bill and in working with everyone involved so that we can bring this bill to the House floor today.
OSHA's Hazard Communication Standard is one of OSHA's most important but also most troublesome regulations. A lot of complaints that we hear about, about the paperwork burden and the nit-picky paperwork violations from OSHA are because of the Hazard Communication Standard. The idea of the standard is a good one, to make sure that employers and employees know what chemicals they are working with and how to safely handle them. But the implementation of this standard has long been a source of complaint, and OSHA has not been exactly quick to fix the problems.
H.R. 4037 addresses two of the problems that have been the source of these complaints for years. Under the Hazard Communication Standard, each chemical product must have a Material Safety Data Sheet, or better known as an MSDS that is written by the producer or importer of the chemical, and which must contain a variety of information about the chemical involved and the potential hazards it may present. Those Material Safety Data Sheets, or MSDS, are then forwarded down through the chain of commerce all the way to the retailer or user of the product. Each employer who uses or sells any products containing chemicals for which there have been any studies showing potential health or safety hazards must maintain these Material Safety Data Sheets in his or her workplace. OSHA estimates that there are over 650,000 chemical products covered by the Hazard Communication Standard. Others have estimated that there are Material Safety Data Sheets in circulation for over a million different products. Your typical small business can easily have a couple of thousand of these MSDS Data Sheets on hand. And an MSDS Data Sheet can easily be 10 or more pages long. It is little wonder that failure to have all of the required MSDS Data Sheets on hand has been one of the most frequently cited of all OSHA's regulations.
The first part of H.R. 4037 makes clear that an employer's obligation to have these Safety Data Sheets readily accessible may be met by electronic access to the MSDS Data Sheets.
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The advantage of using the electronic system to access these sheets are overwhelming, particularly for small employers. For a couple of hundred dollars a year, a small businessman can subscribe to an electronic service that maintains all of the MSDS sheets through which he can instantly call up the desired information. Instead of going through piles of paper and filing cabinets and looseleaf folders, the employee can simply type in the name of the product and access the information.
OSHA does not prohibit electronic systems from accessing material, the safety data sheets, but the regulation and OSHA's enforcement policy suggests that employers should maintain copies of MSDS sheets, whether or not they are also in the electronic system. As a result, many employers simply maintain paper copies, despite the fact that the electronic system would be more useful and effective.
H.R. 4037 makes it clear that electronic access systems, whether maintained in-house or by third parties, are permitted, so long as four conditions are met: First, the electronic system is reasonably and readily available to employees and upon request to union representatives of the employees; second, the electronic system can produce paper copies of the MSDS, if requested, without unreasonable delay; third, employees are adequately trained in the use of the electronic system; and, fourth, the electronic system provides a means of retrieving information contained in the MSDS in case of temporary power or equipment failure. Thus, for example, an employer whose electronic system used as an Internet connection could receive information contained in the MSDS via telephone in the event of computer or power failure until the Internet connection is restored.
A second complaint about the hazard communications standard has been the fact that the MSDS sheets are not easily used by most employees or employers, both because of the amount of information they include and because they are often written in technical language. Suppliers of these MSDS point out that the sheets are used for a variety of purposes, including emergency response personnel and health care providers, so more detailed and technical information in the Material Safety Data Sheet is important.
H.R. 4037 attempts to strike a balance between these two concerns. It does not require change in either the format of the MSDS or in the type of information provided by this MSDS. Instead, it requires that summary emergency information with the information most useful to the employee be attached to the front of the MSDS. That information is the same as is often provided in the product label.
So the bill provides that either the label or the text of the label should be attached to the front of the Material Safety Data Sheet. But the label or the text of the label must include certain basic information about chemicals, including emergency contacts.
Finally, concerns were raised about the effect of H.R. 4037 on efforts under way to reach an international agreement on a standardized form for presenting information on chemicals. Now, I appreciate that concern, and as we continue the move into the global marketplace, it makes sense to standardize as much as possible the presentation of hazard information.
On the other hand, we do not know at this point when the international effort will conclude or what it might provide. So H.R. 4037 requires that the Secretary of Labor, if an international agreement is reached, recommend to this committee and to the Senate Labor Committee any changes in the law necessary to make it consistent with international agreement.
Mr. Speaker, H.R. 4037 is a simple but important step towards improving this OSHA regulation.
Again I want to thank the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer) and the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Granger) for their efforts to move this bill, and I urge my colleagues to support this bill.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. ROEMER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
(Mr. ROEMER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. ROEMER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of this common sense legislation. First of all, I, too, want to applaud the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Ballenger) and the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Granger) for their work and their cooperation and their bipartisanship on this very common sense bill.
The bottom line, Mr. Speaker, for me is we need to work in a bipartisan, common sense way to prevent the 6,000 people that are killed in the workplace every year and the 70,000 workers that are hurt in the workplace every year. There are things we can do, working across the aisle, Democrats and Republicans, to use common sense, and in this case technology, to prevent those deaths and those injuries.
This bill, I think, goes a long way toward providing that common sense and that usage of technology by updating these MSDSs. We now can encourage our small businesses and big businesses to use the CD-ROMs. Instead of merely using what they have used over the decades and through years and years of paperwork, the Material Safety Data Sheets, that have all kinds of complexities and paperwork and sheets of data that are faxed from one employer to another and back and forth, and you cannot even read them once they are faxed back and forth, we want to bring OSHA into the new century and the next century and use the kind of technology, Internet services, fax-on-demand, electronic services, and, yes, CD-ROMs, to make sure we try to use technology to prevent the 6,000 people that are killed every year and the 70,000 people that are injured in the workplace. So this uses technology, and it uses it in a very, very fair, common sense and efficient manner.
Secondly, we want to use the common sense with that technology to prevent these injuries and deaths. Too often in these sheets of paper we do not use common sense and things read ``avoid ocular contact.'' Avoid ocular contact? Why can we not just say ``keep out of the eyes.'' That is the kind of common sense language that I think we all need to use, whether we are speaking on the House floor or whether we are trying to prevent injury and death in the workplace.
So this bill goes a long way towards using that common sense, toward permitting the use of technology and the Internet and CD-ROMs, and toward working with a diverse group of people and interest groups in this town and throughout the country.
We have worked with the AFL-CIO, we have worked with the Department of Labor, we have worked with the Chemical Manufacturers Association and the Small Business Coalition for MSDS reform led by the NFIB. All of these groups have worked with the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Granger) and the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Ballenger) to put together this bipartisan legislation and try to move this country forward toward protecting our workers with technology and common sense.
So I strongly applaud this bipartisan work, this good work product, this use of technology, this use of better English language to help our workers understand the dangers of the workplace.
Finally, I want to conclude by saying, Mr. Speaker, that this is the third bill this year where we have passed incremental changes to OSHA that try to do things to ensure better morale, better productivity and a safer workplace.
We passed H.R. 2877, which prohibited OSHA from setting quotas for citations and fines. We should not have quotas for citations and fines. This committee worked together to prohibit that practice.
We passed 2864, which allows state OSHA agencies to consult with businesses to improve their safety programs. This kind of consultation and proactive way, rather than just doing penalties, will also improve the way OSHA tries to protect the workers with common sense and technology and proactive ways of working with our businesses, rather than just simply going in and fining them.
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I want to say I am very proud to have worked with the Republicans and Democrats to get this legislation up before the body today. I am very proud to have worked in a bipartisan way to pass two previous pieces of legislation that reflect the same kind of things in this bill, the common sense and the use of technology, and also very proud to do some things in this body that reach out to States like Indiana and North Carolina, that reach out to States like Texas and California and New York, to do what we all want to do, increase productivity, keep this economy rolling along, and, yes, protect the worker in the workplace. That is what this common sense legislation will achieve.
I thank again the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Granger) and the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Ballenger), to the staff on my side of the Committee on Education and the Workplace, and to my staff member Ryan Dvorak for his hard work.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, I yield three minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Granger).
(Ms. GRANGER asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)
Ms. GRANGER. Mr. Speaker, many times on many occasions we come to this floor in the hope of solving a crisis. Today we come in the hope of preventing one. H.R. 4037 is a simple bill with a simple premise, to protect the safety and security of America's workers.
Let me give you an example of how this bill will make a difference in the lives of working people everywhere. Under current law, when a chemical is spilled in the workplace, the workers have to plow through a Material Safety Data Sheet to find instructions on how to clean up the spill and minimize danger. Unfortunately, these forms are, as the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer) said, generally written in legal terms, not common sense terms, that can straightforwardly protect the safety of our workers.
Our bill ensures that at the beginning of each MSDS form there will be an emergency overview that lays out in layman's terms what needs to be done in the case of a chemical spill in the workplace.
Moreover, our bill allows these important forms to be kept through an electronic communication systems, like a fax-on-demand system, Internet service or CD-ROM. These will make them more convenient, more accessible, and, the most important thing, they will make them more effective for our workers.
I want to thank the gentleman from North Carolina (Chairman Ballenger) for his hard work on this issue and for his willingness to bring this bill to the floor. I would also like to thank the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer), who cosponsored this legislation with me, and, as the Congressman said, in particular, we would like to thank our staff, in my case Lisa Helfman who worked on my staff and Ryan Dvorak on the staff of the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer), for their hard work in bringing this forward.
We often speak of issues in terms of right or left. This is an issue that is truly right versus wrong. It is right to give our workers the protections they need, since it is always the right time to do the right thing.
I urge my colleagues to pass H.R. 4037 today.
Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 4037 makes two simple but important changes to OSHA's regulation on Hazard Communication.
First, H.R. 4037 clarifies the law with regard to the acceptable use of electronic systems for maintaining ``material safety data sheets,'' which employers are required to maintain and make available to employees by the Hazard Communication standard.
To anyone who has looked at the amount of information required of the typical business by the Hazard Communication standard, it should be evident that an electronic system of keeping that information is preferable to a paper system. And yet OSHA continues to suggest a preference for paper copies of material safety data sheets by putting conditions on the use of electronic systems that it does not put on paper copies.
By encouraging employers, especially small employers, to use electronic systems for maintaining material safety data sheets, H.R. 4037 will make a real impact in reducing OSHA's paperwork burden on employers.
Second, H.R. 4037 requires that summary and emergency information be attached to the front page of the material safety data sheet. This is to make the information more useful and useable for employers and employees.
Mr Speaker, I want to commend the sponsors of H.R. 4037, Representative Granger and Representative Roemer, for their work on this bipartisan bill, as well as Subcommittee Chairman Ballenger. H.R. 4037 will help make one Federal regulation a little more sensible and compliance a little easier. I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 4037.
Mr. ROEMER. Mr. Speaker, today, the House of Representatives will pass H.R. 4037, a bill of which I am an original cosponsor. I would like to thank my colleagues, Representative Kay Granger and Representative Cass Ballenger, and all of the cosponsors, for their bipartisan efforts to help create and pass this common sense OSHA reform legislation.
Under current law, every business in the country must maintain documentation about the chemicals they keep at a work site. These documents are called Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS's) and while originally intended to provide critical health and safety information about dangerous chemicals, they have become cumbersome technical documents that can be up to twenty pages long, and are the causes of frequent paperwork violation citations.
H.R. 4037 has three main points. First, it would allow businesses the choice to access the information contained on an MSDS through electronic communications services, like a fax-on-demand system, internet service, or a CD-ROM. This type of service eliminates an enormous amount of regulatory paperwork, while actually increasing access to the information. Current MSDS service companies can provide instantaneous access to critical chemical information, expert technical advice, and coordination with emergency responders. The current paper system can do none of those.
Second, H.R. 4037 would require all MSDS to have an emergency overview at the beginning of the document that lists emergency contacts, hazard warnings, and first aid information. This emergency overview would allow both employers and employees to have immediate access to the most critical information on an MSDS. Currently, this information can be buried near the end of the document, behind pages of confusing technical information.
Finally, the bill instructs the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to conduct a study on the technical level of language used to write MSDS's. Presently, some documents still say things like: ``Avoid ocular contact,'' instead of: ``Keep out of eyes.'' OSHA would make the results of their study available to MSDS writers to provide guidance and improve their quality.
To achieve this bipartisan piece of legislation, we have worked in good faith with every interested party to address the concerns of the AFL-CIO, the Chemical Manufacturers Association, the Department of Labor, and the small business Coalition for Material Safety Data Sheet Reform. Again, I thank my colleagues for their cooperation and hard work on H.R. 4037. I look forward to working with the Senate to ensure its eventual enactment into law.
Mr. ROEMER. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Dickey). The question is on the motion offered by the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Ballenger) that the House suspend the rules and pass the bill, H.R. 4037, as amended.
The question was taken; and (two-thirds having voted in favor thereof) the rules were suspended and the bill, as amended, was passed.
A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
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