online, so you can get that.

		DR. MONFORTON:  Okay.  Terrific, thank you.  I've also reviewed the
study by Vacek that's looking at the association between exposure to
silica and lung cancer among the Vermont granite workers.

		And the authors report, and I'll quote, "Lung cancer mortality was
significantly elevated in the study cohort, compared to the general
population, but there was no evidence of association with silica
exposure."  So to what do you attribute this excess lung cancer?

		MR. SLAVIN:  Tom Slavin.  The -- I haven't reviewed the Vacek report,
so I can't answer.  All I can do is say, the people that have reviewed
it, the people that have looked at this -- and there's a letter, I
think in the docket, from Dr. Vacek herself, so in looking at that
information, our observation is, OSHA hasn't done its job of picking the
right study.

		I can't -- I mean, the answer is probably somewhere in the study.
Somebody besides me is going to have to figure that out.  But all our
point is, it looks like you're not including the best available
information.

		DR. MONFORTON:  Okay.  And earlier in this hearing we heard about an
excellent medical surveillance program that's adopted by the members of
the National Industrial Sand Association, and the best practices manual
that you developed with OSHA as part of your alliance talks about
medical surveillance.  I think it's called a health screening.

		So you have any data on how many of your members have a medical
surveillance program that's comparable to what NISA presented?

		MR. SLAVIN:  Tom Slavin.  No, I don't believe we have ever determined
that.

		DR. MONFORTON:  Okay.  Thank you so much.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Thank you, Dr. Monforton.  Any further questions?
Please state your name, spell your last name and identify your
affiliation.

		MR. DOOLEY:  Yes, my name is Peter Dooley, D-o-o-l-e-y, and I'm here
representing National COSH, which is the National Committee on
Occupational Safety and Health.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Go ahead, Mr. Dooley.

		MR. DOOLEY:  Thank you.  So this is a question for the panel, and that
is, yesterday afternoon we heard testimony from a former foundry worker
from Racine, Wisconsin, Racine Steel Casting Foundry, where he worked
for 14 years from 1988 to 2002, describing some very, very harsh
conditions that were present in that foundry.

		And he related hearing conditions presently in foundries at least in
several areas near where he lives in Milwaukee, including Racine as well
as Beloit.  And my question is, if that currently exists, you know, very
sort of challenging situations at foundries -- so my question is, are
all foundries in the U.S. part of the -- of your organization?

		And is there ways that you go around and inspect for health and safety
purposes, the foundries that are partners of your -- members of your
society.

		MR. CALL:  This is Jerry Call.  No, not all members -- not all of our
industries are members of AFS.  There are 1978 foundries in the U.S.,
and we have about 450 of the foundries that are members of ours.

		MR. DOOLEY:  Okay.

		MR. SLAVIN:  This is Tom Slavin.  Peter, the second part of your
question, as a society, we can do outreach, and we can present -- we
can publish documents and we can present material, and we can partner
with OSHA on -- to the extent that we can, and as we've done.  And I
think you heard how we actually have presented foundry training to OSHA
inspectors.

		So we're -- we do outreach, but in terms of inspection of members or
requiring that in order to be a member you have to pass an inspection,
something like that, we don't do that.  So we can't, you know, we can't
vouch for every foundry that's out there.

		We do believe that our members, by and large, are conscientious and,
you know, have been -- are on board, if you will.  But we can't -- you
know, we can't account for every foundry that's out there.

		MR. DOOLEY:  Thank you.  My second question is, you made a lot of --
you raise a lot of issues about what it would take in terms of
industrial hygiene monitoring to meet the requirements of a new PEL,
given the whole issues of variability in sampling, right?

		And, but -- so is the -- in the proposed standard that OSHA has, do
you believe that the sort of issues around variability are different
than any of the existing standards, in terms of industrial hygiene
monitoring?

		For instance, the current OSHA standard for silica, and the
variability questions in terms of monitoring, would the current proposal
be any different than the existing ones?

		MR. SLAVIN:  This is Tom Slavin.  I'm going to turn this to see if Bob
has a comment first, and then I'll answer.

		MR. SCHOLZ:  Yes, I definitely have a comment on this.

		UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:  State --

		JUDGE PURCELL:  And this is, for the record, Robert Scholz.

		MR. SCHOLZ:  Oh, Robert Scholz, yes.  First of all, there's an
emphasis in OSHA on getting data.  Once you show that you have someone
above the allowable limit, you sample them at some frequency.

		Now, one of the drawbacks of that is that until you do something to
alter it, you're just repeating that type of information.  We think that
the strategy that's used in the foundries should be a broader based
strategy intended to focus the light on root causes of exposure and to
set priorities.

		And it's something -- I said before as a personal opinion, I think
it's something that between OSHA and the foundry industry, an alliance,
such guidelines could be there, that the foundries should really
establish the strategy for sampling in the foundry.  It shouldn't be
mandated.

		And it should be -- but it should be, have objectives, not just the
fact that you have to keep tracking things now that you've, you know,
you've triggered this limit, so you're on the radar screen and now
you're required to sample at some level.

		So, I mean, it's something -- it's an area that needs development,
this whole process of establishing a proper sampling protocol.  I don't
know if that answers what you're getting at.

		MR. DOOLEY:  Yes, I don't think so.

		MR. SLAVIN:  Tom Slavin.  Let me -- so, other standards have the same
issue.  It's a frustration that we have, and I'm -- I think some of my
old friends share in the frustration, that we're kind of -- we're
prisoners of a single data point, and we don't understand sources, we
don't understand real exposures.

		We just -- we need more data.  We need useful data.  So to answer
your question, other standards have the same thing.  And I don't think
OSHA has figured out how yet to incorporate the aspects of variability
into a sampling strategy.

		They have, to some extent, figured in, in sampling and analytical
error, they figured in some of that aspect of variability, but they
haven't figured in exposure variability yet.

		You know, from a practical standpoint, we look at -- you know, to
maintain the current PEL, you really need to maintain a mean exposure
that's somewhere below the proposed PEL, actually.  You need to --
that's kind of where you have to be if you want to, with some
confidence, be assured that you're in compliance with even the current
PEL.

		So we recognize that, but we just -- we also, I guess, another
frustration that we have, and this is -- I'm not sure if there's a
piece of your question or not, but I'm going to take the opportunity to
slip this in here, is that the requirements to do the sort of repetitive
eight-hour time-weighted average sampling, quarter after quarter, if
there's something to be learned there -- and there is some statistical
value in sampling, but the way that's done, it doesn't look like we're
using the data.

		And OSHA's not using the data.  OSHA doesn't look at the data that an
employer collects, you know, 200 samples, and look at that and say,
okay, I understand your distribution, I understand where your problems
are.  That's not the case.

		OSHA comes in and takes one sample somewhere, and pow, well you're
either over the PEL or you're under the PEL.  You know, good luck, have
a good day.  And that's not really the way the world should work.  We
should be -- use -- the data that we take, it's expensive to get.

		Employees -- if you sample employees on a repetitive basis, they
start resenting wearing that sample, or that pump for all day long.  So,
you know, it's -- we need to make sure we're doing it for the right
reason, getting good information out of it.

		And I think employees would accept that a lot more easily, to wear the
sampling pumps as well.  But I think just to mindlessly sample and then
not use the data, I think is unfortunate.

		MR. DOOLEY:  One last question, and that is -- and I heard several
times, this notion that you wish that we had more source data on
exposure monitoring.

		And I'm kind of surprised by that, in the sense that, you know, I'm
actually -- I was a foundry worker for several years, and later as a
certified industrial hygienist, went into many, many foundries to do
health and safety evaluations.

		And I'm surprised to hear from a group of foundry, you know, sort of
professionals, that you haven't done more source evaluation of
exposures.  Is that -- I mean --

		MR. SLAVIN:  This is --

		MR. DOOLEY:  -- that would seem to be very logical, especially with
the given technology of video -- of exposure monitoring and such.  Why
don't you have -- I was kind of expecting to see more of that in your
presentation as to where the highest exposures are.

		MR. SLAVIN:  Peter, that's a great question, and I'm going to give Bob
the first chance to answer that.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Mr. Scholz?

		MR. SCHOLZ:  And we are doing that.  In fact, a document was referred
to in the presentations that was done on the OSHA alliance, actually.
There's a case history at Kennedy Valve, a foundry in Elmira, New York,
that was in the silica control manual that's published by AFS under the
OSHA alliance.

		And we used real-time methods there to identify the sources of the
exposure.  This is chipping and grinding with portable tools.  And we
were trying to assess the sources.  We were also trying to establish
ventilation parameters for a back draft hood and supply air combination
that the foundry was considering, trying to get the proper -- and we
used it there.

		And, basically, there isn't any monitor for respirable silica, you
know, that reads it directly, but there is a respirable dust monitor,
and the standard is respirable dust.  But you need to know the silica
content to calculate the target.

		I would say -- we've been using these methods now in the foundry
industry for the last 20 years.  But I would say, in the last 10 years,
they're being more used.  There's a number of OSHA offices that have
seen reports that have been done after a citation as part of a
compliance program, where OSHA requires that the foundry do an
engineering study.

		A number of foundries have turned in those studies, which have used
real-time instruments to define root causes.  For example, there's an
issue in chipping-grinding with portable tools in ferrous foundries that
you don't often get complete feasibility of compliance, mostly because
if you're grinding inside the casting, the dust has to come out of the
casting before it goes into the ventilation, but it passes by the
breathing zone first.

		It's an inherent limitation of the ventilation method.  And that's of
much interest to OSHA because the standard says that they have to
control the exposure to the extent feasible.

		So in that case we have a double purpose.  In other words, we do
real-time monitoring to find out what is the root cause, and also to
establish, how much protection would ventilation offer, two very useful
things.

		But that's all new.  This is all in the last 10 years that this has
been going on, and in a very limited sense.  I think OSHA, even, would
like -- they should comment on that, but they'd like to see more.

		And Tom Slavin has -- Tom, you should tell him the idea that you've
had recently, that -- you know, that the one thing about real-time
monitoring, is it's not eight hours long.  Most times it's a half hour.
All you have to do is go through a normal cycle of that worker's job,
and you can establish these things.

		Tom made the comment one time that --

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Hold the mic up, if you would, Mr. Scholz.

		MR. SCHOLZ:  I'm sorry -- that that data could be useful as this data
that OSHA's expecting to see on a continuous basis.  Because if you knew
the kind of response a real-time monitor would have during a typical job
cycle, and if you could get that in a half an hour or an hour, imagine
the leverage that you'd have in creating a database.

		This is -- so what was done under the OSHA alliance should continue
under the OSHA alliance.  We should keep going on that point.  That
would -- the amount of money to do real-time monitoring is a lot less
than taking a whole series of eight-hour time-weighted average samples.

		See, there's a whole series of issues -- and that's what Mr. Slavin
was saying, a whole series of issues with regard to monitoring, where we
need to make progress in our approach to it -- not the fact that we
need to do more of it or anything, but just the basic approach.

		The fact that we need a lot of data to establish variability, the
foundry has more data than OSHA, yet that data doesn't really count --
that question, the whole series of questions.  I've been told to stop
here.

		(Laughter.)

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Did that answer your question, Mr. Dooley?

		MR. DOOLEY:  Thank you.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Okay.

		MR. SLAVIN:  Tom Slavin, if I could add one more thing.  There's a lot
of flying blind that we do.  You know, we assume we know what the answer
is.  We assume we know what the problem is.

		And as -- you know, it was kind of demonstrated by Frank's question
earlier, we look at that exposure and we assume, well wait a minute,
that job category, there's nothing there.  You know, that's a -- that
must be coming from somewhere else.

		And we make a lot of assumptions that because, you know, we know so
much, we've been around so much.  But really, we need to do the
investigation to sort of prove our point, to prove where the sources
are.

		And a lot of what we do is, we fix a problem.  And then we find
out -- OSHA comes back after -- you know, they cite us once.  We fix
it.  They come back.  We've still got a problem.  And now we got to fix
something else or we -- and I've -- there was a case study presented
at the last environmental health conference.  We have one each year, a
foundry environmental health conference.

		And the case study there of a foundry that had spent -- rebuilt their
whole sand room.  They spent about, I don't know, $5 million or
something to rebuild this, and found out they were worse off than when
they started.

		And then they brought in Bob to do the more source studies and find
out what their real sources were.  And he did some mapping and, you
know, found out where the dust or where the silica is really coming
from.

		Because it's pretty illusive, and it's -- you're dealing with such
fine particles that follow air currents, and you get some strange things
happening, so you really have to understand all of that.  So yes,
it's -- the real-time monitoring is very helpful in understanding the
sources, so that you can then go on to fix what's really the problem.

		MR. DOOLEY:  Thank you.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Thank you, Mr. Dooley.  There was a young woman who
had some questions.

		MR. MARK:  Your Honor, this is Peter Mark.  Chris and I have a plane
to catch, and we'd like to be released from the panel up here, if that's
possible.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  I think probably OSHA had some questions, but --

		MS. KRAMER:  Hold on one second, Your Honor.  Thank you.

		MR. SARVADI:  Your Honor, this is David Sarvadi.  If the OSHA panel
has specific questions for Mr. Mark, they can certainly submit them,
and we'll try to get the answers back to them.

		MS. KRAMER:  If we may, Your Honor, would it be all right if we asked
him just a few questions right now?  How much time do you have?  You
have maybe 10 minutes before you need to leave?

		MR. MARK:  That's fine.

		MS. KRAMER:  Is it okay if we kind of cut in front of you?

		UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:  That's great.  Yes.

		MS. KRAMER:  All right.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  All right, go ahead.

		MS. KRAMER:  Thank you, sir.

		MR. O'CONNOR:  This is Dave O'Connor.  I have just one question.
Mr. Mark, you had indicated in your testimony that you do exposure
monitoring every 18 months or when there's a process change, and that
there's no need for more frequent monitoring.  I was just wondering how
you selected 18 months.  What was the basis for that?  Why was it not 12
or 24?  Was there any particular reason for 18?

		MR. MARK:  The main -- oh, this is Peter Mark.  The main reason that
we picked 18 is we then change seasons that the testing is done, because
you have a dramatic difference in, if you're testing every summer versus
if you have one test in the summer and then you're going to have one
test in the winter, so that you have a variability in the seasons and
your variability in your exposure rates.

		MR. O'CONNOR:  Thank you.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Other questions from the OSHA panel for Mr. Mark?

		DR. COBLE:  Yes, hello.  Good afternoon.  My name is Joe Coble.  And
in reference to your monitoring, the current PEL respirable silica is
actually based on respirable dust levels.  So do you measure the
respirable dust levels and then have that analyzed for percent silica
content?  And what is the average percent silica content of the dust?

		MR. MARK:  Peter Mark.  Yes, we have it analyzed for percent silica,
and we use the OSHA formula.  And then we also use the 100 µg as a
secondary parameter.  And that's kind of a target rate also.  And that's
internal standards that we're using.  The second half of your question?

		DR. COBLE:  What's the average and maybe range of the percent silica
in the dust?

		MR. MARK:  Just going off the top of my head, the low is 3 percent or
so, and the high is higher teens, so that 18 percent area.

		DR. COBLE:  Okay, thank you.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Any other questions for Mr. Mark?

		MS. IANNUCCI:  Good afternoon, this is Annette Iannucci.  Real quick,
Mr. Mark, you said your medical surveillance does not include x-rays,
chest x-rays?

		MR. MARK:  Peter Mark again.  The medical surveillance does include
chest x-rays for some of the locations, yes.

		MS. IANNUCCI:  Okay.  Why is it only some of the locations?

		MR. MARK:  Peter Mark again.  It's based on the medical providers'
recommendations.  And so it's allowed at all of the locations that we
have a surveillance program in place, based on what the medical provider
is recommending and requesting.

		MS. IANNUCCI:  Okay.  And do you have any idea of the percentage of
your employees who participate in medical surveillance?

		MR. MARK:  Peter Mark again.  That would be a total shot in the dark.
I really couldn't give you an accurate percentage.

		MS. IANNUCCI:  Okay.  And is there any follow-up of the employees
after they retire?

		MR. MARK:  Peter Mark again.  To my knowledge, there is no follow-up.

		MS. IANNUCCI:  Okay.  And can you give me a range and average of
tenure at your companies, employee tenure?

		MR. MARK:  Peter Mark again.  Years of employment, it does vary based
on location.  If I had to throw a dart at the wall, I would say that
eight to 10 year average.

		MS. IANNUCCI:  Do you have a range or?

		MR. MARK:  Oh, a range?  Well, we're always hiring.  We do have --
and in fact, we just had an employee that retired, and he was 43 years
working in the foundry.

		MS. IANNUCCI:  Okay.  And then just to verify, you say you receive no
information from your medical exams from your employees; is that
correct?  They're confidential?

		MR. MARK:  This is Peter again.  We receive information from a medical
provider if he feels that it warrants follow-up with the company.

		MS. IANNUCCI:  Do they give you actual diagnoses or?

		MR. MARK:  I don't believe that they're going to actually give
diagnosis.

		MS. IANNUCCI:  Okay, thank you.

		MS. SCHIFANO:  This is Jessica Schifano, just one quick question for
both Mr. Norch and Mr. Mark.  Do you currently have training programs
that train workers on silica hazards?

		MR. NORCH:  This is Chris Norch.  Yes, we do.

		MS. SCHIFANO:  Can you describe what you include in that training?

		MR. NORCH:  We start out with a basic orientation overview of the
foundry.  It's a series of instructional videos of the type of
environment that they're going to be subjected to, from every type of
operation on the shop floor.

		It segues in, goes through the personal protective equipment, what the
exposure levels are, and not just for respirable crystalline silica but
also molten metal, for, you know, potential of cuts and abrasions.  If
they're in the cleaning operation, we try to run, you know, every --
the gamut from one end to the other to make them as aware as possible
before we even take them on the shop floor.

		MS. SCHIFANO:  Great.  Thank you.  Mr. Mark?

		MR. MARK:  We give silica training as part of the hazard communication
training, and then with new employee orientation we go specifically over
what exposures are and why we have the different engineering controls in
place and the different respiratory programs in place.

		MS. SCHIFANO:  Great.  Thank you.

		MS. KRAMER:  This is Allison Kramer with the officer of the Solicitor.
 I just wanted to thank those of you that have to pop out for coming in
today.  We very much appreciate it.

		And also, as you know, questions may come up, as other people ask
questions.  We would like to preserve our opportunity to send you any
questions that do come up during the rest of the hearing today.

		MR. MARK:  This is Peter.  I do not have a problem with that.

		MR. CALL:  This is Jerry Call.  Yes, we would agree to that.

		MS. KRAMER:  Thank you.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  All right, thank you, gentlemen.  Those --

		MS. REINDEL:  Can I ask one quick question, and then after one of my
questions --

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Okay, identify yourself, spell your last name, and
your affiliation.

		MS. REINDEL:  Sure.  My name is Rebecca Reindel, R-e-i-n-d-e-l, with
AFL-CIO.  Thank you very much for being here today.

		Just to the two gentlemen, Mr. Mark and Mr. Norch, you had mentioned
some elements of your medical surveillance program, and I was just
wondering, following up on this, the 2007 AFS' best practices document,
it does recommend some elements such as chest x-rays that were to
distribute them so many years.

		So I'm wondering why some of your facilities require chest x-rays and
some don't, and what relationship, or what kind of communication you've
received about the best practices document, and how closely you may or
may not follow those practices.

		MR. NORCH:  This is Chris Norch.  I'll answer that for our foundry.
What we do is, like I said, we do a general encompassing thing on a
wellness program, blood pressure, hypertension, all those things.

		And it gives the employees a chance to go in and talk to a medical
examiner.  They do a full battery of questions, you know, are you
experiencing shortness of breath?  Have you had any of these issues?

		Then it's more a checklist, so that if they feel they want to continue
that, we will, you know, support that and cover that for the employees
to get further evaluated.  And it's done at the discretion of the
employee and the medical examiner.

		MS. REINDEL:  And is that in line with the Best Practices document?

		MR. NORCH:  I would have to go back and reference it, but I would have
to say that it at least meets and probably exceeds.

		MS. REINDEL:  Okay.  And Mr. Mark?

		MR. MARK:  For Grady, it depends.  There's variations in the answers
for the different facilities.  Some of it has to do with how long that
the facility has been with the Grady organization.  And we cover all the
basics that are in that recommendation from AFS.

		MS. REINDEL:  Well, it -- okay.  Chest x-rays were included in there.
 That's why I was wondering.  And there was a certain frequency that was
established in the document, and so I was --

		MR. MARK:  And the chest x-rays are based on the medical provider --

		MS. REINDEL:  Okay.

		MR. MARK: -- and their decision, their discretion.

		MS. REINDEL:  Okay.  Thank you.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  All right.

		MS. REINDEL:  I have other questions, but for the panel.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Certainly.  Thank you, Mr. Mark, Mr. Norch.  If you
all have -- is that the two that had a plane to catch?

		MR. NORCH:  Thank you, Your Honor.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Appreciate your coming today.

		MR. MARK:  Thank you.  We appreciate your --

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Safe travels.

		MR. O'CONNOR:  And, again, on behalf of OSHA, I'd like to thank
Mr. Mark and Mr. Norch for testifying here today.

		UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:  Thank you.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  All right, Ms. Reindel, you had other questions?

		MS. REINDEL:  Yes, thank you.  I think I heard the panel report that
the AFS has about 3000 members.  Was that correct, or did I get that?

		MR. CALL:  We represent about 3000 people in U.S. metalcasting
industry foundries and related.

		MS. REINDEL:  Okay.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  That was Mr. Call responding?

		MR. CALL:  Yes, I'm sorry.  Jerry Call.

		MS. REINDEL:  Okay, thank you.  Do you have data, or do you know how
many of those foundries fully adopted that best practices document I was
just referring to, to reduce -- it's titled, Control of Silica Exposure
in Foundries?

		MR. CALL:  Jerry Call.  No I do not.

		MS. REINDEL:  And do you -- sorry.  Some of the panelists were just
talking about their medical surveillance programs, so specifically, do
you have data on how many of those 3000 members are -- have adopted the
medical surveillance components of the best practices?

		MR. CALL:  This is Jerry Call.  I'm going to clarify.  The 3000 people
we represent aren't all foundry --

		MS. REINDEL:  Okay.

		MR. CALL:  -- members.  We had -- there are about 400 actual
foundries --

		MS. REINDEL:  Okay.

		MR. CALL:  -- that are members of us, and no, I do not know what
percentage of those.

		MS. REINDEL:  Great.  It was my understanding from your testimony that
AFS recognizes that health effects -- there are health effects
associated with silica exposure.  Is that correct?

		MR. CALL:  Jerry Call.  Yes.

		MS. REINDEL:  And so are there -- I was trying to kind of make a list
of what you were -- you know, some of the issues that you were raising
today.  And so are there any provisions of the proposed silica standard
that AFS supports?

		MR. SLAVIN:  Tom Slavin.  I don't know.  I have to look at specific
provisions.  I mean, there are a lot of aspects of -- a lot of that
standard is consistent with good industrial hygiene health and safety
practice, as long as it's consistent.

		But, you know, the devil's in the details, and so we would have to
look at each specific provision.  There were a couple, I think, in our
response on the 87 questions, there were a couple of areas that we
didn't have an issue with.  I don't recall what those were at this
point.

		But most of those, most of the sections we had -- some were minor,
some were serious heartburn.  But, you know, we had some comment.  And
so I think we'd have to refer back to that.

		MS. REINDEL:  Okay, thank you.  And then the panel displayed a number
of photos inside foundries, they were displayed on the screen behind
you.  And to complete the record, I was wondering if you would share the
names of the foundries where those photos were taken.

		MR. SLAVIN:  This is Tom Slavin.  The ones that were part of -- Chris
Norch, those were his foundries.

		MS. REINDEL:  Okay.

		MR. SLAVIN:  Peter Mark, I believe those -- the pictures he had in
his presentation were his foundries.  The other foundries, I'm not sure.

		MR. SPADA:  I'll clarify one point.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Mr. Spada.

		MR. SPADA:  Al Spada, AFS.  Chris Norch presented the wet explosion
photo, and that was not from Denison Industries.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  That's correct.

		MR. SPADA:  I do not know where that was from at this point, but that
was not from Denison Industries.

		MS. REINDEL:  I wasn't referring to that photo.

		(Laughter.)

		MR. SPADA:  No, but I just wanted to clarify that, yes.

		MS. REINDEL:  Thank you.  I guess I was wondering if they were taken
in active foundries that are currently in operation.

		MR. CALL:  This is Jerry Call.  Yes.

		MS. REINDEL:  Okay.  We had some photos that were taken, or displayed
earlier in the hearing proceedings that were very different, and so
these were crystal clean photos.  And I was just wondering if those were
in working foundries, because we haven't seen working foundry photos
that are that clean.

		MR. SLAVIN:  This is Tom Slavin.  That was one of the reasons we
included those pictures.  Originally our testimony wasn't -- didn't
have as many pictures in it, or we weren't planning to include as many
pictures, until we sort of realized that there's a misimpression that's
going on with all these terrible things out there.

		Not that those -- that there aren't foundries, situations that are in
existence like that, but from the standpoint of what's a typical foundry
look like, we thought it was more important to include more pictures of
really active foundries and yes, none of these are staged or --

		MS. REINDEL:  Okay.  But some of the equipment later -- maybe some of
the later slides they were maybe an exhibit hall or something.  Maybe
that's what I -- I mean, that's what I was looking at specifically,
maybe not these photos but the ones maybe further down the presentation.
 They were kind of showing a -- some control measures, so maybe that's
what I had in my memory.

		MR. CALL:  Jerry Call.  No.  These were all from foundries.  They
weren't exhibit hall pictures.

		MS. REINDEL:  Okay.  Thank you.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Thank you, Ms. Reindel.  I don't see any other hands
for questioners.  At this point, I'd like to express my appreciation for
the panel from the American Foundry Society.  Gentlemen --

		MS. KRAMER:  Your Honor --

		UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:  OSHA has some --

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Oh, OSHA did have some questions.

		(Laughter.)

		JUDGE PURCELL:  I thought they'd asked all theirs.

		UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:  We'd be happy to leave now, Your Honor.

		MS. KRAMER:  Thank you.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  So, in light of that, does OSHA have any more
questions?

		MR. O'CONNOR:  Yes, we do.  Tiffany DeFoe will begin OSHA's
questioning.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Certainly.

		MS. DeFOE:  Thanks for coming today.  At various points in your
written comments, and in your testimony today, you made statements that
OSHA's scientific review was incomplete.

		To be sure that we have as clear an understanding as possible of the
studies and information that you want OSHA to review, would you please
submit those studies to the record?

		MR. SARVADI:  Let me see if I can take that.  This is David Sarvadi,
counsel for the AFS.  We've already submitted, in the written comments,
a reference to the document that has the references.  And OSHA is fully
capable of getting those references from those sources, so I don't see
any reason for the Foundry Society to spend its money on the copyrights
to provide OSHA with the copies.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Mr. Sarvadi, I understood there were links to the
documents in the --

		MR. SARVADI:  Correct.  There's a link to the document, the one
document that's referenced in Tom's slide where he says seven out of the
30 studies were used and the others were not.  That's a U.K. document.
There's a link in this testimony to that.  And in the back of that
document is a complete bibliography.

		MS. DeFOE:  And you've reviewed all of the 30 studies?

		MR. SLAVIN:  This is Tom Slavin.  We have not reviewed the studies.
What we -- our point is that this is a fairly recent review of lung
cancer in foundries.  It cites -- and it's comprehensive, at the time,
2011 -- was comprehensive, specific to foundries, cites 30 studies.

		And OSHA only -- in their reference, only includes seven of them.
We're not saying what those studies say.  We haven't read those studies.
 We're just saying OSHA hasn't looked at them either.  And as far as I
understand, as far as we understand, OSHA has the obligation to use best
available scientific data.  And it's incomplete if those studies aren't
in there.

		Maybe there's reasons for not using the studies, but they -- it would
seem they at least have to be looked at and dismissed if there's reasons
to dismiss them, or used if there's reasons to use them.  But we haven't
done that review ourselves.

		Now, in addition to those studies, you talk -- there are other
studies that have been referred to.  I think Peter Morfeld referred to
at least three more recent epidemiological studies in his testimony two
days ago.  And so I think those also should be included in a -- in the
review, before the risk assessment is finalized.

		MS. DeFOE:  Apart from the 30 studies in the review paper that you
just mentioned, and the three studies that Dr. Morfeld mentioned, are
there any other studies that you think OSHA needs to review?

		MR. SLAVIN:  There were two other U.K. documents that we referenced in
our written testimony, that -- two other studies that -- where I went
through and looked at the references and crossed them to the references
in OSHA's review.

		And I noticed that 40 percent of those -- in both documents, 40
percent of the references -- and I don't remember how many there are,
but there's several dozen, were not included in OSHA's review.  So I
would recommend that OSHA look at those as well.

		Again, I don't know what the quality of those are.  Our point is that
we would expect that a fair review of the question would include all of
the research that's relevant.

		And those three studies that we mentioned plus Dr. Morfeld's
stuff -- and there's probably additional items in the comments.  Those
are just the ones that I'm aware of.  But I would think those would need
to be included to, you know, to pass the test of a fair scientific
review.

		MS. DeFOE:  If, after looking at those links, there's any confusion
about which studies you feel are important, would you be open to follow
up?

		MR. SLAVIN:  Yes, certainly.  Tom Slavin again.

		MS. DeFOE:  And then, in the slide just before -- see, I think we
have different numbers of slides in our pages, but I think it would be
your Page 9, you state that OSHA ignores empirical evidence in favor of
models in its risk analysis.

		Would you specify which empirical evidence you're referring to, that
OSHA should have relied on in its risk assessment?

		MR. SLAVIN:  Well, the -- this is Tom Slavin again.  The one piece
of empirical evidence is the chart that was on Page 8, which shows the
declining rates.  That's one.

		And I think there is -- so anyway, that -- there may be others, but
the point is that there's data about incidence of silicosis that's
available and relevant, that may take -- may be more reliable than --
you know, when you're actually counting people, may be more reliable
than constructing artificial theoretical models, especially with the
criticism that we've seen of some of the model selection and the various
biases that go into the models.

		So, again, we're not epidemiologists to say, you should use this model
or that model, but we listen to epidemiologists that question that
you're -- the models that OSHA uses.  And so, you know, it seems
compelling to us.

		MS. DeFOE:  Are you aware of any data -- and so with the chart, with
the incidence rates that you're talking about, are you aware of any data
that would specify the exposure levels of the cases in that chart?

		MR. SLAVIN:  This is Tom Slavin again.  No, I'm not aware of what
exposure levels are associated with each of these.  I think people that
have looked at this, have determined that exposure levels have come
down, that when you back-calculate a 30 year latency period or, you
know, a 10 to 30 year latency period, that you're looking at some
exposures that were much higher in the past, and that the exposure
levels that were -- seen today are much less, although there are still
some high exposure levels today.

		And that when you -- between the latency period and the overexposures
that we occur today, there -- some of the experts that have looked at
this -- and again, I point that Dr. Morfeld, because I happened to be
here when I heard his testimony the other day, indicates that there's
probably a threshold, and that if you're below that threshold, you're
not in danger of silicosis.

		On the other hand, he's not surprised that there's continuing cases
when you look at the current exposures, as high as they are, some being
above 250 µg.

		MS. DeFOE:  Thank you.

		MS. SCHIFANO:  This is Jessica Schifano.  Just a couple of quick
questions.  A number of people today have mentioned the best practice
guide, The Control of Silica Exposures in Foundries.  Would you be able
to submit that to the record?

		MR. SLAVIN:  This is Tom Slavin.  I think it's already been submitted.

		MR. CALL:  Yes, it has.  This is Jerry Call.  I don't know if it has
or not.  If it hasn't, we can.

		MS. SCHIFANO:  Great.  Thank you so much.  And then I just wanted to
follow up with Mr. Scholz, regarding the real-time monitoring that you
mentioned.

		MR. SCHOLZ:  Yes.

		MS. SCHIFANO:  You described one of the case examples from the best
practice guide.  In that guide or otherwise, do you have specific
protocols that were used for the real-time monitoring?

		MR. SCHOLZ:  Okay, first of all, you refer the Kennedy Valve example?

		MS. SCHIFANO:  The one that you just mentioned in a response to
another question, yes.

		MR. SCHOLZ:  Now, that was written up in its entirety in that case.
He -- Kennedy Valve wrote the case history.  We contributed to it in
defining the technology that was used to get the data.  If there's
anything else you need to know about the technology, though, I will be
happy to -- it's not a secret thing.

		And like I say, it's been divulged to several OSHA offices by way of
engineering studies that foundries have done in compliance programs to
identify root causes.  So if you have any -- we'll clarify that method
for you as far as you want it clarified.

		MS. SCHIFANO:  Okay, great.  Thank you.  And does the method in the
case example relate those real-time monitoring exposures that you
quantified to personal exposures in any way?  Or is it just generally
levels for the operation as a whole?

		MR. SCHOLZ:  No.  The real-time monitor is calibrated in respirable
dust, so that it's accurate on.  And the standard is on respirable dust.
 We'll typically use background area samples, or we'll use the recent
personal samples of that foundry to give us an idea of percent silica,
and then we'll -- so we'll actually present our findings.

		The findings are like a strip chart of real time, showing the spikes.
By the way, the data's taken with someone observing what's going on, and
taken -- no, we don't use video methods or anything.  They're too --
it's very practical to take very good notes.  You're taking data every
few seconds, and you're data-logging it.

		So that that's -- it's a very powerful method that we -- NIOSH had a
conference on this a year or two ago, where they brought in a number of
people.  They were trying to get this -- get some interest going in
these types of things.

		I don't think it went anywhere, though.  Everybody expressed their
opinions on this, but it's a valuable method.  Definitely valuable once
you've found an overexposure and you need to get the root causes.
That's the way to do it.

		MS. SCHIFANO:  Okay.  Great.  Thank you very much.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  For the record, that was Robert Scholz responding.

		MR. SCHOLZ:  Yes, I'm sorry.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  That's okay.

		DR. COBLE:  Yes, Joe Coble.  And I wanted to just follow up to see
whether you're planning on submitting some of the exposure monitoring
data that you've presented today, you know, specific foundry -- not
necessarily the names of the foundries but some of the database.  You
said that we need to coordinate more on that?

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Is that directed to --

		MR. SCHOLZ:  So now you're talking about the seven foundries?  You
stated we --

		DR. COBLE:  Yes.  Yes, the -- you had --

		MR. SCHOLZ:  Yes, the data's at --

		DR. COBLE:  -- ranges of operators, and it's a fairly impressive
dataset, where you looked at the 50 -- the medians, and the 84th
percentiles, based on some comprehensive monitoring.

		MR. SCHOLZ:  No.  The data was requested from the foundry industry.
It was gotten through a -- I don't know who the seven foundries were.

		DR. COBLE:  Yes.  No, we wouldn't need to know them, just to just --
some of the individual measurements.

		MR. SCHOLZ:  You need the raw data?

		MR. SLAVIN:  This is Tom Slavin.  I think we'd like to do that.  I
think we need to take that under consideration and make sure that we're
not violating some promise that was made to the people.  But yes, I
mean, I think it would be very useful for you to have that data.  We
very much support that.

		MR. SCHOLZ:  Yes.

		MR. SLAVIN:  And so if there's any that we can, we will provide that.

		DR. COBLE:  That would be great.  Thank you.

		MR. BURT:  Hi.  I'm Bob Burt.  I've got a few questions.  I wanted to
start with, do -- you mentioned there were 400 -- approximately 400
foundries that that were members.  Are any of those captive foundries?

		MR. CALL:  To my knowledge, only -- excuse me, Jerry Call.  To my
knowledge, only one of them is.

		MR. BURT:  So you're basically representing independent foundries
today?

		MR. CALL:  Yes, sir.

		MR. BURT:  And you mentioned that you saw a data problem with captive
foundries.  Could you tell us a little more what you had in mind there?

		MR. SLAVIN:  This is Tom Slavin.  So the foundries -- the --
captives are defined a couple of different ways, so I want to make sure
we're talking about the same thing.

		Some people would refer to a GM foundry as a captive foundry, but from
a NAICS standpoint, from the standpoint of the NAICS code, their
foundry -- I think their foundries are standalone facilities that would
have a foundry NAICS code.  So they wouldn't be captive under that
sense.

		So the captive foundries were -- when you start looking at the
numbers, when the Economist started looking at the numbers and trying to
tease out those numbers, there were so -- you know, you -- when you
start looking at percent of revenue or percent profit for an industry, a
captive foundry that may represent 0.0006, you know, part of that
business kind of gets lost.

		And I think that way -- those were some of the examples, some of the
issues that we had with the captive foundries in the analysis that OSHA
did, the economic analysis.  In some cases, they lumped captive
foundries together, and we couldn't figure out quite the basis for that.

		And in other cases they had some of the data mixed in with whatever
industry they were captive of.  And so it was just too difficult to deal
with that, so.

		But in terms of the numbers of foundries, when we looked at those four
industries, they represented -- you know, of the 1900 foundries, they
represented somewhere in the neighborhood of 1400 to 1500.  So it was
really the bulk of the industry, anyway.

		MR. BURT:  Thank you.  I want to -- probably almost all of my
remaining questions are going to be about specific kinds of data you
provided.  And I want to start by thanking you and saying, there is
probably more data in your written comments than many, many others put
together.  And we very much appreciate that.

		And I just -- I'm asking questions to be sure we can make maximum
best use of the effort you've put together here to provide all of this
information.

		I'm going to start with one that I know has been mentioned several
times, and that's the -- in your written comments, the -- Page 27,
Table 6, the AFS survey.  I just want to reiterate that the more
information you can provide us about the exact questions asked, how many
people you sent it to, how you decided what, who to send it to.

		All of that information will make this more useful.  It's obviously a
very extensive dataset.  And to the extent you could divide it even
further in terms of the distribution, how many above 200, how many below
25, all of those would make it more and more helpful to use.  So that
just the request, that if you could provide that, it would be very, very
helpful.

		MR. SARVADI:  This is David Sarvadi.  You've just gone through a kind
of a laundry list of questions.  It would be really helpful if you
could -- even just an e-mail with some bullet points telling us what
data you're looking for, we can certainly try to answer those questions
and be specific.

		MR. BURT:  That would be great.

		MR. SARVADI:  Okay.

		MR. BURT:  I'd appreciate that.  I'd appreciate the opportunity to do
that.

		MR. SARVADI:  We'd be happy to do it.

		MR. BURT:  You also had some -- a lot of very helpful material.  In
Page 37 on, in your written comment, a section called Metalcasting
Industry Overview, you say, for example, "The U.S. foundry industry is
comprised of 1987 operating casting foundries."  Do you know if that
included captive foundries, or that was only --

		MR. SPADA:  Al Spada.  It does include captive operations, yes.

		MR. BURT:  Okay.  And a major source you give here was the
Metalcasting Forecast and Trends Report.  Is that something that could
be entered into the record or that we could obtain from you?

		MR. SPADA:  Yes, it is.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Mr. Spada.

		MR. BURT:  Appreciate it, if you could enter it, then.  I had no idea.
 You know, some of these reports are $50,000 reports, and I didn't want
to say, oh, just throw that into our record.  But we'd very much
appreciate it.

		MR. SLAVIN:  No.  He was going to send the invoice, too.

		MR. CALL:  Jerry Call.  We'll give you the member rate on it, though.

		MR. BURT:  And there are a number of others -- many numerical
statements throughout.  To the extent that you could provide sources for
some of those, or if they're all coming off that report, I mean, things
like your detailed discussion of end use markets.  And you do cite the
import stuff.  Just anything you can provide in addition would be very
helpful.

		(Off microphone discussion.)

		MR. BURT:  Yes.  I could do that.

		MR. SPADA:  This is Al Spada.  If you want to provide those questions
with the other questions --

		MR. BURT:  Yes, that'd be great.

		MR. SPADA: -- they're more than happy.  The majority of the
information comes from two or three different reports.

		MR. BURT:  Yes.  Okay, great.  Yes, I can list specific things that I
was curious where they came from.  Because this is a very helpful, very
well put together report.

		You provide many examples of cost to specific foundries of specific
activities.  I would like to suggest that those can be most useful if we
have data on the size of the firm in question, the type of foundry if
that's appropriate, and what they were trying to accomplish with this
effort.

		Were they at 400 and trying to get to 100, at 100 trying to get lower?
 Something that puts it in context would again make these many, many
helpful quotes much more useful.

		Size is just critical, just because of the fact that when we don't
know whether we're talking about 20 or 200 people in a foundry really
affects what you want to do with those cost estimates.  And that one's
relatively simple, size of firm, type of foundry if you have it, what
they were trying to do with that effort.

		MR. SLAVIN:  It's just that it -- Tom Slavin.  That was the -- one
of our appendices had -- I think it is what you're referring to,
that --

		MR. BURT:  Yes, Appendix 2 had many, many examples, and --

		MR. SLAVIN:  Okay.  So we'll try to -- we'll go back through that and
try to provide as much detail as we can on --

		MR. BURT:  And this -- I think this is really important evidence
because it's practical examples for real people trying to do this, but
we need a little more to make full use of it.

		MR. SLAVIN:  Okay.

		MR. BURT:  Just one or two questions concerning Mr. Scholz' study.
For the individuals, where you had data on a single individual -- I
think it was your Table 2 series, do you have any idea over what time
frame those exposure monitoring results took place?

		MR. SCHOLZ:  I know for the seven sets, they -- a lot of these
foundries had data even before the year 2000, but we took the data from
2000 to the present.

		MR. BURT:  So these could be over several years?

		MR. SCHOLZ:  Yes.  You know, when you're doing -- that's -- when
you're doing this type of --

		MR. BURT:  I'm astonished how many you found, in some cases.

		MR. SCHOLZ:  Yes.  Some foundry organizations had strong databases, so
we were very pleased with that.  There were seven foundries.  But it was
14-year data.

		We were careful, though, that these foundries had not made changes to
those lines that -- if it was a particular job category, we didn't want
one where they had instituted controls halfway through or something.

		We would have answered our own question.  We would have produced our
own variability, you know.  So it definitely has to be of a situation
that is constant.

		MR. BURT:  Sure.  On the 3-series tables, do those represent jobs,
multiple people in a single foundry, or might they sometimes represent
different foundries?

		MR. SCHOLZ:  Some of those foundries, the seven foundry, a couple of
them were from the same organization and had the same job in various
plants.  But, you know, it seems -- I don't want to get too statistical
here, but the data was lognormal.

		And that's talked about a little bit in our report, but the reason
it's lognormal is that the basic process of doing something, you know,
like say you're grinding with a tool or something, that's what causes
the uniformity of the distribution so that it follows a model, is that.

		It's the fact that -- the essentials to it.  Now, when you start
adding things to it, there's an aisle sweeper that's driving by, and
there's all these other things going on, that's all distractive, in
the -- to getting that lognormal distribution.

		So that's why I made the comment, we only got 84 percent, because
NIOSH said to be careful about that.  I mean, the guidance did, that you
could do better, you could get 95 percent if you controlled the entire
job, which is a philosophy of mine.

		I don't believe any data should be taken unless you have baseline
conditions.  Now, I know when OSHA samples, you're doing a reality
check.  You're studying reality as it exists.  But for the data that you
need to do this proper analysis, you do need the dust collectors
running, the makeup air unit is turned on.  The workers know the work
practices they're supposed to be using and it's legitimate baseline.

		You get -- that's the data that gives you the real value, because the
data is lognormal, and it is repeatable.  So, now the data from these
seven foundries, I didn't have any checks on that, except that I could
ask questions, feed the questions back about the fact, what changed over
that period, and the like.

		So these were -- these are job categories -- even if the foundry had
two core rooms and we're studying core rooms, we did them one by one, to
eliminate the fact that if I do things in this room, I might be exposed
differently than if I do it in that room, for who knows what reason.

		MR. BURT:  So you would have treated those as two different
datasets --

		MR. SCHOLZ:  Yes.

		MR. BURT:  -- if that had been the case?

		MR. SCHOLZ:  Right.  And going forward, the same rules we followed, we
would propose going forward, that -- see, I know OSHA's always accepted
the fact that you can utilize job categories, because otherwise sampling
would be prohibitive if you had to document every worker's exposure.

		So job categories, but this data proved that job category is a
legitimate way of doing things.  Because some of these had a whole
series of people's exposure was in there, yet it was still lognormal.

		We learned a lot statistically.  I know the comment was made.  This
was one of the simplest statistical tests.  And NIOSH made the comment
in their literature that this, it was intended to be as non statistical
as possible, so that it had a chance of being utilized by people.

		MR. BURT:  So you would suggest that the good lognormal fits are
themselves further evidence that this is a relatively homogenous
sample --

		MR. SCHOLZ:  That's right.  That's the beauty of the method.  And just
on a graph, you can -- on a graph, you get your answer right on that.
And if it's not -- the tails are the part.  The 84 percent and higher,
they call that the tail.

		And NIOSH says, if you look up that guidance document, the tails can
go all over the place.  And I think they're very indicative of the fact
that things maybe aren't that baseline for conditions if you can't
create data that goes beyond 84 percent where you know the confidence.

		Because I think that 95 percent confidence goal is a legitimate one,
and therefore we should create data that can give you 95 percent
confidence.

		MR. BURT:  Thank you.  That covers all I have, and I appreciate your
offer to let me send you an e-mail listing some of the information.
Thank you very much.

		MR. STONE:  Robert Stone.  I have just a couple of questions, mainly
on the economics as well for the entire panel.

		First of all, I'm trying to grasp the ventilation costs that you've
prevented in various places.  And I'm trying to compare them to what we
estimated, and what URS estimated.

		And, for example, URS estimated a cost of $22 for the equipment costs.
 Do you have an estimate of what you think that is?  I saw something for
$27, but I wasn't sure if that's what you were referring to.

		MR. SLAVIN:  Tom Slavin.  You know, the cost estimate in the OSHA
methodology gets annualized.  And so you go through a couple of
assumptions to get to that.  And so, you know, it's difficult to do
that.

		What -- where we got our $20 per cfm and then $7 for makeup, was the
Foundry Committee, engineering -- has a bunch of engineers that get
together occasionally, and we were able to provide a -- to get those
engineers -- and there's -- included in there are a number of
consultants who do ventilation work, and who go to foundries and, you
know, build the ventilation, build the baghouses, build the duct work.

		And so they were giving us the numbers that they use when they decide
how much is it going to cost to put in this project.  And so that's
where that number -- it kind of came out as a consensus number.

		There were -- there was a -- I don't know what the range was, but
it -- I mean, it wasn't -- they didn't all come out with the same
number.  But that was kind of the consensus of -- that when you force
them to, well what's, you know, what's the most likely?

		So that's where we got that number, but I did want to point out that
it's also -- you know, EPA has some guidance on what it costs for a
baghouse.  And they put it in annualized cost as well.

		So, anyway, that's kind of the world they work on.  And their range is
wider.  I think it's like -- I don't know, it's, you know, 6 to 36 or
something.  And, of course, the bigger the facility, the lower the cost
per cfm.

		And when you get into, you know, smaller baghouses, then your -- you
kind of go up through the roof.  But, anyway, that's where that came
from.

		MR. STONE:  Okay.  Just to confirm, then, you're suggesting the cost
is about $20 per cfm for the installed capacity, and then $7 for the
operating cost?

		MR. SLAVIN:  No.  The -- it's so -- that's the installation -- it's
the annual cost.  And so that annualized cost includes a certain
number -- and I think, actually the number for installation wasn't far
from that.  So it was about, say, $20 per installation.

		And then you annualize that, so it comes out to, I don't know, $7 or
$8.  But then you've got energy costs.  You've got operating costs,
maintenance costs, replacing bags in the baghouse.  You've got ductwork.

		And a lot of the operations are not -- a lot of foundries are not
configured optimally, so where you put your baghouse is a couple hundred
feet away from where your exhaust has to go, so you've got that ductwork
issue.

		And so when they add up all those things, this was what these, kind
of, experts, if you will, decided, that that was the average figure that
they use when they do their engineering.

		MR. SARVADI:  This is David Sarvadi.  This sounds like a sufficiently
complex situation that it might be better if we try to answer the
question in the post-hearing comments.

		And if you have, again, a list of bullet points that you'd like us to
address, maybe that would be the best way to do that.

		MR. STONE:  Well, let me just say, if you're telling me that the
installation cost is annualized at $20, and then the remaining amount,
which comes to -- the residual of -- to total the $25?

		MR. SLAVIN:  No, no.  I'm sorry.  I'm sorry, Tom Slavin again.  So
the -- factored in to this $20 per cfm annualized cost, factored in to
that, is -- I don't know what the number works out to be, maybe $5 for
the installation.

		Annual -- you know, you take -- say the installation is $20 per cfm,
and when you annualize that over 10 years with whatever the interest
rate and the -- you know, those factors that you, you probably come out
to maybe -- I'm pulling a number out of the hat, $5 or $7.

		And that $5 or $7 is then just a component of the annualized cost.  So
that's just the installation component.

		MR. STONE:  What about the actual purchase of the capital equipment?
That's what I'm missing, frankly.

		MR. SLAVIN:  Oh.  Well, that's -- it's the purchase.  So the purchase
would be the $20 per cfm, and then you annualize it, and you add the
other costs in it, and you get an annual cost of $20 per cfm.  So
you --

		MR. STONE:  Okay.  Okay, that -- I got it.  Now --

		(Off microphone discussion.)

		MR. SLAVIN:  Well, okay.  And then there's always -- Bob also makes a
point about the supply air, then.  You have to add that.  Because
every -- see, to do ventilation properly, every cfm of exhaust, you
really need a cfm of makeup air.  And so that's why we added the -- the
$7 was the cost of the -- annualized cost for that equivalent makeup
air.

		MR. STONE:  Now is that -- is the makeup air the capital
installation, or is this -- what is this?

		MR. SLAVIN:  Again, it's the annualized, which includes a factor for
the capitalized -- for the initial cost, plus operating, maintenance,
energy, all those numbers built up.

		MR. STONE:  Okay.  Okay, you're right.  This is too complicated.

		MR. SLAVIN:  Yes.

		MR. STONE:  What I would request, if you could possibly do it, if you
could provide us, in your later response, what the components of this
cost that would be capital cost, installation cost, and then any other
operating costs you have.  Okay.  Because otherwise I can't disentangle
it.  Thank you so much for that.

		MR. SLAVIN:  Okay.  Excuse me -- Tom Slavin again.  So the -- but
the most useful number for you -- you're sort of -- you know, there's
a lot of numbers that float around, but the most useful number for you,
is it the annualized cost?  Or you want to get all these sort of
itemized things so that you can build your own annualized cost?

		MR. STONE:  Right.  That would be good.  But the -- you know, the
annualized cost for URS, for example, was about $7, maybe $8, in that
range.  So you're about triple their cost, which is about double ours.

		MR. SLAVIN:  Okay.  Tom Slavin again.  I think they got to $12.

		MR. STONE:  No.  Ours was $12 for the capital cost.  Theirs was $22
for the capital cost.  Our annualized cost was $5 and change, and theirs
was not quite double that.  They used the same operating cost that we
did, same operating percentage.

		So their cost is under $10, and -- okay.  So anyway --

		MR. BURT:  Could I ask a follow-up question to that?  Could you tell
us the source for your statement that EPA estimates $6 to $36, if it
isn't already in here?

		MR. SLAVIN:  It's already in our written comments.  There's a
reference to it, yes.

		MR. BURT:  Okay.  Thank you.

		MR. STONE:  Okay.  Anyway, if you could provide us with a further
breakout, that would help us to understand what your costs are coming
from.  Thank you.  And we'd like to compare to URS, for example, and to
our own.

		Okay.  I had one other data question.  This comes from Table 6 in
the -- in your written submission, and it's the one with the percentage
of workers exposed above 50 from your 2013 percentages.

		Were those single data points?  Were those the highest point that was
sampled for those workers?

		MR. SLAVIN:  We -- Tom Slavin again.  What we did was, this was, came
out of our survey.  And what we asked foundries to do was to give us the
number of people in ranges, number of people below 25, between 25 and
50, and so we had them put the numbers in that range.  And we actually
did it by shift as well.

		And then we -- and so that's where those -- so we didn't have the
actual number to -- you know, we didn't have whether it was 35 µg per
cubic -- we didn't have those exposure numbers.  We just had percentage
of people in the range.

		MR. STONE:  All right.  But was the percentage of the people in the
range reflective of their -- a single exposure for them, their average
exposure or their peak exposure?

		MR. SLAVIN:  We didn't specify.  So we -- what we -- I think we
implied that it was an -- their -- we asked them for their average
exposure, you know, how many people are exposed to this, you know, to
characterize, if you had to say, this person X here, what's the exposure
level?  So it wasn't a single data point.

		MR. STONE:  All right.  Thank you.  And I understand that you're
recommending that OSHA propose a PEL of 100 for general industry and for
foundries.

		MR. SLAVIN:  Tom Slavin again.  Yes.  That -- we would propose that
on kind of a reading of the health information and the threshold, but
also because it -- properly interpreted, a PEL of 100 requires that you
maintain exposures below 50.  I mean, that's our interpretation.  That's
our assumption, and that's what we're building on.

		MR. STONE:  All right.  That's good.  And are you aware that NISA and
others have recommended a PEL of 100 as well, with an action level of
50?  And do you support that element of a proposal?

		MR. SLAVIN:  We support the aspect of the 100.  We haven't really
taken a position on the action level and where it goes.  And I think we
disagree with them on some of the ancillary provisions.

		MR. STONE:  Okay.

		MR. SLAVIN:  But in terms of the PEL, we definitely are on the same
page there.

		MR. STONE:  Okay.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  And that was Mr. Slavin responding.

		MR. SLAVIN:  Oh yes.  I'm sorry.

		MR. STONE:  Okay.  That's all for me.  Again, I want to thank you all
for your excellent submissions of data and material.

		MR. O'CONNOR:  This is Dave O'Connor.  I have just a couple of
questions, hopefully quick questions here.

		In your testimony and comments, you mentioned the real-time monitoring
and area mapping.  And I was just wondering if those are used to
characterize exposures to the extent that decisions are made with regard
to use of respiratory protection based on real-time monitoring and area
mapping, or whether you rely on personal air sampling data to make those
determinations.

		MR. SLAVIN:  I know -- this is Tom Slavin.  I know Bob is itching to
answer that question, but I'd like to take a stab at it first, and say
that sometimes the area mapping is more useful -- and you're probably
familiar with noise mapping as well.  A lot of companies do that.

		But area mapping is very useful to characterize kind of the average
exposures, and identify what areas respirators are required.  And we
find it more -- at least I find it more useful, better information than
individual eight-hour samples where you don't understand what went on in
that eight hours.

		MR. SCHOLZ:  Yes.  First of all, the area mapping can --

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Robert Scholz.

		MR. SCHOLZ:  Oh yes, Bob Scholz.  Contour mapping and real-time
monitoring for root cause analysis, then they're often done
concurrently, are not used for industrial hygiene decision making.
They're done solely to put direction into the program to improve
engineering controls and work practices, and to -- by identifying the
root causes of exposure.

		So they're an engineering technique, fully, but they're a necessary
one.  The -- and they -- related a little bit to what Frank had said
earlier on, because he was concerned about the way these departments
interact, and why a department that shouldn't really have a lot of
silica does.

		The contour mapping can show the spread of the -- and it -- so that,
for instance, if an area is high in silica, it doesn't matter what's --
it doesn't matter if you go and sit down on a chair in that department,
you can get overexposed, perhaps.

		So it's a necessary component, and the next one being the process
itself.  You know, that a lot of the engineering studies, when they
study -- when we study root causes, we'll often times do it on a Sunday
when nothing else is going on, if there is such a break, and where you
can assign an exposure to that process.

		Because see, there's so many potential silica sources that you're
going to have to divide and conquer at some point.  But do you see, the
engineering -- but to answer the question, without getting too far
afield, is that it's directed at specific engineering goals, that you
have to get to root causes.

		I always use the example, you know, the quality field didn't make any
progress till they did that.  You know, and I know what it was like in
the 60s, with the inspector at the end of the line that would tell you
if the part was okay or not.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Hold the mic up, please, Mr. Scholz.

		MR. SCHOLZ:  And they got away from that, you know, that you need a
predictive means.  And the quality field's done wonderfully with that.
And we need to adopt that more.  In other words, if you knew root
causes, you could make a lot more progress.

		We are highly dedicated to driving down silica exposures.  We have
been for years.  And our publications and the work we've done in the
training has been aimed at it, strongly.  And it's by taking the methods
and raising them to a level where they're really powerful.

		There's no question in our minds that eight-hour samples is not going
to get you where you need to go.  You got to go beyond that.  But your
standards have always said that.  You said, when people had to come up
with their plan, they're supposed to come up with their plan for
engineering studies.  And that's the part we'd like to work together on,
actually.

		MR. O'CONNOR:  Okay.  But I gather, from your response, then, that in
terms of determining whether respiratory protection is needed, and what
level of respiratory protection would be needed, you're looking at
personal air monitoring data?

		MR. SLAVIN:  This is Tom Slavin.  Well, that was kind of Bob's
response.  My response is, I think if you take a contour map, and the
whole room is above 100, you kind of know where you are.  So I think
there is use in that contour map to determine where controls are needed.

		MR. SCHOLZ:  Oh, yes.  That I said.  But he --

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Mr. Scholz.

		MR. SCHOLZ:  Oh, sorry.  But his kind of question was to respiratory
air protection, to that.

		MR. O'CONNOR:  Yes.  And that sort of leads to my next question, which
was getting at something you presented in your written comments.  And
this is on Page 30 of your written comments, where with regard to
regulated areas, AFS says that, "If the standard allowed real-time
monitoring and exposure mapping as an alternative to eight-hour TWA
sampling, one might be able to construct a basis for defining regulated
areas."

		And I was just wondering if you could describe how real-time
monitoring and exposure mapping could be used in that regard.

		MR. SLAVIN:  Well, this is Tom Slavin, and I think this is again where
Bob is saying something a little bit different.  My issue with the
regulated area is that if you do it on a time-weighted average basis --
and I used the example earlier of the maintenance person that spends
part of his time in the office, and you really don't know where the
exposure comes from, and so every place he spent time has to be part of
the regulated area, which doesn't provide useful information, whereas
more area-specific exposure information might be.

		So you could have someone whose time-weighted averages exceeds the
PEL, who doesn't have to wear a respirator every place he goes.  He just
has to wear it when he's in certain high-exposure areas that you know
are high-exposure areas.  And so that's -- that was the point of that
comment there.

		MR. O'CONNOR:  Okay, thanks.  So if I understand correctly, you would
be looking at this real-time monitoring and exposure mapping to define
areas where the exposure would be above the PEL, and then defining them
as the regulated area?

		MR. SLAVIN:  This is Tom Slavin.  Yes, I think that that's probably
fair.  It's similar to the approach taken in the noise standard, where
you identify geographic areas as opposed to personal areas where hearing
protection is required.

		MR. O'CONNOR:  Okay, thank you.  And that concludes OSHA's
questioning.  I'd like to, again, thank the panel for coming in for your
testimony, and for your detailed written comments.  They were very
helpful.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  I'd like to thank the panel as well.  We appreciate
your time and preparation for all this.  And you're excused.

		UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:  Thank you, Your Honor.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Next on the agenda is James Mallory, with the
Non-Ferrous Founders' Society.  It'll take a minute.  Go ahead and take
your time and set up.  Let me know when you're ready.

		MS. KRAMER:  Your Honor?  The OSHA panel would appreciate, maybe if we
went off the record briefly for a break.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  How long a break would you like?

		MS. KRAMER:  Maybe 10 minutes.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  All right.  The time is 20 minutes to 5:00.  We'll
reconvene at 10 till 5:00.  Mr. Mallory, go ahead and make yourself
comfortable.

		(Off the record.)

		(On the record.)

		JUDGE PURCELL:  I'd like to reconvene.  During the break, Ms. Kramer
asked Mr. Mallory and Mr. Smith, who are the next two presenters, if
they would mind making their presentation together and responding to
questions.

		Mr. Mallory has a 7 o'clock flight to Chicago, and I'd like to make
sure he gets out of here on time, so I'd ask you to keep that in mind
when we get to the point of questions.  But with that said, let me go
ahead and ask Mr. Mallory to introduce himself and make his
presentation.

		MR. MALLORY:  Thank you, Your Honor.  Jim Mallory, Executive Director
and CEO of the Non-Ferrous Founder' Society from Park Ridge, Illinois.
I've had the privilege of serving in that capacity since 1985.

		First of all, I'd like to express that the Society is grateful for the
opportunity to testify at this hearing, on behalf of the more than 2000
foundries in our industry that will be severely impacted if the proposed
rule is allowed to take effect, particularly in the form in which it was
originally proposed.

		My comments today are intended to reiterate and support those that
have just been presented by the American Foundry Society, just as I know
that the AFS testimony echoes similar arguments and concerns that have
already been offered by the National Industrial Sand Association, the
American Chemistry Council's Crystalline Silica Panel, the National
Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Small
Business Administration Office of Advocacy, and other organizations that
have yet to testify.

		NFFS -- and we do pronounce the acronym, NFFS, we support the
consensus conclusions that have been put forth, and the comments and
testimony offered by these groups, that because OSHA has inadequately
demonstrated a valid need for this rule, that because the Agency has
erred in assessing the technological feasibility of achieving compliance
on a continuous basis, and because the economic impact analysis
presented in support of the proposed rule improperly estimates the costs
that would be imposed on the regulated industries, the proposed rule
should be withdrawn.

		At the same time, however, we're pragmatic.  We recognize that the
length of time, the amount of the effort and the cumulative budgetary
investment that the Department of Labor has spent in developing the
proposed rule make it highly unlikely that it will ever be withdrawn.

		With that recognition in mind, and presuming that OSHA is committed to
proceeding with a new silica rule in one form or another, our
organization feels obligated to point out several other problems and
deficiencies with the rule that we feel should be addressed before the
final rule is presented.

		Number one, a new Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act,
or SBREFA, panel should be convened for this rulemaking.  Our
organization is aware that OSHA would prefer not to have to convene a
second SBREFA panel for this rulemaking, but the simple fact is that the
initial panel was formed and submitted its reports more than a decade
ago.

		Other respondents to the docket have pointed out that since then,
economic conditions have changed, then changed again, then changed
again.  They also note substantive flaws with the economic impact
assessment model that OSHA employs to support the presupposed premise
that achieving compliance is economically feasible.

		OSHA's economic assessment methodology not only underestimates cost,
but fails to understand the disproportionate impact on small and very
small businesses.  Without belaboring the facts that AFS presented, we
wish to note that we strongly endorse their economic assessment that
projects that the true cost of the proposed revision would represent 13
percent of revenue and 372 percent of profit for non-ferrous sand
casting foundries.

		We don't understand how any rational person could possibly consider
that as demonstrating economic feasibility.  The initial SBREFA panel
submitted its report in 2003, and questioned whether a revision to the
PEL was necessary.  They also suggested that the costs imposed by the
rule, in 2003, would far outweigh its benefit.

		Five of the small enterprise representatives to the SBREFA panel were
foundry owners.  Four were current or former Non-Ferrous Founders'
Society members, and two others came from companies that supplied
silica-based materials to foundries.

		We believe that the staggering and overarching impact of the proposed
new rule demands that a second SBREFA panel be created, and that at
least 20 percent of the panelists be representatives drawn from the
foundry industry and their suppliers.

		Number two, OSHA should include a de minimis exposure level, below
which exposures are not believed to be harmful, and therefore are not of
concern within the final rule.

		It's impossible to generalize about workplace exposures occurring in
foundries because of the diversity in foundry operations.  Exposures in
large foundries are much different from those that occur in smaller
ones.  Iron foundry exposures are much different than those that occur
in aluminum casting facilities.

		In the apparel industry, there's a joke that suggests
one-size-fits-all rarely does, at least not fashionably.  In workplace
practices and engineering controls in the foundry industry,
one-size-fits-all never does.  Yet OSHA insists on stocking its
regulatory compliance closet with one-size-fits-all recommendations.

		Silica is a natural occurring element, but science has not been able
to specify a level at which natural occurring exposures to silica are
always harmful, nor any level below which they might not be.  Now,
anyone who's ever driven an ATV in the desert, or ridden in a jeep
across the sand platt, has probably been exposed to respirable silica
particles.

		Clothing worn during those activities -- if I can borrow a term from
the OSHA proposed silica rule, quickly becomes grossly contaminated.
OSHA would probably scoff at the idea that exposures in recreational --
recreational exposures should be controlled.

		But at the same time, they presume that any workplace exposure --
every workplace exposure, even those that might occur at levels below
which occur during recreational exposures, is harmful and therefore must
be controlled.

		Current silica research suggests that high exposures for short periods
of time carry greater risks than higher accumulated lifetime exposures
at low levels, and that any exposure measure should be weighted to
reflect higher risk of higher exposures.

		This would seemingly suggest that there may be a de minimis or
threshold level, below which exposure presents less risk, even if it
persists over time.  A final silica rule cannot ignore this possibility.
 And if such de minimis or threshold is above either the proposed PEL or
the action level, then the proposed rule becomes impractical,
unnecessary, and should be withdrawn or amended accordingly.

		Number three, the health benefit assessments in the final rule should
based only on the reduction of health effects for which a direct
causative link to respirable silica exposures has been established.
OSHA goes to great lengths to establish theoretical estimates of
silica-related disease effects, despite clear evidence that such disease
is declining and particularly in foundries.

		Moreover, many of the major health effects that occurred -- or that
the proposed rule associates with crystalline silica exposures, seem
from our perspective to speculative and based on a selective reading of
scientific literature.

		AFS and the other commenters have cited references to other studies
that suggest that the adverse health effects that OSHA associates with
respirable crystalline silica exposures can be effectively reduced if
silicosis is prevented.

		Number four, the final rule must allow employers to use exposure
control methods that are already working, without imposing additional
cost and control burdens, for which the added or presumed benefits are
speculative at best.  In this rulemaking, OSHA has made a preliminary
determination that compliance with the proposed PEL can be achieved "in
most operations most of the time" through the use of engineering and
work practice controls.

		That would seem to establish a defense argument against citations,
fines, and penalties when a facility could claim that it shouldn't be
cited, since it meets the PEL most of the time.  I doubt very much that
the Agency would ever accept that argument.

		OSHA's insistence that engineering controls be used as the primary
means of reducing employee exposures in the workplace shows its lack of
familiarity with day to day foundry operations.  Dust control in any
industrial facility, especially at the low levels that OSHA is
recommending, is both challenging and complex, and has been previously
noted, one size never fits all.

		OSHA describes engineering controls as if they've never been tried
before, but as has already been pointed out, foundries have decades of
experience with dust and silica control technologies.  The benefit of
that experience and the efforts that have been made to reduce employee
exposure to silica hazards over the past 30 years are clearly
demonstrated by the reduction of the number of cases of silicosis or
lung disease that can be directly attributed to working in a foundry
today.

		OSHA's bias against employee rotation as a means of controlling silica
exposure seems arbitrary and unreasonable.  Rotation is an acceptable
and effective administrative control that must be allowed, not
prohibited.  If reducing employee exposures to silica is the true goal
of this rulemaking, then OSHA must allow facility operators to determine
for themselves and to use whatever controls work best.

		Foundries have spent great effort and cost on controls that in
operation have proven incapable of achieving the current PEL with 100
percent reliability, yet OSHA's rule would mandate that additional
thousands -- millions of dollars be spent to meet a proposed PEL
reduction, with little or no guarantee of success.

		The rule describes the use of respirators, a proven and established
means of controlling employee exposures to silica, as presenting the
least satisfactory form of exposure control.  Meanwhile, the Agency
admits that respirator use would still be required if engineering
controls can be proven to be ineffective in reducing exposure below the
proposed PEL.

		So, in fact, what OSHA seems to be suggesting is, "Well, we think
requiring employers to spend thousands of dollars on new controls is a
good idea, but if they can prove that that simply doesn't work, then
they'll have to go back to doing what they've been doing all along."
And the quote is mine, not OSHA's.

		That is, foundries have been using controls to effectively reduce
workplace exposure to silica hazards for more than 30 years.

		Number five, the effective date for the final rule must allow
sufficient time for regulated entities to purchase and install any
additional engineering controls that may be required.  The rule would
become effective 60 days following its publication in final form in the
Federal Register.

		Provisions outlined in the standard would become enforceable 180 days
after the effective date, with the exception of engineering controls and
laboratory requirements.  Engineering controls would be required no
later than one year after the effective date.

		And the accredited laboratories on which foundries would have to
depend to perform the analysis of respirable crystalline silica
samples -- say that twice, would have an additional year in which to
achieve the certification and accreditation.  That schedule seems
incongruous.

		It requires employers to meet a preordained goal, without knowing how
well they're doing or even if their current efforts have been effective.

		OSHA requested comments on allowing a longer term or more complex
phase-in of the standard, possibly delaying implementation dates for
small businesses, and even presupposed a phase-in period might be useful
in certain industries, such as foundries, allowing employers to
coordinate their environmental and occupational safety and health
control strategies to minimize potential costs.

		The Non-Ferrous Founders' Society agrees with this presumption, but it
still questions whether spending the cost of installing new technologies
that may or may not prove effective in reducing or controlling silica
exposures is reason enough to justify massive expenditures with little
hope of significant benefit or gain.

		However, if OSHA is adamant in insisting that engineering controls be
used as the primary means of complying with this rule, then foundries,
most of which -- 90 percent of which are small businesses, must be
given a minimum of five years in which to make any required capital
investments in new control technologies.

		That's not unpredicated.  The OSHA lead standard provided a five-year
phase-in for foundries to achieve engineering control compliance.
Moreover, however, the lead rule identified certain operations within
non-ferrous foundries for which achieving compliance by means of the
engineering controls alone might never be achieved.

		That type of assessment needs to be offered -- that type of option
needs to be offered in a respirable silica rulemaking as well.

		With that, Your Honor, I am happy to respond to any questions on
anything that I have said here today, or anything contained in our
written comments to the docket.  And, again, I thank you and OSHA for
allowing me the opportunity to testify on our industry's behalf.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Thank you, Mr. Mallory.  Before the testimony, you
gave me a copy of your written remarks.  I've marked that as Hearing
Exhibit Number 90, and I'll admit that into evidence.

(Whereupon, the document referred to as Hearing Exhibit 90 was marked
received in evidence.)

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Before opening it up to questions, let me go ahead and
have Mr. Smith present his comments.  It's Brett Smith of the American
Iron and Steel Institute.  And also, do you have a copy of your
testimony, Mr. Smith?

		MR. SMITH:  You'll have this copy right here, Your Honor.  I'm happy
to give it to you after I'm -- at 3:00.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  That's fine, and then I'll mark it as an exhibit and
we'll enter it.

		MR. B. SMITH:  Thank you very much.  Good afternoon.  I am Brett
Smith, Senior Director of Government Relations for the American Iron and
Steel Institute, or AISI.

		AISI serves as the voice of the North American steel industry in the
public policy arena and advances the cause for steel in the marketplace
as the preferred material of choice.

		AISI is comprised of 22 member companies, including integrated and
electric arc furnace steelmakers, and approximately 125 associate
members who are suppliers to or customers of the steel industry.

		Our member companies represent over 3/4 of both the North American and
U.S. steel capacity, and our members directly employ over 150
individuals in North America, and are committed to continuous
improvement in safety and health, and to achieving an industry --
injury-free workplace.

		While AISI appreciates that OSHA has attempted to develop a regulation
that would protect workers' health in general industry from the dangers
of exposure to elevated levels of respirable crystalline silica, AISI
members believe lowering the current PEL is necessary to -- unnecessary
to achieve this end.

		Before moving to a lower PEL, OSHA should consider the alternative of
improved enforcement of, and expanded outreach for the existing PEL of
100 µg per -- 100 -- for general industry.

		OSHA's own numbers show that some 30 percent of general industry is
not in compliance with the PEL.  By simply cutting the existing PEL for
general industry in half, the Agency will not ensure greater compliance,
but will make it even more likely that the 70 percent of the general
industry that was in good standing will now find themselves in
noncompliance.

		AISI therefore recommends that OSHA carefully study the effects of
full compliance with the existing PEL on reducing the health risks of
exposed workers, and continue employer outreach programs coupled with
better enforcement of the existing standard.

		Beyond this broader concern about the proposed lower PEL, AISI also
has a number of steel industry specific concerns about the proposal.  In
particular, we believe that the prohibition on dry sweeping and
compressed air presents a significant safety hazard for steelmaking
facilities.

		In areas where steelmaking facilities -- where molten metal is
present, the use of dry sweeping has been the industry practice for
controlling crystalline silica and other dust accumulation.  Wetting
methods for dust control in these areas present the potential for steam
explosions, a significant and immediate safety hazard for any workers in
these areas of the facility.

		Further, the alternative of vacuuming for such large areas is both
cost prohibitive and logistically difficult.  AISI therefore requests
that OSHA allow greater flexibility in the choice of cleaning methods
for work areas where wet controls present a greater danger to worker
safety than established dry sweeping methods, and where vacuuming is not
practical.

		Additionally, the proposed rule is duplicative of existing steel
industry standards, and potentially conflicts with the coal dust PEL.
First, OSHA's existing coke oven emission standard, COE standard,
protects employees working in the regulated area around metallurgical
coke ovens and metallurgical coke oven batteries, where exposure to
emissions are of greatest concern.

		AISI believes that workers covered by OSHA's coke oven emission
standard are therefore already protected adequately from the dangers of
crystalline silica exposure, and such operations should be exempt from
the proposed rule.

		Secondly, AISI requests that OSHA specifically -- provide specific
guidance to coal handling facilities that operate under an existing coal
dust PEL.  Guidance is needed on how OSHA proposes to apply the existing
coal dust PEL when crystalline silica is also present, and how the
Agency would apply the proposed crystalline silica standard in coal
handling and processing areas.

		In anticipation of the amended standard and its lower PEL and action
level, AISI members have begun assessing the potential exposure values
for crystalline silica.  In conducting these initial assessments, some
steel shops have experienced difficulty in accurately measuring
crystalline silica exposure down to the proposed action level due to
graphite interference.

		AISI therefore requests that OSHA provide guidance in situations where
equipment sensitivity challenges a regulated employer's ability to
accurately measure crystalline silica exposure down to the low exposure
action level anticipated in the proposed rule.

		The proposed employee training requirements in the rule use the terms,
"each employee" and "each affected employee" interchangeably.
Clarification is needed on whether OSHA intends all employees at a
facility to receive training required under the proposed rule, or if
only "affected employees" must go through the proper training.

		Specifically, AISI requests that OSHA amend the definition of affected
employee to only those foreseeably exposed at the PEL, and use this term
throughout to provide certainty that only affected employees need to
receive the required training on potential crystalline silica exposure
in their specific work areas.

		Beyond that, many of AISI's members own and operate mining facilities,
and are therefore regulated by MSHA, with some members regulated by both
OSHA and MSHA.  Recently MSHA has indicated that it also intends to
revisit its own regulation on occupational exposure to respirable
crystalline silica, which will likely harmonize its own PEL with that of
OSHA.  This will add another layer of compliance costs for OSHA -- AISI
member companies that were not accounted for in OSHA's proposed rule.

		So, in conclusion, AISI strongly urges OSHA to fully implement and
enforce the existing general industry crystalline silica PEL of 100
before adopting and implementing a new standard that will be more
complex and require more technical control than the existing standard.

		Additionally, AISI requests that the Agency address the steel industry
specific concerns that we have raised concerning hazards inherent with
wet cleaning methods, duplication of existing standards around
metallurgical coke oven operations, guidance of the existing coal dust
PEL, issues that arise with monitoring due to graphite interference, the
ambiguous employee training requirements and the precedential effect on
other agencies.

		We appreciate the opportunity to offer our comments here today, and
our written comments as well, which are in the docket, and look forward
to answering any questions that others may have.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Thank you, Mr. Smith.  If you'll hand me your written
testimony, I'll mark that as Hearing Exhibit Number 91 and admit it into
evidence.

(Whereupon, the document referred to as Hearing Exhibit 91 was marked
and received in evidence.)

		JUDGE PURCELL:  With that, I'll open it up to questioning.  As a
courtesy to Mr. Mallory, I'd ask the questioners to keep in mind that
he does have a flight at 7 o'clock, so --

		MR. MALLORY:  Thank you, Your Honor.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  -- please direct your questions first to him.
Anybody that has any questions, can I see a show of hands, as far as --
I don't see any, so I'll turn it over to the OSHA panel.

		MS. KRAMER:  We do have some questions, Your Honor.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  I assumed you did.  And, again, if you would, direct
those to Mr. Mallory.  Any that you have for Mr. Smith, I'd ask you to
hold until you've completed questioning Mr. Mallory.

		MR. O'CONNOR:  This is Dave O'Connor.  I have one question for
Mr. Mallory.  You indicate in your written comments that the creation
of a regulated area where overexposures exist is unmanageable in an
operating foundry.  And I was wondering if you could describe why you
believe that's the case.

		MR. MALLORY:  Partly because of the diversity -- and Your Honor, if
it's all right, I -- since I'm the only one getting questions, I won't
identify myself for each response.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Certainly, Mr. Mallory.  I'll correct the record if
there's any questions directed to Mr. Smith.

		MR. MALLORY:  Again, because of the diversity in foundry operations,
some foundries are very large, some foundries are very small.  Smaller
foundries would have a harder time creating a demarked or controlled
area wherein silica exposures are easily identifiable, because of the
way that the foundry is laid out and the way that it is structured.

		I don't believe that a person walking through the foundry would be
able to find an area that would not be considered a regulated area in a
small foundry operation.

		MR. O'CONNOR:  Do I understand, then, that in these small foundries,
the entire foundry would be exposed above our potential permissible
exposure limit?

		MR. MALLORY:  I can't say that categorically.  What I'm saying is that
I think it would be hard to identify an area in the foundry and to
present an assessment of silica exposures that are unique to that area.

		MR. O'CONNOR:  Okay.  If I could follow that up a bit, how are
foundries approaching this now, in determining where the overexposures
are, given our current PEL of approximately 100 µg/m3?  How do they
determine who's overexposed in working --

		MR. MALLORY:  In my experience with the foundries that I've been in, I
see that done most often on a job-specific basis.  Those employees who
work in areas that are directly involved with or come in contact with
silica or silica exposures are identified as the people for whom people
respiratory protection must be provided.

		But a general maintenance worker, for example, might not be required
to wear a respirator if they perform their activities in more than one
area of the foundry during the course of a normal workday.

		MR. O'CONNOR:  Okay.  And it wouldn't be possible to mark off that
area where the job is taking place, where the overexposure occurs, or
what --

		MR. MALLORY:  Well, I don't see the benefit that that would provide,
because even a secretary, then, who would be walking through that area
would be subject to having to wear a respirator to walk through the area
to get to, for example, the employee lunch room.

		MR. O'CONNOR:  Okay.  Thank you.

		DR. COBLE:  Yes, I want -- this is Joe Coble.

		MR. MALLORY:  Yes, Joe.

		DR. COBLE:  I wanted to ask you about your statement regarding the
variability across foundries, and something to the effect it's -- you
can't generalize, that they're so different that there's no way you
could say something that worked here will work there, no guarantee.

		MR. MALLORY:  Not with a high enough degree of reliability.

		DR. COBLE:  Right.

		MR. MALLORY:  Yes.  I think that's true.

		DR. COBLE:  How much variability have you seen in the types of
controls that are employed?

		MR. MALLORY:  They vary with the size of the company, with the number
of employees involved in the operation, the number in the production
department, with the -- frankly, with the market value of the castings
that are produced, and the general profit levels of the company.

		DR. COBLE:  To your knowledge, is there any difference between ferrous
versus non-ferrous?

		MR. MALLORY:  Oh, absolutely.

		DR. COBLE:  So what would be -- with regard to exposure potential to
silica, would there be a distinction between the ferrous versus the
non-ferrous?

		MR. MALLORY:  Again, I think it's very hard to generalize on foundry
specific operations, because they are different.  A ferrous foundry
tends to pour metal at a much higher temperature than a non-ferrous
foundry, certainly than an aluminum foundry.

		DR. COBLE:  Right.

		MR. MALLORY:  And so some of the burn off of silica within the mold
cavity would occur at a higher rate in a ferrous foundry operation than
it would in an aluminum shop.

		DR. COBLE:  Sure.

		MR. MALLORY:  I think there are some facilities that -- smaller
facilities might find it easier to reduce or use alternative materials
than larger facilities would, again, based on the size of castings, the
number of castings --

		DR. COBLE:  Yes, there are -- my impression is that the very large
castings --

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Mr. Coble.

		DR. COBLE:  I'm sorry.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Let him finish before you start.

		MR. MALLORY:  That's quite all right, Your Honor.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  We want to make sure the record is clear.

		MR. MALLORY:  Thank you.  Again, these operations vary dramatically.
I have personally been within the foundry at the Newport News
shipbuilding facility, that we heard testimony earlier today from a
represent of United Steelworkers.  The expanse within that foundry and
the size the castings produced in that foundry, some of those castings
wouldn't fit in this auditorium.

		I have also been in foundries, small facilities that have fewer than
10 employees, that have basically, you know, floor molding capabilities,
and they don't have automated sand-handling technologies, and yet they
do so on a productive basis and they are able to control silica
exposures to a reasonable degree.  I don't have specific data I can
cite.

		But, again, depending on the operation of the individual facility and
the type of material that they produce, the type of processes that they
employ, it's very, very difficult to make any kind of a general
statement that says engineering controls will be effective with a 95
percent degree of reliability in all foundry operations all the time.

		DR. COBLE:  And how important is maintenance on these?  Is some of the
possible variability we're seeing in these exposures, would that be
related to the level of maintenance of the engineering controls?

		MR. MALLORY:  I'm not an engineer.  And I'm not an expert in foundry
engineering.

		DR. COBLE:  Right.

		MR. MALLORY:  So I really can't address that with a fair degree of
certainty, but I would suspect that maintenance is an important factor
in all foundry operations, that you have to maintain a working facility
capable of producing the parts that you need on a regular and continuous
basis.

		DR. COBLE:  Yes.  Just pursuing the idea of how much of the
variability would be due to the absence of controls in some facilities
versus others, as opposed to all these facilities have controls but some
work better than others due to the maintenance.

		MR. MALLORY:  I can't answer that.

		DR. COBLE:  You wouldn't be able to provide any --

		MR. MALLORY:  I have no data that would allow me to give you that
answer.

		DR. COBLE:  Okay.  And then I have a question on the -- I guess we'll
have another round of questions, is that -- for?

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Not for Mr. Mallory.

		DR. COBLE:  Yes.  Okay, I'll wait, then.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Oh, okay.

		DR. COBLE:  Thank you.

		MS. SCHIFANO:  I just have one quick question for Mr. Mallory.  This
is Jessica Schifano.  In your written statement, you identify that there
are several industrial studies that have suggested there is no
appreciable exposure from dirty clothing.  Are you referring only to the
study identified in the AFS testimony or other studies that you're aware
of?

		MR. MALLORY:  I'm not quite certain.  I think the primary reference
that I made was to the study in the AFS materials.  We have a good
working relationship with the AFS.  I trust that there have been other
studies performed for other industries that might yield some similar
results.

		MS. SCHIFANO:  Great, thank you.

		MS. KRAMER:  Hi.  This is Allison Kramer with the Office of the
Solicitor.  I just have a couple of follow-ups for you.

		MR. MALLORY:  That's fine, Allison.  Thank you.

		MS. KRAMER:  First, related to what David O'Connor was asking a
second ago, you mentioned that determinations regarding exposure levels
and who would wear a respirator is done on a job specific basis, based
on things like, you know, what they're working with, what they're doing,
what kind of content of the material would be.

		Do you do any sort of, like, area monitoring or personal monitoring or
real-time monitoring?  And when I say you, of course I mean your
members, that you're aware of.

		MR. MALLORY:  To answer this part with regard to my organization
first, we do not get involved in doing any monitoring of the member
facilities.

		MS. KRAMER:  Of course.

		MR. MALLORY:  I'm not aware of any of our members who do any real-time
monitoring.  I'm sure there are some, but I couldn't identify who they
are.

		MS. KRAMER:  Are you aware of any members that do medical surveillance
or that offer exams to their employees or anything like that?

		MR. MALLORY:  Again, I have no specific knowledge of member practices
as far as medical surveillance or their medical removal or any of the
other processes that they use to control employee exposures.

		I would not be at all surprised to find that there are some facilities
who are members of our organization who do do a regular medical
surveillance programs.

		I would tend to think those would tend to be the larger facilities who
are members of our organization and not the smaller ones.  And just as
an aside, within the structure of our organization, we categorize our
members by the number of employees that they have.

		And roughly 50 percent of our members have fewer than 50 employees.
So I suspect that that half of the industry may be less sophisticated in
some of their approaches to medical surveillance than those with 50 and
above.

		MS. KRAMER:  And one final question.  Have you spoken at all or had
any communications with your members regarding this proposal?  And if
so, would you mind submitting anything that they would be okay with, of
course, their opinions on this rule?

		MR. MALLORY:  We have not done a survey or had any formal dialogue
with our members.  And we did that for a pointed reason.  Many of our
members are also members of the American Foundry Society, and since they
were doing quite an extensive survey of the entire foundry industry, we
felt that trying to do any outreach would only generate a, let's say a
disparity of information presented to the docket.

		So we deferred all of those communications with the industry to AFS,
who has frankly, a larger staff and a larger budget for those purposes
than we do.

		MS. KRAMER:  Thank you very much.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Thank you, Ms. Kramer.  Thank you, Mr. Mallory for
your presentation.

		MR. MALLORY:  I think Mr. O'Connor had a --

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Oh, I'm sorry.

		MR. O'CONNOR:  I was just going to thank Mr. Mallory for his
testimony this afternoon.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  All right.

		MR. MALLORY:  Thank you very much.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Any further?  All right.  Again, thank you,
Mr. Mallory for your testimony, and have a safe trip back to Chicago.

		MR. MALLORY:  Thank you, Your Honor.

		UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:  Better hurry.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Let me ask first, the audience, any questions for
Mr. Smith?  Seeing no hands, I'll hear --

		UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:  No, no.  Over there, Your Honor.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Oh, I'm sorry.  I didn't see the one hand over there.
Dr. Monforton?

		DR. MONFORTON:  Thank you so much.  Dr. Celeste Monforton, George
Washington University School of Public Health, and questioning here as
an individual.  And I have just two questions for Mr. Smith.

		I just -- I wasn't sure if I heard your testimony clearly, and I
apologize if you stated this, but is it your organization's position
that OSHA should not adopt a comprehensive rule on silica?

		MR. B. SMITH:  I'm not sure I understand the framework of the question
in that lowering of the PEL beyond the current PEL?

		DR. MONFORTON:  No.  Just the, you know, the whole -- are there
things in the standard that you would support and would like to see
adopted rather than -- I mean --

		MR. B. SMITH:  You know, we haven't gotten to that point.

		DR. MONFORTON:  -- set aside the PEL?

		MR. B. SMITH:  I'm sorry --

		DR. MONFORTON:  Okay.

		MR. B. SMITH:  -- for talking over your -- this is Mr. Smith.  You
know, I can't say to that point.  We are dealing with the proposal that
is at play, and the comments that we have submitted reflect that.

		DR. MONFORTON:  The proposed rule has a reduction in the PEL, but
then --

		MR. B. SMITH:  Correct.

		DR. MONFORTON:  -- it also has many other provisions in it.

		MR. B. SMITH:  That's right.

		DR. MONFORTON:  But you haven't evaluated them --

		MR. B. SMITH:  Well, no, we have.  And in the context of the reduced
PEL as well as the other provisions, such as the ones on dry sweeping
that we have laid out.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Mr. Smith, let me just ask you both to make sure the
other is finished speaking before you start.

		MR. B. SMITH:  Yes, of course.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  So we have a clear record.  Did you have?

		MR. B. SMITH:  I don't believe so.

		DR. MONFORTON:  Okay, so like a provision for exposure monitoring?

		MR. B. SMITH:  Right, right.

		DR. MONFORTON:  You'd --

		MR. B. SMITH:  We have not taken a position on that.

		DR. MONFORTON:  Position, okay.  Thank you.  And then in your written
testimony it seemed to indicate that OSHA should really focus on
enforcing the existing PEL.  The existing PEL -- is that correct?  Is
that what you're --

		MR. B. SMITH:  That is correct.

		DR. MONFORTON:  Okay.  And as a way to be consistent with that
recommendation, would your members support a special emphasis program,
to go into your workplaces and enforce that 100 µg standard?

		MR. B. SMITH:  As it pertains to the steel industry?

		DR. MONFORTON:  Yes, with your members.

		MR. B. SMITH:  The SEP on the industry, no I can't say that we would,
at this point, but that's certainly something we could consider.

		DR. MONFORTON:  Okay.  Thank you so much.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Thank you, Dr. Monforton.  Any further questions from
the audience?  I don't see any.  OSHA panel?

		DR. COBLE:  Yes, Joe Coble.  I just wanted to follow up on your --
you discussed training be limited to what, I think you referred to as
affected employees, as employees exposed above the PEL?

		MR. B. SMITH:  Correct.

		DR. COBLE:  Was that your position?

		MR. B. SMITH:  Well, it was pointing out -- and again, the written
statement goes into more detail, and cites those passages in the rule
where the concern is.  It's just from our reading; it appears to some
ambiguity of those terms with each other.  So our point would be to
provide clarity, provide guidance in whatever happens in the final rule.

		DR. COBLE:  So would the -- specifically, then, on the training, was
it your position that training would only be provided if you're exposed
above the PEL?

		MR. B. SMITH:  Yes, I believe that's correct.  Only the affected
employee, as we say -- and I'm looking through, I'm sorry, my direct
employee -- or written comment right here.  Only those foreseeably
exposed at the PEL was where our focus would be.

		DR. COBLE:  But what about employees who are trained on methods to
prevent exposure above the PEL?  So they're not exposed above the PEL.

		MR. B. SMITH:  That's right.

		DR. COBLE:  But they would -- but that's only because they've been
trained on how to properly operate the controls to -- the awareness of
the hazard and the precautions they need to be taking.  Their exposure
would then drop to below the PEL.

		And so -- I mean, I'm trying to figure out why you would restrict it
to people who are overexposed and not to people who, by receiving the
training could then be below the PEL.

		MR. B. SMITH:  The distinction, if I may, that we're trying to draw
here is between the term each employee, which theoretically could
include anyone at a steelmaking facility, and each affected employee.

		I think the distinction you're drawing there is a good one and a valid
one, and not one that we've covered here but I appreciate the point.

		DR. COBLE:  Okay.  So you would advocate training for employees --

		MR. B. SMITH:  I think that's right, yes.

		DR. COBLE:  -- at a lower threshold than the PEL?

		MR. B. SMITH:  Training -- if that is what the lower -- or what the
PEL is set at, that would be the training, to get to that point, yes.

		DR. COBLE:  Okay.  Thank you.

		MR. STONE:  This is Robert Stone.  I have just a couple of questions
for you.  You had mentioned in your testimony that certain industries,
you think, should be exempted from this rule because they already have
current standards in place.  Is that right, for -- I think it was coke
and --

		MR. B. SMITH:  I would not say certain industry -- certain aspects of
the industry itself, which are already covered under the existing
standards for coke ovens, in particular.

		MR. STONE:  Okay.  And then coal dust, I think you mentioned.

		MR. B. SMITH:  And coal dust.  Not -- it'd be more of a conflict on
the coal dust side than anything else.

		MR. STONE:  Okay.  Well, are these activities currently regulated
under the current?  So even if we didn't change the rule otherwise,
you'd want them exempted now?

		MR. B. SMITH:  No, no.  If what is proposed here from OSHA were to go
into effect, that would create an ambiguity, and in the case of the coal
dust, a conflict that would need to be -- or not, clarified, to be more
accurate.

		MR. STONE:  Okay.  And then my other question is, do you have any --
oh, I'm sorry.

		MR. B. SMITH:  Did that answer your question?  I --

		MR. STONE:  It did.  I think we need to do -- I'll have to do more
research.

		MR. B. SMITH:  Okay.  Happy to help.

		MR. STONE:  We have to do more research to evaluate the conflict, but
that's good for now.  Your answer was responsive, thank you.  My only
other question would be, do you have any information about to what
extent your member firms are providing medical surveillance exposure
monitoring or training, similar to what's proposed in this rule?

		MR. B. SMITH:  It's going to differ, company by company -- more
accurately, facility by facility.  I know, to the questions raised of
the other panelist here, some of our companies do, yes, provide that.
Not all do, though.

		MR. STONE:  Right.  So you wouldn't have an idea about a percentage,
so.

		MR. B. SMITH:  Oh, I couldn't -- I could not say that, certainly not
today.

		MR. STONE:  All right.  Thank you very much.

		MR. O'CONNOR:  And just one last request.  In your written --

		JUDGE PURCELL:  That's Mr. O'Connor, for the record.

		MR. O'CONNOR:  Yes.  In your written comments, you indicate that AISI
members have begun assessing the potential exposure values for
crystalline silica in various areas of their facilities.  To the extent
you're able to submit that information to the record in post-hearing
comments, that would be very helpful for us.

		MR. B. SMITH:  Okay.  I would just say that that was done on an
individual companies basis, individual facility basis.  So it was not
something in the case of the foundries industry where we had a large
survey, so it wouldn't -- that sort of data, information wouldn't be
available.

		MR. O'CONNOR:  Okay.  Thank you very much for testifying this
afternoon.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  All right, Mr. Smith.  Thank you very much.

		MR. B. SMITH:  Okay.  Thank you.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Appreciate your attendance here, and you're excused.
The next two presenters are Lynn Bragg from the Glass Packaging
Institute, and Steven Smith of -- and I'm going to leave it to
Mr. Smith to pronounce the organization.

		I know that Ms. Kramer was interested in trying to combine that.  I
don't know if you've spoken with the panelists.

		MS. KRAMER:  I didn't, Your Honor.  And if we could go off the record
for a moment just to double check --

		JUDGE PURCELL:  All right, let's --

		MS. KRAMER:  -- to see if that's something they're interested in.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Off the record.  Everybody just stay in place, though.

		(Off the record.)

		(On the record.)

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Ms. Bragg and Mr. Smith have spoken.  They're
willing to give their presentation simultaneously.  I'll ask Ms. Bragg
first to identify herself for the record, and her organization.

		MS. BRAGG:  Thank you, Your Honor.  I'm Lynn Bragg.  I'm President of
the Glass Packaging Institute.

		Good evening.  We -- the Glass Packaging Institute, otherwise
referred to as GPI, appreciates the opportunity to testify regarding the
proposed rulemaking on crystalline silica.

		GPI is the North American trade association for the glass container
manufacturing industry, whose member companies employ 18,000 represented
and salaried workers within the glass container industry.  A substantial
number of those employees at the glass plant level are involved in
activities that are likely to be covered by the proposed standard.

		As a fact, over 90 percent of our labor force are union members.  GPI
and its member companies share OSHA's goal of an updated national
crystalline silica regulation based on sound science that not only
protects workers from adverse health effects associated with inhaling
excessive amounts of respirable crystalline silica, but is also both
technologically and economically feasible.

		The safety of workers at GPI member company plants and facilities is a
top priority for our industry.  That being said, we have several
significant concerns with the proposed regulations, and have
recommendations to improve the feasibility and effectiveness of the
final rule.

		As proposed, the regulation would limit the use of respirators during
necessary maintenance and malfunction activities.  These limited events
will briefly and periodically breech the proposed permissible exposure
limits.  Under the proposed framework, no exception is granted for these
activities, nor consideration granted.

		The draft rule identifies the glass industry as overall feasible,
meaning the proposed action level and permissible exposure limits are
achievable with engineering controls and work practice controls.

		It also appears that under the draft rule, the use of respirators
would only be permitted where it is not feasible to install engineering
and/or work practice controls.  Both of these regulations would present
significant issues for glass and other industries that have been labeled
feasible under certain circumstances, particularly with respect to
maintenance or malfunctions.

		In the glass industry, maintenance is extremely difficult to predict,
because glass manufacturing is extraordinarily complex.  Glassmaking
typically proceeds in three stages.  Raw materials of various sizes,
including silica sand, are mixed in the batch house.  Batched raw
material is then melted in the furnace, and finally, glass is formed and
coated.

		Because glass manufacturing involves the input of raw materials of
diverse shapes and sizes, maintenance issues for glass manufacturing may
vary even within a single company, depending on the end product, raw
materials, equipment and location.  Glass manufacturers must have the
flexibility to use respirators to respond to unanticipated maintenance
issues with little or no notice.

		While some maintenance activities may be amenable to engineered
solutions over time, others, especially those associated with
malfunctions, are entirely unplanned.  Accordingly, in cases that it
cannot be planned, it would be impossible to provide adequate
engineering controls, because the type and level of maintenance
malfunction events are essentially endless.

		The engineering control itself would require maintenance, and any
malfunctions of the engineering control could require immediate,
unplanned repairs.  Some practical examples of when the need for
respirator use would arise include but are not limited to equipment
issues, such as failure of any conveyance system, elevators, conveyors
or pipes, failure of dust collecting bag systems, or suction head
failures.

		To address these circumstances, we have several recommendations.
Pertaining to respirators, limited maintenance and occasional
malfunctions at glass plant facilities must be exempt from the draft
rule.  There are occasional conditions where maintenance on systems is
required.

		For example, maintenance activities in all of the sand batch handling
systems must be performed, due to the abrasive and corrosive nature of
the silica itself, and other materials in the process.  Under such
circumstances, it is simply not technically feasible to establish
engineering controls for all possible maintenance or malfunction
activities that could occur in our operations.

		Today, and going forward, the best way to protect our employees during
such activities remains the use of respirators.

		With respect to air sampling, due to the unscheduled and sporadic
nature of some of the maintenance and malfunction occurrences, it would
not be possible to repeat air sampling within the proposed time frames.
I'll note that personal sampling of exposures during routine daily
operations is not expected to be problematic.

		The draft proposal also prohibits the use of compressed air to clean
surfaces and equipment.  In the glass container industry, there is
equipment that needs to be cleaned using compressed air because other
cleaning methods are not effective, for example, the removal of abrasive
dust on scales and weighing equipment.

		While we agree that compressed air should not be permitted wholesale,
there should be an exemption for its use to -- during such maintenance
activities.  Respirators would be mandatory with the use of compressed
air during these activities.

		Based on the foregoing, GPI recommends allowing the use of respirators
during maintenance and malfunction activities and other circumstances
related to necessary plant operations, while using compressed air, and
that air sampling not be required during these unanticipated activities.

		GPI further recommends that the draft rule allow for compressed air
cleaning in specific activities, and for certain applications, including
scale, weighting equipment, and equipment and surfaces in other limited
areas.

		We also believe that insufficient time is granted under the draft rule
for safe implementation and necessary EPA and applicable state
permitting requirements.  The proposed rule would require engineering
controls to be implemented no later than one year after the effective
date.

		In addition, the draft rule provides for accelerating testing at six
and three months, depending on the exposure level identified.  These
timing requirements are wholly unrealistic, given the complex
permitting, engineering, testing and practical purchasing obstacles.

		Employers must be allowed sufficient time to ensure that operational,
procedural, testing and other engineering requirements are fully
satisfied, and proper equipment obtained with permits to comply with
newly proposed air and other associated standards.

		Here is a summary of major impediments that will make OSHA's proposed
time frame practically unfeasible for compliance.  First, environmental
permitting:  Our review of requirements in numerous states where a
number of GPI member company facilities operate indicate to us that
state environmental notification and EPA Title V permit modifications
are required for such engineering controls in such states.

		In these states, equipment cannot be purchased and facilities cannot
be changed or modified to accommodate the equipment until state approval
has been obtained.  Such approvals alone can take up to one year.

		Three or six months is simply not enough time for companies to ensure
they are properly in compliance with the proposal.  Compliance officers
and other company officials need to ensure that sampling measurements,
needed permits and sound procedures are in place at each impacted
facility in such cases.

		As a component of the glass manufacturing process, sand is used in all
glass manufacturing facilities.  Because of that, the initial
engineering necessary to evaluate all existing facilities during the
implementation phase would require additional time, one year, which is
not identified in the proposed rule.

		GPI recommends that the draft rule be implemented no later than three
years after the effective date.  This would provide one year for the
initial evaluative engineering, one year for environmental permitting
plus an additional 12 months to implement engineering controls after the
effective date.

		We are also concerned that the proposed air sampling measurements are
technologically unfeasible and unjustified.  Air samples more than 12
months old cannot be used under the current proposal.

		This is a substantial change from past practice, i.e., the general
rule that sampling and analysis data is valid for three years unless
there is an equipment or process change that may alter the airborne
concentration.

		GPI believes this change is overly burdensome and unjustified, and
would not lead to increased risk reduction for workers.  Also, the
feasibility of accurately measuring at 25 µg/m3 of air, the proposed
action level, is also of concern because at that level small changes or
minor upsets in the workplace could cause large swings in the sampling
results.

		Usage of respirators would aid in the reduction of an overexposure
risk.  Moreover, the proposal specifies sampling and analytical
methodologies; however, it does not refer to nationally recognized
standards put in place by the National Institute for Occupational Safety
and Health, NIOSH.

		We believe that existing NIOSH sampling and testing methods would
satisfy proposed OSHA standards.  Rather than creating new and
burdensome standards, we would like to see NIOSH protocols adopted as a
standard, as they meet OSHA specification within the proposal.

		GPI also recommends the following modification to this section of the
proposed rule: sampling results be valid for three years, unless
equipment or process changes could alter airborne concentrations.

		For any employee exposure sample above the proposed action level but
below the permissible exposure limit, the employer must resample within
six months.  For any employee exposure sample above the permissible
exposure limit, the employer must resample within three months.

		Also within the proposed rule, it appears that HEPA filtered vacuums
are required.  This appears to disallow any other technology.  Many
glass batch houses are currently equipped with central vacuum systems
that discharge external to the facility.  This is a permitted discharge
by the Environmental Protection Agency and is in accordance with other
applicable laws and regulations.

		These systems are equivalent, in terms of worker exposure control, to
a HEPA vacuum, and should be allowed by any new standard.  We request an
exemption for vacuum systems that discharge external to the facility as
airborne concentration of crystalline silica dust would not be generated
in the workplace, and therefore, employee exposure in these instances
would not be applicable.

		We want to thank OSHA in advance for your thoughtful review of our
comments and suggestions to improve upon the proposed rule.  Thank you.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Thank you, Ms. Bragg.  You don't have to, but if you
would like, I will mark your written testimony as an exhibit and admit
it into the record.

		MS. BRAGG:  Can we provide a clean copy?

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Certainly.

		MS. BRAGG:  Mine is all marked up.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  That'll be marked when it's received as Hearing
Exhibit 92, and it will be admitted.

		MS. BRAGG:  Thank you very much.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  All right, thank you.  Mr. Smith, please enter your
appearance and state your organization for the record.

		MR. S. SMITH:  Sure.  Thank you, Lynn, for those comments.  Your
Honor, I'm Steve Smith.  I'm Vice President of Environmental and
Regulatory Affairs for Verallia.  Verallia is a glass container
manufacturer.  We have 13 operations located in 11 states.  Verallia
supports the comments that the Glass Packaging Institute has made in
this issue.

		The safety and health of our workers is a top priority.  We support
the efforts that OSHA has taken to lower these limits.  We have already
undertaken efforts to meet the OSHA new proposed limits, and we continue
to work on that.

		However, we do have some specific concerns that need additional
consideration to ensure the safety and health of our workers,
particularly in maintenance and malfunction, as Lynn had discussed.  The
current proposed rule would only allow respirators if engineering
controls are unfeasible.

		There is a myriad of activities where such an approach wouldn't work
or will not work, and put our employees at risk.  And I've got some
pictures at the end of this that should help clarify that.

		Demonstrating unfeasibility for all maintenance and malfunction
activities is not possible as a practical matter, due to the endless
array of possibilities of maintenance repairs and/or malfunctions that
can occur in one of our factories or any of our factories.

		Given the nature of our manufacturing process equipment, we need to
use compressed air for air cleaning.  And I've got an example of that,
that I can show you in a few minutes, too.  Verallia recommends that
respirators be allowed during all maintenance and malfunction
activities, and that compressed air be allowed to be used for cleaning.

		There is insufficient time to implement the proposal.  Analysis and
engineering of all our facilities will be a time consuming and expensive
undertaking involving every facility, and we have limited engineering
staff.

		Environmental permitting is something that's required in every state
that we have operations.  All of our facilities hold Title V Part 70 air
permits, and it can take as long as a year to modify a Title V permit.

		We cannot modify or change the facility in any way, shape or form
until the permitting agency gives its approval.  And then we must
implement those identified changes across the fleet of operations.

		Verallia recommends that OSHA use a three-year deadline after
approval, one year for analysis and engineering, one year for state
permitting and one year for implementation.

		The air sampling requirement is burdensome.  Standard protocol in the
industrial hygiene field is that air monitoring samples are valid for
three years unless something changes in the industrial environment that
could modify the concentration of the airborne material.

		Sampling every year in every operation is redundant and would add cost
burden to the industries and no additional benefit to the employees.
Verallia recommends that the three-years protocol standard of practice