INFORMAL PUBLIC HEARINGS FOR THE PROPOSED RULE

ON OCCUPATIONAL EXPOSURE TO

RESPIRABLE CRYSTALLINE SILICA

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UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY & HEALTH ADMINISTRATION

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April 1, 2014

9:30 a.m.

Frances Perkins Building Auditorium

200 Constitution Avenue, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20210

BEFORE: 	STEPHEN L. PURCELL

	   	Chief Administrative Law Judge

	U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR (DOL):

KRISTEN LINDBERG

Attorney, Office of the Solicitor

ANNE RYDER

Attorney, Office of the Solicitor

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY & HEALTH ADMINISTRATION (OSHA):

WILLIAM PERRY

Acting Director, Directorate of Standards and Guidance

JESSICA SCHIFANO

Office of the Director

JOSEPH COBLE, Sc.D., CIH

Director, Office of Technological Feasibility

GREG KUCZURA

Office of Regulatory Analysis - Health

DAVID O'CONNOR

Director, Office of Chemical Hazards - Non-Metals

PATRICIA DOWNS

Office of Technologic Feasibility

ROBERT STONE

Director, Office of Regulatory Analysis - Health

STEPHEN SCHAYER

Office of Physical Hazards

NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH (NCOSH)/EQUALITY
STATE POLICY CENTER (ESPC)/ LABORSAFE:

BILL KOJOLA

DAN NEAL

Executive Director, Equality State Policy Center

PETER DOOLEY, CIH, CSP

President, LaborSafe

JAVIER GARCIA HERNANDEZ

WISCONSIN COALITION FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH (WisCOSH):

ALLEN SCHULTZ

JAMES SCHULTZ

AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE ASSOCIATION -

PROFICIENCY ANALYTICAL TESTING PROGRAMS, LLC

(AIHA PAT):

MARY ANN LATKO

Managing Director

AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE ASSOCIATION -

LABORATORY ACCREDITATION PROGRAMS, LLC (AIHA LAP):

WILLIAM WALSH, CIH

Vice Chair, Analytical Accreditation Board

CHERYL MORTON, Managing Director

THE CENTER FOR EFFECTIVE GOVERNMENT (CEG):

RONALD WHITE

Director of Regulatory Policy

BRICK INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION (BIA):

RAY LEONHARD

President & CEO

SUSAN MILLER

Vice President, Environment, Health and Safety

DR. GARTH TAYLER

Technical Director, Acme Brick Company

SUSAN F. WILTSIE

Attorney, Hunton and Williams

THOMAS BROWN

Director of Health and Safety, Acme Brick Company

BRIAN OGLE

General Shale Brick

JANET WHITACRE KABOTH

President, CEO, and Chairman, Whitacre Greer Company

LINCOLN ANDREWS

Stiles and Hart Brick Company

JOE RICE

CEO, Belden Tri-State Building Materials

WILLIAM LATHAM

Attorney, Acme Brick Company

OTHER PARTICIPANTS:

CHRIS TRAHAN

Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO

SCOTT SCHNEIDER, CIH

Director of Occupational Safety and Health

Laborers' Health and Safety Fund of North America

ELIZABETH NADEAU

Attorney, International Union of Operating Engineers

HENRY CHAJET

Attorney, Jackson Lewis

U.S. Chamber of Commerce

DALE DRYSDALE

National Sand, Stone and Gravel Association

JOE BONIFATE

Arch Masonry

INDEX

										PAGE

INTRODUCTION

Judge Stephen L. Purcell 					  PAGEREF a1purcell \h  3141

NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY

AND HEALTH (NCOSH)/EQUALITY STATE POLICY CENTER (ESPC)/LABORSAFE;
WISCONSIN COALITION FOR

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH (WisCOSH)

	NCOSH - Bill Kojola			   			  PAGEREF a2kojola \h  3141

	ESPC - Dan Neal					  	  PAGEREF a3neal \h  3144

	LaborSafe - Peter Dooley				  	  PAGEREF a4dooley \h  3156

	NCOSH - Javier Garcia Hernandez		  	  PAGEREF a5hernandez \h  3164

	WisCOSH - Allen Schultz				  	  PAGEREF a6aSchultz \h  3170

	WisCOSH - James Schultz 				  	  PAGEREF a7jSchultz \h  3182

	Questions 						  	  PAGEREF a8questions \h  3204

AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE ASSOCIATION -

PROFICIENCY ANALYTICAL TESTING PROGRAMS, LLC

(AIHA PAT); AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE

ASSOCIATION - LABORATORY ACCREDITATION

PROGRAMS, LLC (AIHA LAP)

	AIHA PAT - Mary Ann Latko				  PAGEREF a9Latko \h  3262

	AIHA LAP - William Walsh, CIH				  PAGEREF b1walsh \h  3281

	Questions 							  PAGEREF b2questions \h  3286

CENTER FOR EFFECTIVE GOVERNMENT (CEG)

	Ronald White							  PAGEREF b3white \h  3313

	Questions								  PAGEREF b4questions \h  3321

INDEX

										PAGE

BRICK INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION (BIA)

	Ray Leonhard							  PAGEREF b5leonard \h  3325

	Susan Miller							  PAGEREF b6miller \h  3334

	Robert E. Glenn, M.P.H., CIH

	(presented by Dr. Garth Tayler)			  PAGEREF b7tayler \h  3342

	Dr. Garth Tayler						  PAGEREF b8tayler \h  3352

	Susan F. Wiltsie						  PAGEREF b9wiltsie \h  3361

	Thomas Brown							  PAGEREF c1brown \h  3368

	Brian Ogle							  PAGEREF c2ogle \h  3373

	Jeff Wyers

	(presented by Susan Miller)	 			  PAGEREF c3wyers \h  3386

	Janet Whitacre Kaboth					  PAGEREF c4kaboth \h  3390

	Lincoln Andrews						  PAGEREF c5andrews \h  3401

	Joe Rice								  PAGEREF c6rice \h  3409

	William Latham							  PAGEREF c7latham \h  3420

	Questions								  PAGEREF c8questions \h  3434

ADJOURNMENT								  PAGEREF c9adjourn \h  3490

EXHIBITS

EXHIBITS		DESCRIPTION				 	PAGE

Exhibit 108	NCOSH PowerPoint	  		    	  PAGEREF x108 \h  3157

Exhibit 109	Mr. Allen Schultz' testimony    	  PAGEREF x109 \h  3169

Exhibit 110	WisCOSH PowerPoint	  		    	  PAGEREF x110 \h  3170

Exhibit 111	Mr. James Shultz' testimony	  	  PAGEREF x111 \h  3204

Exhibit 112	Mr. Walsh's testimony		   	  PAGEREF x112 \h  3281

Exhibit 113	Ms. Latko's testimony	  	   	  PAGEREF x113 \h  3280

Exhibit 114	Mr. White's testimony		   	  PAGEREF x114 \h  3312

Exhibit 115	Mr. Leonhard's testimony		   	  PAGEREF x115 \h  3333

Exhibit 116	Mr. Leonhard's PowerPoint	   	  PAGEREF x116 \h  3334

Exhibit 117	Mr. Wyers' testimony		   	  PAGEREF x117 \h  3390 P R O C E
E D I N G S

(9:30 a.m.)

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.  This is Day 11 of
the OSHA rulemaking on silica.

		Today's date is May [sic] 1, 2014.  The time is approximately 9:30,
and my name is Stephen Purcell, and I'm the Chief Judge for the U.S.
Department of Labor.

		We're going to combine the first two panels on the agenda this
morning.  That's the National Council for Occupational Safety and
Health, Equality State Policy Center, and LaborSafe with Wisconsin
Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health.

		Mr. Kojola is first up on the agenda.  So I'll turn it over to him.
Good morning, Mr. Kojola.

		MR. KOJOLA:  Good morning, Your Honor.  It's a pleasure to be here.

		My name is Bill Kojola, and I'm here representing the National Council
for Occupational Safety and Health.  I'm a retired industrial hygienist,
most recently working in the Safety and Health Department of the
AFL-CIO.  I've spent the last 35 years working for labor unions as an
advocate for protecting workers from hazards on the job.

		The National Council for Occupational Safety and Health is pleased to
be here and to express our strong support for OSHA's effort to
promulgate a final standard for crystalline silica.

		The long overdue rule will save the lives of many workers exposed to
silica.  The current exposure limit is decades out of date and fails to
provide adequate protection.

		In addition to revising the permissible exposure limit to the level
recommended by NIOSH, we're pleased that OSHA's also proposing a
comprehensive set of provisions that will help reduce the health risk to
exposed workers.

		I will focus my testimony this morning on one important aspect of the
proposed rule, and that is worker training.

		While this issue has received little attention at these hearings, it
is a critical element in an overall approach for protecting workers from
silica exposure.

		To be most effective in protecting workers, all elements of a final
rule need to be strong and they need to be fully implemented by
employers.

		I want to discuss how the proposed provisions on employee information
training can and should be strengthened in a final silica rule.

		Many of the existing OSHA health standards have more specific and
extensive worker training provisions than those being proposed for
silica.  We urge OSHA to include these provisions in the final rule.

		First, require training to be provided prior to or at the time of
initial assignment to a job involving potential exposure to silica.  The
proposed rule is silent on when training is to be given.

		Secondly, refresher training should be given annually.  The proposal
does not provide refresher training to be given ever.  It's as though
OSHA is assuming that workers forget nothing.

		Thirdly, training should include training specifically on engineering
controls.  The proposal only mentions work practices and the use of
personal protective equipment and doesn't mention engineering controls
as one element of a worker training program.

		We believe that the final rule should require additional training when
modifications of tasks or procedures or instituting new tasks or
procedures that affect exposure.  The proposal is silent on this issue.
It's as though OSHA doesn't expect that changes in the workplace will
occur that could change exposure, and those are provisions that are in
other OSHA health standards.

		We would encourage OSHA to include in the final rule a requirement
that training and materials be provided at the educational level,
literacy, and language of the workers.  If that's OSHA's intent, then we
believe they should make it explicit in the final rule so that everybody
understands what the obligation is.

		And, lastly, we believe that there should be a provision in the rule
that says that training should be provided at not cost to the employee
and during working hours.  Again, the proposed rule is silent on this
matter.

		In our view, these recommended changes to training provisions of a
final silica standard will enhance the effectiveness in protecting
workers, and we urge OSHA to adopt them.

		And thank you for the opportunity to appear here before you today.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Thank you, Mr. Kojola.

		Next on the agenda is Mr. Dan Neal.

		MR. NEAL:  Thank you, Your Honor.  I appreciate this opportunity.

		My name is Dan Neal.  I'm the Executive Director of the Equality State
Policy Center in Casper, Wyoming.  We operate the Wyoming Coalition for
Occupational Safety and Health and have a long history of advocating for
good policies that support Wyoming workers.

		The extractive industries drive the economy of Wyoming.  We the
nation's number one coal state and the top producer of trona.  In 2012,
the state ranked third among the states in natural gas production and
seventh in oil production.

		In the past few years, much of the new gas and oil production stems
from recent developments in drilling technology and the technology used
in hydraulic fracturing, a method of using water and sand to open tight
shales that hold both oil and gas.

		It's this process that brings the ESPC to this hearing.

		First, I would remind you that work in the industry sector is
dangerous.  Last year in Wyoming, two coal miners, Chris Stassinos and
Jake Dowdy, died on the job, one near Rock Springs, the other in the
Powder River Basin at the Black Thunder Mine.  Carl Jordan was killed
on a drilling rig near Baggs, Wyoming.  Since they died in 2013, they're
not really yet even official national statistics, but each one of them
left mourning families.  Two of them had young children.  We've also had
people burned at refineries and injured in explosions in that oil and
gas patch.

		Nationally, the number of deaths in oil and gas extraction increased
substantially in 2012 with 138 deaths compared to 112 in 2011.

		Across the country, the death rate in quarrying, mining and oil and
gas extraction was 15.6 per 100,000 workers, compared to the all worker
fatal injury rate for the nation of 3.2 in 2012, nearly 5 times higher
in this industry.

		Health and safety are critical matters to my Wyoming friends and
neighbors who work to power the nation.  Exposure to silica with its
risk of developing silicosis or one of the many diseases related to
silica exposure is a significant hazard related to hydraulic fracturing
in the oil and gas business.

		Strong oversight and control is needed in an industry that the
statistics indicate has failed to provide safe and health worksites.

		The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has studied
silica exposure during fracking operations and found serious exposure
risks for all workers in the oil and gas industry.  It has issued a
hazard alert warning about exposure to silica during hydraulic
fracturing.

		NIOSH scientist, Eric Esswein, conducted the research he noted in a
blog for NIOSH that "The magnitude of the exposures is particularly
important.  Thirty-six of the 116 samples exceeded the NIOSH REL by a
factor of 10 or more.  The significance of these findings is that even
if workers are properly using half masks air-purifying respirators, they
would not be sufficiently protected because half masks air-purifying
respirators have a maximum use concentration of 10 times the
occupational health exposure limit."

		Although fracturing technology has been a staple in oil and gas
drilling since at least the middle of the Twentieth Century, increased
use of horizontal drilling to maximize production from shell beds has
led to much greater use of fracking by the oil and gas industry.

		This increased use alone increases risk for workers, but another
technological development must also be considered.  Companies in places
like Wyoming Screen River Basin have worked very hard to make their
operations more efficient and less harmful to the environment.  One
strategy for reaching these goals is to locate multiple wells on a
single drill pad.  While it means fewer roads are needed to reach wells,
it also means that well pads now have wells in various stages of
drilling and production.

		Workers may be on a well pad drilling a new hole, while others service
a producing well on the same pad.  Those crews may be working when a
well servicing company comes to the pad to frack a well.

		All the workers on the site are at risk of exposure to silica use in
the hydraulic fracturing.

		Education of the various drilling and well servicing crews must
include education about the dangers of silica exposure and methods of
reducing exposure.

		The NIOSH hazard alert notes, "Determining worker exposure levels is
important for selecting the right type of control measures, including
engineering controls and respiratory protection."

		The NIOSH hazard alert contains a list of methods to control dust
exposure.  Engineering methods include relatively low cost measures such
as keeping as many workers on the site upwind of the moving sand, water
spraying to hold dust down, stopping holes in sand batteries,
specifically stick a rag in the hole, and placing screens to knock down
dust as sand is transferred from a sand battery to a well bore.

		Potentially more expensive measures include designing new sand
batteries to use in closed augers, to move the sand to the well bore
and/or using a less hazardous non-silica material as a proppant such as
ceramic where this is feasible.

		Continuing education is particularly important in this industry.  The
physical demands of much of the work, competition for workers, and the
transient nature of these moving jobsites, result in continuous
turnover.  Moreover, booms in the industry induce the rapid expansion in
numbers of jobs.

		In the first quarter of 2000, in Wyoming, there were 7,809 jobs in oil
and gas extraction, oil and gas drilling and in jobs supporting oil and
gas operations in Wyoming.  A year later, those numbers climbed to
9,563, an inkling of the boom that hit full force in the middle of the
decade.  By the fourth quarter of 2008, there were 20,006 of those jobs
in Wyoming.  Job numbers declined to 16,248 in the first quarter of
2013, but that's still 108 [sic] percent increase compared to the first
quarter of 2000.

		It's possible to get a sense of turnover as well.  State statistics
show that in the first quarter of 2000, nearly 1200 more workers than
jobs, 8,971 worked in oil and gas in Wyoming.  At the peak of the boom,
in the fourth quarter of 2008, 23,378 workers were paid wages by the
industry.  That's nearly 3500 more workers than jobs, and I'll note that
those statistics don't include movement within the industry.  Those
numbers reflect people who were paid wages by the industry.  So if
someone moved from one company to another, they also might need training
or education about the effects of silica.

		So we believe this makes a strong case requiring continuing education
and training of both supervisors and workers about the hazard of silica
and how they can be avoided.

		In the past 10 years, 24,490 new wells have been drilled in Wyoming.
This is according to the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.

		We're looking at a new boom in the Southern Powder River Basin where
industry officials predict 5,000 wells will be drilled in the next 10
years.  Other studies indicate another 25,000 wells will be drilled in
Wyoming over the next 10 to 15 years.

		As companies seek to maximize production, we can expect them to employ
the latest drilling and completion technology including extensive use of
hydraulic fracturing.

		These wells will provide relatively high paying jobs which will
attract new workers who need training and who have a right to safe and
healthy workplaces.

		Wyoming has a state OSHA program.  Like OSHA nationally, the task
before it is much bigger than its staffing and funding.  Over the past
decade, Wyoming consistently has registered the worst job fatality rate
or second worst job fatality rate in the nation, usually three to four
times the national rate.

		It's important to note that this rate only includes deaths related to
fatal, traumatic injuries.  It does not include deaths caused by
occupational illness such as silica-related diseases that may occur long
after an employee has left the workforce.

		After wide public outcry to address Wyoming's horrible fatality rate,
the state legislature in 2011 appropriated funds for more courtesy
inspectors for its consultation program.  These inspectors go to a site
and help an employer identify hazards.  No citations are given but the
employer must correct the hazards.

		At the same time, Wyoming launched a program to incentivize employers
to address safety and health and help small companies establish safety
programs.  Moreover, companies that accept state consultation or that
work with accredited private health and safety consultants, receive
discounts on workers' compensation insurance premiums.

		The program also funds safety training and equipment purchases above
and beyond regulatory requirements.

		The oil and gas industry formed the Wyoming Oil and Gas Safety
Industry Alliance in 2011 with the express purpose of improving the
safety culture in Wyoming's oil patch.

		Wyoming has embarked on a revision to its rules on oil and gas
drilling, well servicing and special well servicing that exceed federal
regulatory requirements and take into account the best available
technology.

		In doing so, Wyoming OSHA has reached out to industry and worked with
safety and health advocates.  The new drilling rules were completed in
2012.  This is before the hazard alert was sent out.  Revisions of well
servicing and special well servicing rules are now underway.  They will
note the hazards posed by silica and include recommendations for
training limiting exposure, abating dust, and engineering solutions.

		Why then do we need this new federal regulation?  We believe that
improving worker safety and health requires a carrot and stick approach.

		I just outlined the incentive Wyoming offers employers.  The carrot's
dangled before them to encourage efforts to address safety and health.

		Unfortunately every company in the hydraulic fracturing and drilling
industry will not meet this safety exposure limit on its own.  Not every
company in the industry will conduct the exposure monitoring, offer the
medical surveillance to workers who are heavily exposed to silica or
provide adequate training.

		In fact, some in the industry already have tried to argue that risk
from silica exposure are low.  This regulation is needed to provide the
enforcement that will bring along less cooperative operators.

		In 2012, Wyoming OSHA sent letters to every registered oil and gas
industry employer in the state notifying them of the NIOSH Esswein study
of silica exposure during hydraulic fracturing.  The letter noted that
NIOSH was "interested in working with industry partners in drilling and
well servicing, hydraulic fracturing, to field test NIOSH developed
engineering controls to minimize exposure to silica dust during those
operations."

		The letter asked companies interested in assisting NIOSH or that had
information about worker safety and health in the industry to contact
NIOSH or Wyoming OSHA directly.  No company contacted state OSHA in
response to this request.

		The state agency wants to be one of the first state programs to
address silica hazards in its drilling and servicing rules.  It recently
observed a hydraulic fracturing operation conducted by Halliburton.  The
agency observers were able to conduct some monitoring according to John
Ysebaert.  He's the Administrator of the Wyoming Department of Standards
and Compliance for the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services.

		Nationally, the oil and gas industry has established a Respirable
Crystalline Silica Focus Group as part of its National Steps Network.
That work is being coordinated by the American Petroleum Institute.

		Nevertheless, it is our view that significant action will happen only
with a more protective rule in place.  Cooperation occurs but we can't
depend upon cooperation alone.  We need the stick that this new rule
will provide regulators to ensure that rights of all workers to a safe
and healthy workplace are protected.

		In addition to its moral interest, however, the community has a
financial interest in preventing long-term disabilities.  They're
expensive to both individual workers and to the safety net intended to
shield them from disaster.  Wyoming's occupational epidemiologist, Max
Sewell, has written that, "long-term disabilities are especially
important from an individual perspective because they represent both
significant medical costs as well as disability wage replacement.  These
tend to be the most costly of all work-related injuries."

		The existing standard does not adequately protect workers.  It is
outdated and does not reflect current scientific knowledge.  Tougher PEL
standard comes much closer to recognizing the true hazard posed by
silica dust.

		We believe its adoption will ultimately help protect the thousands of
workers who toil in Wyoming's oil and gas drilling industry from silica
exposure, and we urge its adoption.  Thank you.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Thank you, Mr. Neal.  The next speaker on the agenda
is Mr. Peter Dooley.

		MR. DOOLEY:  Thank you.  Thank you, Your Honor, and OSHA Panel.

		My name is Peter Dooley.  I am a certified industrial hygienist and
certified safety professional.  I currently am the President of
LaborSafe health and safety consulting, and I'm here today representing
the National Council on Occupational Safety and Health.

		I currently serve on several national advisory committees including
NCOSH and a global management standards committee for health and safety.

		I perform health and safety evaluations, training and other health and
safety functions for a side group of companies, non-profits and
governmental agencies.

		If we can move to slide, first, next slide.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Well, right now I think that's a PowerPoint
presentation Mr. Kojola had.  Is that --

		MR. DOOLEY:  I'm not sure which.  Try one.  Yeah.  Thank you.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Okay.  And I have a printed copy of that, Mr. Dooley.
 I'll mark it as Hearing Exhibit 108 and enter it into evidence.

(Whereupon, the document referred to as Hearing Exhibit 108 was marked
and received into evidence.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  And I see the slides are numbered or the photographs
are numbered.  So --

		MR. DOOLEY:  Yes.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  -- just refer to them by number as you go along.

		MR. DOOLEY:  Yes.  Thanks, Your Honor.

		So in my career, I have been in hundreds of workplaces that have
significant silica exposure.  I personally started my working career
working as a sandblaster and then worked in a foundry and then later got
interested in the health and safety aspects of the jobs that I was
working in, and then followed by professionally being part of going and
evaluating workplaces involving significant silica exposure.

		In general, the jobs involving silica are dirty, dusty work that are
extremely high demanding in terms of physical endurance and stamina.
They are often jobs that are complicated by other health and safety
factors including heat stress.

		So some of these jobs involve work like foundry work, blasting
operations as well as many construction jobs.

		A lot of these workplaces were a part of well-known, world-class
health and safety companies, yet many others were part of very small
companies that didn't have a very structured health and safety program.

		The need for a new silica standard is very much needed.  The current
conditions, and we heard a panel last week, including Juan Ruiz who
worked in a foundry and Santiago Hernandez who worked construction work,
about the current conditions in workplaces involving silica, and there's
very, very significant exposures that exist today that we need to be
sort of raising the bar on the whole current exposure situations
regarding silica for workers of various kinds of workplaces.

		Next slide please, or here I can.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Mr. Dooley, before you go to the next slide, would
you like to describe what was shown in the first slide.  I noticed there
were two workers with face protection.

		MR. DOOLEY:  Yes.  So the photos that I'm including in the slides are
photos of a workplace, a foundry that I visited that had deplorable
health and safety conditions including silica dust.  This is a foundry
that had severe dust conditions that existed as well as other health and
safety hazards.  So all the photos will be that same workplace.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Okay.  And where is the workplace?

		MR. DOOLEY:  The workplace is in Illinois.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Okay.  Thank you, Mr. Dooley.

		MR. DOOLEY:  Uh-huh.  So, secondly, OSHA needs new tools to be
addressing the silica hazards in workplaces.  While many companies have
made significant improvements over the years, many others have not.
Some companies have simply transferred the dirtiest work to contractors
or outside vendors who continue to work without the necessary
precautions.

		At NCOSH, one of our target populations is vulnerable workers, whether
low wage workers, temporary workers, many Latino workers or other ethnic
groups that have little choice in terms of jobs and end up getting some
of the dirtiest jobs in the industry.  So many, many extremely hazardous
silica conditions continue to exist employing these most vulnerable
workers.

		Most silica exposures in my experience of being in workplaces and
evaluating health and safety conditions, most exposures happen in very
intimate exposures and without being identified by any kind of air
sampling.  So although air sampling can be an extremely definitive way
of identifying and quantifying the amount of dust, most workers know the
times when there's most exposure to silica laden dust and those
exposures are often not monitored in any kind of way.

		So we really looking for, you know, sort of the kinds of tools that
are introduced in this proposed standard to help raise the bar on silica
as a hazard for workers and make the necessary improvements that we know
that can be made to reduce worker exposure to silica dust.

		Most workers are not made aware of silica hazards in my experience.
Our profession has not elevated silica to a rightful place in the
workplace hazards that demand control.  We've seen over and over again
where workplaces will take some necessary precautions if they're
expecting an inspection or having somebody from the outside come in
their workplace, and they take a lot of effort to reduce dust, to be
doing housekeeping and cleaning up of dust levels, but until there's
that kind of incentive for it to be done, unfortunately many workplaces
are in a condition that is unhealthy and deplorable kinds of exposures
that happen.

		At NCOSH, one of our expertise is training and particularly trying to
reach out to workers who may not have gotten the quality of standards
where they might have from again a world class kind of company.  And
most workers are very much unaware of the real hazards of silica, and
most have not been shown the kinds of control technology such as wet
methods, vacuum exhausted tools to be using in their jobs.  And when
they see what could be done to reduce the dust levels, it's an ah-ha
moment of knowing how their work could be done a lot safer if they had
the tools to be using.

		Many workers have not been given sort of the most fundamental tools on
the jobs to protect themselves such as the right kind of respirators,
any kind of training or fit testing for respirators.  They're often just
handed a respirator and that's the extent of the kinds of protections
that they're given.

		So, in summary, and we submitted comments to the record beforehand,
but some of the main points that we wanted to just emphasize is, one,
this whole issue about the hierarchy of controls, an extremely important
part of the OSHA proposed standard.

		To us, hierarchy of controls is the absolutely most fundamental
premise in which we make advances in workplace health and safety.  To
rely on other methods such as personal protective equipment or various
ways of not engineering and controlling the substance at the source,
would be a really huge problem for us because the principle of really
trying to reduce the controls with the most effective methods is
extremely important.

		The fact that the OSHA proposal has a multi-pronged component,
including medical surveillance, things like Table 1 which describe the
work methods that could be done in construction operations, we believe
is a very significant advance in this proposed standard that would go a
long way to reducing worker exposure, again to emphasize the limitations
of air sampling.  As a certified industrial hygienist, I can tell you
that 99 percent of my work in the field has nothing to do with air
sampling.  It's basically evaluating conditions, knowing what kind of
products are being used, and one of the employers on a previous panel
last week described their policy as no dust equals no silica, and we
very much believe that an emphasis on reducing dust and therefore
reducing silica exposure is a very important principle that we could be
using to be helping reduce silica exposure in all industries.

		We believe there should be a band of silica in blasting operations.
This has been done in other countries as well as even some armed forces
departments have taken this precaution.  And, again, it goes along with
the hierarchy of controls principle.

		The education and training requirements which Bill Kojola has
addressed already, again we see that as a very, very -- at the core of
any kind of standard.  The more that we can be increasing the knowledge
of the workers who do this work, the better control that will be seen
throughout the industries.

		And that vulnerable workers need the protection of a stronger
standard.  And, you know, often we think about OSHA standards as just
helping OSHA enforce their standard.  Well, in reality, it's really
about workers knowing what their rights are, knowing what the standard
requires and having that be a mechanism of enforcement in the workplace.

		And, lastly, we believe that in terms of respirators, when respirators
are required, we believe that workers should be able to request and
demand a powered air-purifying respirator as is in like the asbestos
standard because powered air-purifying respirators can be, and they're
not perfect, but they can be much more comfortable, and they can also be
somewhat addressing the issues with heat stress related to respirator
use.  So we believe that they provide more protection factors and
there's a lot of new technology of respirators out there, and we believe
that that could utilized to have more effective control.

		So that's my testimony and thank you.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Thank you very much, Mr. Dooley.  The agenda notes
that there's one additional individual to be added to the panel.  That
person is Javier Garcia Hernandez.  Mr. Hernandez, if you're ready, go
ahead and proceed.

		MR. GARCIA HERNANDEZ:  Thank you.  My name is Javier Garcia Hernandez.
 I am here with the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health.
 I'd like to thank you for allowing me to testify.  I currently have two
jobs.  I work as a construction worker, helping organize a worker
construction collective coop, and I also work as a trainer, as an
outreach OSHA trainer.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Mr. Hernandez, if you back the microphone up a little
bit.  Thank you.

		MR. GARCIA HERNANDEZ:  I'm here to share my experience as a long time
construction worker and I'm also here to share my experience as a
outreach OSHA trainer and community organizer.

		I work in Philadelphia.  I currently work in Philadelphia.  I'm
performing trainings for small non-profits called the Philadelphia Area
Project on Occupational Safety and Health, but I also work construction
in the area.  Construction is my main focus because that's how I support
myself and my family.

		I'll try to read through this note, and it might be a little difficult
here.

		My experience as a construction worker, over 15 years here in the
United States, and I also worked as a construction worker in Mexico,
I've been a member of a laborers union for years, about eight years and
after that, I work for non-union companies.

		My experience with the silica dust and other dust in the construction
field is there isn't much to protect us.  I was here on the hearing last
Thursday and Judge Solomon, when my colleagues testify, all immigrants
like myself, he mentioned in Spanish, he asked, when they were leaving,
he said good luck.  In Spanish he said buena suerte, and my very first
thought was, well, they are going to need it.  They really are going to
need it.

		We see very little of enforcement and I say that as a trainer but I
also say that a construction worker.  And I'm reminded of this every
morning when I get up, I feel the urgency to spit and clear my throat,
gargle to clear my throat, the phlegm on my chest and I cannot stop from
thinking about that it's related to dust, silica dust.

		Even union employers, I work as a pipelayer for a long time, laying
pipes in trenches, I would go in the trench and there is only few times
that I remember wearing a paper mask.  I would get in the trench to cut
the pipes, the existing pipes to make new connections to pipes, and the
dust would be all over in that trench with no air exhaust fans.  Sure,
it only took 10 minutes or 20 minutes at the most to cut a pipe, but
that was 20 minutes that I was breathing that dust and the fumes, right.
 And ever since that I feel I have this chronic attack in the mornings
or sometimes at night when I feel like I have to spit.

		Another, to connect to the silica dust, my uncle and I immigrated
together from Mexico about 15 years ago.  About five years ago, he was
ill and he decided to go back home to retire, and three months after he
had been home, he left because he had a pain on his side, and three
months after, he said he was going to go home and retired, he had enough
of working.  We work in construction, we work in building, and when we
left the building every day, we were all dusty, our clothes.  The next
morning we cannot wear the same clothes because they would itch.

		But, anyway, after the three months that he left, he passed away of
cancer.  None of us really knew what type of cancer it was because we
were from a rural community in Mexico where we believe that everything
happens to us is God's will, it was meant to be.  Really I don't think
today, knowing what I know about the OSHA standards, about OSHA, I don't
think it was meant to be.  He could have been protected, better
protected.

		And that's the same message that I get from workers.  Without having
the OSHA standards, without having stronger protections, we have to
defend for ourselves.

		One of the messages that I get from workers, and among my trainings,
of the hundreds of trainings that I have done, I'm not snitching.
That's the most common word that I get from workers, I'm not snitching.
I won't ask for protections because I'm afraid that I'll get fired.  I'm
afraid that I'll get terminated.  It is an expression to keep a job.

		That's the message I get from my coworkers and from many of the
workers that I have trained.  They're desperate to have a job and again
in my experience as a construction worker, sometimes I feel that it is a
high price to pay, that we have to pay with our health, right, and I
think we can do better.

		When I think about the OSHA standards, the standard for silica, to
make it stronger, I think of if in the wintertime, we were asked to wear
a T-shirt when we could be wearing a jacket.  That's what this proposal
reminds me.  Why should we settle for less when we could be more better
protected?

		As a construction worker, I can honestly tell you not only here in
Washington, Philadelphia, I lived in Seattle for many years.  You go to
a construction site, and you will see that most employers are not
following the standards.  You will see workers covered in dust all over
the place.  This is some of the crisis besides the enforcement.  So at
the very least we could have a better protection to protect our brothers
and sisters.

		I realize every day, and I apologize for the emotion, but I really do
think we can do better.  That's all I have to say.  Thank you.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Thank you very much for your testimony,
Mr. Hernandez.

		Next on the agenda is the Wisconsin Coalition for Occupational Safety
and Health represented by Allen Schultz and James Schultz.  Allen
Schultz is first on the agenda.

		Mr. Schultz, I have a written copy of your testimony, and I'm going
to mark that as Hearing Exhibit 109 and introduce it into evidence.

(Whereupon, the document referred to as Hearing Exhibit 109 was marked
and received in evidence.)

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Also, will you be using the slide presentation during
your testimony?

		MR. A. SCHULTZ:  I'll leave that for my son to use that part of it --

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Okay.  That's fine.

		MR. A. SCHULTZ:  -- whenever he chooses to.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  I'll mark that for as Hearing Exhibit 110.

(Whereupon, the document referred to as Hearing Exhibit 110 was marked
and entered into evidence.)

		MR. A. SCHULTZ:  Much of it is about the same location.  So he may
decide to show some early, I don't know.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Okay.  That's fine.  You can go ahead and proceed,
Mr. Schultz.

		MR. A. SCHULTZ:  Thank you, sir.

		I guess I'll start at the beginning.  There's so much I could say
about this subject.  My name is Allen R. Schultz.  I'm a retired United
Steelworkers' member from Waukesha, Wisconsin.

		I have 40 years of experience in all types of foundries from aluminum
foundries to various grades of aluminum and cast iron foundries to
stainless steel foundries.  I've had all kind of jobs starting with
cleaning up, shoveling sand and dust and iron chips from around running
machines that I could be a foot away and I couldn't see what I was
doing.  I could just hear the screeching of the machines running.

		One machine, in fact, when I was brand new on the job, down in one of
the basements, it was like a foot, foot and a half between the wall and
the machine and I had to get in there and keep that clean or the machine
would plug up.  It grabbed my shovel.  They had warned me.  Stay away
from the machine, but it was so dusty you couldn't see the machine even
though you were only a foot and a half away from it.  You could only
hear it.

		It grabbed my shovel, and the shovel had gone into the dust.  I don't
know what happened to it.  I had to follow my way out of the hole back
upstairs to get a new shovel.  I didn't want to take a chance on getting
caught in the machine looking for that shovel.

		Anywhere from the basements, sub-basements, in the crawl spaces around
the machines, we had to keep those clean, up into the towers.

		The foundries, you may not be familiar, many of them operate on the
principal of gravity.  It helps a lot.  They have bucket elevators that
start by lifting the sand way up to the top of these big towers where
the sand bins are and then gravity feeds them down through the various
machines to convert the sand into proper molding material.

		I've had many jobs in the foundries.  I was a core maker.  I was a
molder, melt furnace repairman, quality control man, the head shipper.
I also did special projects.  I had to be cleared by the FBI for this
during the Vietnam War.  We made a  -- process with lost wax and lost
foam cores to make extremely precision materials for the Army.

		I don't know what they all entailed, but I know that we had a
government inspector that watched us each day to make sure we didn't
take any of these secret things out.  We had to turn in all our
notebooks.  We didn't have adding machines in those days.  We had
formulas we had to follow, and we had to write them all down in a
notebook and hand everything into them and he'd lock them up in a big
safe, and then the next morning, we'd sit at our workbenches until he'd
come back in and give us all of our materials.  I guess that's off the
point.

		My last few years, I've been working in a machine shop where they
machine iron castings.

		My second foundry, I started at Grady's.  That was the worst place.
It's unimaginable.  I couldn't explain it so that you would really
comprehend how bad it was.

		The second foundry I worked in with my stepfather at Waukesha Foundry.
 He had worked there since World War II, and his last 10 years there, he
was a sandblast operator where he had to go inside the cabinet where the
castings were hanging inside and going with this gun with a hose on it
that would blast sand out at the castings to clean them off, and he
could get a respirator if he wished.

		But things that people don't seem to understand, a foundry is a very,
very hot place and the foundries that I worked in, generally except in
the coldest part of the winter, by the time you got your clothes changed
into your work clothes, in the locker room, your work clothes that you
were putting on were all soaking wet with sweat.  When you would go out
into the shop, you'd kind of walk around funny because you were full of
sweat until you got caked with dust.  It was a different kind of
environment.

		But, anyways, for his last 10 years there, just before he retired, he
was having more and more trouble breathing and, in fact, he only lived
about a year after he finally did manage to get a retirement.  They put
him on the easiest, cleanest jobs the last year or so that he was there
so he could make his 30 years so that his family could get the benefits.
 Everybody knew he was dying, get the benefits of his retirement.  It
was really very painful to watch him that last year as you could see him
going down.  He had been a big farm boy up in northern Wisconsin before
he started in the foundry, big and strong and that's why they take those
kind of guys in the foundry.  They needed strong workers.

		But anyways, the last year especially, he was having a hard time
breathing, and he was working really hard, trying to get breath and now
they have oxygen bottles that might prolong you a little longer I guess.
 But he had several heart attacks just from trying to work so hard,
trying to get breath and the last heart attack, he didn't survive.  So I
supposed technically you could say that he didn't die from all the sand
that he inhaled.  He died from a heart attack, but he wouldn't have had
that heart attack if he hadn't been breathing all that sand.

		And the respirators they usually had down here because they were so
sweaty, that he couldn't breath through them.  Within a few minutes,
they'd be soaking wet with sweat and they'd get caked with dust and then
there would be no air coming through.  So he'd wear the respirator
around his neck if he had a respirator.  Usually he didn't bother
because you couldn't use them.

		Anyways, it was a very sad thing for my mother and I to watch him go
that way, suffering so much before he finally died.

		From there I moved over to International Harvester.  Shortly after I
started working there, I had some foundry experience.  So the union
asked me if I would go to school to be their first union safety
representative.  OSHA was getting going pretty good then, and they were
starting to bring out new rules.  The union thought that they should
have somebody trained in safety.  They approached the company and the
company and union agreed that they would split the expenses for training
me.  I was the last one that I'm aware of that the company ever paid for
training on the union side.

		They had several of their own.  The first person that they had for a
safety expert was one of the security guards.  Once a month, they'd give
him a white jumpsuit like you see painters put on, and he had white
gloves, and he'd go around and he didn't know anything about safety.  He
would feel on the window sills or on top of the cabinets or on top of
the soda machines in the lunchroom to see how much dust was up there,
and if there was a lot of dust, if he could wipe it off and see it
falling, then he'd put that on his report.

		Some of the safety people that the company hired after that were
conscientious and the company would let them be, and many of them were
hired because they weren't that conscientious to be truthful about it.

		I noticed as the time was going on that it wasn't just the older
generations that I was replacing who were having lots of trouble
breathing and dying young, but the people I was working with were having
more and more trouble breathing and we were the younger generation
supposedly, and it was much cleaner than what it had been for the
generation before us.

		We had been installing all new high-speed modern machinery to get away
from so much physical labor compared to what it had been.

		Anyways, I convinced the company and the union, since many of the
people in the office had originally been working in the foundry at some
point in the careers and worked their way into the office, that's the
way it used to be in the old days before everybody had to be college
educated to work in the office, so the company and the union agreed that
we would have, I've forgotten the name of the company, but they had
mobile x-ray machines.  They would come right into the plant, into the
company yard, and we x-rayed all the employees that wished to be
x-rayed, including all the management people and office people.  And I
know because I escorted them when it was their turn in and out from
their various workplaces to wherever they needed to be for their x-rays
and then back again.

		And a lot of the office people were surprised, they thought, because
they were working in the office, they were no longer in danger.  They
didn't realize it only takes a few flakes of this tiny dust to start
this process.  It just takes many years for it to get around to killing
you.  Many of them had already had silicosis.  We had asbestos and
silicosis poisoning in our foundry, both of them.

		I never was able to get the exact numbers from the company, but I know
that many of the people when I escorted them out and when it was slow
times, the gentleman would show me the x-rays and told me how to read
them.  I know there was many, many people there that had silica in their
lungs as well as asbestos.  I have both in my lungs.

		I'm lucky being a maintenance guy.  I guess I'm supposed to say I'm a
millwright.  I don't know if I mentioned that or not.  My job was
basically a high floating mechanic.  I'd go around and keep all the
machinery running.

		Since I was the safety guy, I was involved a lot with keeping the
various safety systems operating as close as we could to the way they're
designed.  I know a lot about how they're designed and how we tried to
keep them working right.  We always seemed to be out of the right parts
to keep them working.

		Where was I?  We had some original old baghouses, very tiny,
inefficient little things and OSHA came in a number of times as well as
the state, I forgot the name for the state organization, safety
organization, but the company would argue and debate and they would
eventually -- they would always be beyond the limits for pollution for
the workers and all this, even though they did their best to try to
distract the -- like, for instance, I know many times the OSHA worker
was to come to inspect, and the company would not let them in that day.
They would have to come back the next day, and then there would be 24
hours of everybody cleaning up.  They put the very cleanest jobs on the
machinery.  They knew which ones were the filthiest and the dustiest,
and which ones were the cleanest.  They'd change all the work for the
next day so that it would be as clean as possible.  And they'd have
everybody staying over their shifts to cleanup everything, make it look
as good as they could.

		And then sometimes if they didn't get time to do that, they'd ask the
OSHA inspector specifically what he wanted to see, and he's say such and
such a machine in foundry 3 or machine shop or whatever.  They'd walk
them way around the outside of the building to the closest gate to get
into that part of the facility, and they'd let them in to see that, and
then they'd walk them back out and way around, back around to the front
office door.  They wouldn't let them see the rest of the facility if he
didn't ask for it.

		We had rotating management and some of them were better and some of
them were worse from the worker perspective.  Some of them did actually
care as much as they were allowed to try to make things better for the
worker and the company.

		Often the company would get fines but they would bargain them down
over the weeks, months, whatever, down to a couple hundred dollars,
maybe $1,000 and the rest of the fine, they would agree that they would
put it into repair and maintenance of the various safety equipment but
we never seemed to have enough money to buy the filters, get the repairs
for the piping and all those kind of things.

		I could go on with a hundred differences of my experience of the bad
working conditions that we had to put up with.

		You just have to keep in mind that these respirators might work well
in a normal place that you work at like this, where the temperature is
moderate, but in a foundry where it's very hot on a good day, and on a
summer day it can be 130, 135, and that's not counting around the
furnaces where my son worked part of the time, just out in the foundry.
It was extremely hot.  You're soaking wet with sweat, and with all the
dust, it would cake up your respirator and you couldn't be running to
the office.  They only wanted to give you one a day.  What did you do
with it?  Did you get it dirty?  Well, of course, you got it dirty.  It
sucked in all that dust.  You couldn't breathe through it.  So you'd
have to take it off.

		At the end, they started getting these forced air helmets that looked
like space helmets that they had in a couple areas to try them for a
number of years.  They worked pretty good as long as they were kept
clean and operating properly and the machine worked good, but they
wouldn't expand them to the people that needed them the worst out in the
foundry where it was the hottest.  They used them in the relatively
cleaner area where they're just grinding on the castings.

		I'm kind of bouncing around here.  I guess this is --

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Mr. Schultz, I don't want to cut you off, but I want
to make sure we have enough time for your son's testimony as well.

		MR. A. SCHULTZ:  Sure.  I'll finish up with a couple of things.

		Something that people don't realize, even in a foundry, they don't
think about this, but you get your clothes so dirty with this silica
dust and asbestos, and then you take the stuff home and you clean it,
and then it gets in the washing machine, and the filters in the washing
machine don't get rid of all this stuff.  It goes throughout the family
wash, and then your children and your families also get exposed to this
stuff.

		I would like to see something that would require that the companies,
if you're going to be working around dusty conditions, they would be
responsible for taking care of cleaning your work clothing and all this.
 They would be required to do that, that you wouldn't get taking
anything out of your work area that could possibly hurt other people.  I
don't think that's been mentioned by anybody but that's very important.

		Thank you very much.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Thank you, Mr. Schultz.  Next on the agenda is
Mr. James Schultz.

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  Thank you.  Good morning.  My name is James Schultz,
and I am appearing on behalf of the Wisconsin Committee on Occupational
Safety and Health, its membership, and the workers from across
Wisconsin, both those that have representation in the workplace and
those that don't.

		I'm also here today as a worker directly exposed to silica on a daily
basis for over 15 years, and a family member of a worker exposed to
silica on a daily basis and at much higher rates than I was.  I have
also had relatives in my family that have died from silica-related
diseases as have a number of my coworkers that I knew and I still know
workers that are coming down with silicosis even today.

		I am currently serving on WisCOSH's Executive Board as well as oversee
their outreach and training programs.  I also interact directly with
workers that come to and employers that have questions about workplace
issues regarding safety and health, and I am a safety consultant for the
Black Eagle Construction Company.  I'm an OSHA authorized outreach
trainer for construction, and a former United Steelworkers Local 3740
bargaining and grievance committee member and as a safety deputy for
Navistar Waukesha Foundry facility.

		Over the course of my career, I've been in hundreds of workplaces that
range from businesses with 3 or 4 workers to facilities with well over
1,000 workers.  As a youth, my first jobs were on neighboring farms and
ranches by our house that we built.  From there, I went on to work in
the food service industries and hospitality industries for more than 20
years, and I spent more than 15 years working in a foundry where I
worked nearly every job classification within that facility over the
course of my time there.

		Along the way, I also worked construction jobs, both union and
non-union, in small printer shops and in spice mixing and packaging
facilities as well as many other part-time and seasonal jobs.

		Today I will speak mainly about my experience in the foundry as that
was the longest continuous job where I had direct exposure to silica.

		I began my foundry career in the core room where silica sand was mixed
with a chemical binder that is then blown down into a mold to shape the
core and it then has a gas passed through it at a high pressure to kind
of set the binders and the sand in the shape that it needs.  Cores are
put inside of molds to create an open space in the iron so that you
don't have to drill holes and things through it and sometimes you can't
actually drill the shapes you need.  So you need the core there to keep
the iron out of certain areas.  And like the sand used in the molding,
these cores are made out of silica sand.

		Some of these cores were in areas that needed to have special dips put
into them so that they could withstand the high temperatures as they
needed to last longer.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Mr. Schultz, I think your father just put a
photograph in.  That's the first one.

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  This is just outside of the core room area where you
can see boxes and boxes of cores stacked up.  They also had a lot of
shelving that also held cores and basically they were running these
cores, making these cores on a one day or two day ahead basis.  There
were some cores that needed to sit for three or four days but most of
these cores were made and then used right away, and even still they have
a lot of this here, so you can see that there's a lot of silica sand in
use on a daily basis.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  And for the record, the slide caption is east end of
the core room area facing south.

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  Correct.  And in the background you can see a
sweeping machine that is actively working.  This is during the second
shift at down shift, and there's still quite a bit of dust in the air as
you can see as well as on the ground you can see the path that the
sweeper took through there and how much was left and how much is in the
air.

		Our core machines were fed by an overhead mobile mixing platform that
mixed the sand and the binder on an individual machine basis as
different machines would be running different cores for different jobs
at the same time.

		The sand was fed from several 40-foot silos just outside the core room
building.  These transport pipes and the mixing platform often leaked
sand.  As you're transporting this quantity of sand through these pipes
on a nearly continuous basis, you're basically sanding away the inside
of the pipe to the outside, and so there was constantly leaks both
outside and inside the building that workers would have to go and
cleanup besides their work areas.

		There were also several older core machines that made specialized
cores that used a different binder, and they were set by direct heat
flame.  Additionally, all the patterns used to form the cores were
cleaned by sandblasting them clean with silica sand.  Like the rest of
the facility, the areas around the core machines were cleaned up by
using high pressure airlines to blow the sand off the machines and out
of the work area into the aisle where the sweeper would come through and
drive by sweeping up sand off the floor.  The sweeper always left a
plume of dust behind it that often took 15 to 20 minutes to settle.

		When I left the core room department, I went to the soft iron
department, and worked along the knockoff lines which is an area where
we would separate the casting from the part of the metal that was called
the screw and the runner which actually would get the iron from the
outside from the ladle into the casting to shape it.  This was a very
hot and very dusty area.  We had to stand along a long flat table that
would shake to move the castings along.  So they would often come
through with sand still on the casting as well as the sand that had
fallen off from around it, and it would be constantly putting that dust
back up into the air the entire time.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  And for the record, the next slide is captioned soft
iron department --

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  Right.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  -- and I think that's what you're describing now.

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  Yes.  Although this doesn't actually show the
knockoff line.  It was just too dark and dusty in there to get any
pictures that would show up.  Off to the left side here, is where we go
to the knockoff lines.  So this dust here has filtered over to an area
where, you know, 50 to 75 feet away from the knockoff lines, and there's
still this quantity of dust in the air not far from where the workers
are directly working with it.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Is that the area in the direction of the foreman's
office?

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  The foreman's office was the only enclosed area in
that place.  They had minimal filtering for the foremen to sit in up
there.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  So it would be in the opposite direction --

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  Right.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  -- where it says knockoff and shot blaster.

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  Yes.

		MR. A. SCHULTZ:  One thing, at least one thing, the foreman had air
conditioning.  It would probably be below 100 in his office.

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  Along the way from the cooling line rooms, from the
molding machines, the molds would bounce along these long shaker lines
with the intent of separating the casting from the majority of the
silica sand mold that it was poured in.  But even with that, much of the
sand remained on the line all the way to the knockoff lines.

		The molds were poured at temperatures between 2,550 degrees Fahrenheit
and 2,685 degrees Fahrenheit depending on what the job called for and
what type of iron they were making.

		By the time they got to us, they may have cooled down to somewhere
between 750 degrees Fahrenheit and 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.  The sand
that arrived along with the castings would normally be an inch or two
deep but at times it might be four or five inches deep and there were
oftentimes, depending on the large jobs, it may overflow the tables and
fall on the floor and kind of bury the floor that you were working in,
and this would be sand that itself is around 1,000 degree or so also and
very much baked.

		You could tell the parts of the sand that were closest to the iron
because they were baked back white.  They had kind of gotten rid of the
binder that was used to hold the sand together in the mold, but it
constantly kept sand in the air, dust in the air around us.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  The next slide shown here is captioned normal three
molding machines running, and it shows a good amount of dust.

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  Yes.  This is -- you can't even really see the
molding machine down there, but this is while we had three molding
machines in the plant at this time, and this would be while three of
them were working.  So it's just actually outside the melt deck area and
you can't even see down to the first molding machine which is about 85,
90 feet away from where that picture was taken.

		MR. A. SCHULTZ:  I might mention that if they know OSHA's coming in
the next day, it doesn't look like that the next day.

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  Right.  The separated castings will continue along
this shaker line past us.  They would actually merge all three molding
lines together.  Two molding lines would come out on one wall and those
would be set up to a center line where the third molding machine would
then bring in their castings and mix together.  So what the folks down
on the first line couldn't separate from their screw and runner, would
get sent up to a second chance on the other line which had more casting
coming through to be sent, and from there, they would go down the line
to the shop blast machines which were all in that same area and then
sent up around to a sorting belt for the chippers and the grinders to
get the castings from there.

		So all of these areas were directly with each other.  They were not
separated from each.  This dust in the workplace exposed all of these
workers to that silica dust.

		I also worked on several of the molding machines while I was there.
They combined the silica sand with binders and rammed them into patterns
and a pouring cup would be drilled in the top to facilitate the pouring
of the iron and most of this iron was poured by hand by workers having
thousand pound ladles pouring this iron, 25 to 2700 degrees, and they'd
be pouring it by hand into each of these molds as they would go past.

		Eventually we did get a couple of automatic pouring machines which
were basically a capped furnace where you put the molten iron in the one
side, it would pressurize it and pour it directly into the mold on the
other side but they were not any less dust inducing than the hand
pouring.  It just required fewer workers to be so directly close to it.

		Along with these molding machines, you had to work in the area where
this sand was being rammed into the molds, but you would also, for most
jobs, have to place one of these cores or sometimes more than one of
these cores inside of there, and you would also have to check the top
part of the mold because they would have them separated to see if there
was any sand occlusions on there, something that didn't work out right,
so you could scrap it.  And to scrap it, you would wait until they got
close at the end of your line, and then you'd have to throw some more
white silica sand on the top of it to mark it so that the people pouring
them would know that you shouldn't pour that one.  So you were directly
being exposed to silica in a number of different ways on these jobs.

		I worked both in a core setter position and as an iron pourer.  These
molding machines ran at a rate of 200 to 300 molds per hour for the
smaller machines, and 180 to 250 molds per hour with the larger machine.

		At that rate, there was a constant drizzle of sand falling down from
above, from the drill, cutting the pouring cups as well as the sand and
dust in the air from the molders up above the molding machine preparing
the sand to be used by the molding machines.

		The mixer for the two smaller molding machines was overhead of the
molding machines and the third molding machine was in a separate foundry
area and had its own molder to mix the sand, and as you can see, both
the molding machine lines and the iron pouring lines were constantly
engulfed in smoke and falling sand.

		I also worked as a furnace operator for several years and during that
time, my normal assignment was to do the repairs on the new auto pour
machines, the auto pour furnaces, that were installed one and then
eventually two of the molding lines.  This was daily maintenance and
repair of the machine, which meant that I worked directly on that
furnace while it had iron in it shortly after it finished pouring iron
for its production shift, and I worked directly with the refractory
materials.  I would have to use jackhammers and chisels to get the slag
and iron build up off of the machine so that you could continue to have
a good spout to pour the new iron into as well as allow it to maintain
the correct pressure within the machine to do the job correctly.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  The current photograph shown on the screen is the
normal two molding machines running, and it shows melt furnaces and the
H2 molding line.

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  Correct.  So, as you can see, with only two of the
three machines running, it was slightly better in there.  You can see,
that fork truck would have been parked in the same place in the last
picture, and there are three furnaces and a holding furnace where we
would take the iron out of the melting furnaces to put it into the
holding furnace to kind of stabilize and get a consistent chemistry in
the metal and then right past that, about 15, 20 feet from there is
where the next molding machine would be at.  They were in very close
proximity.

		All of the workers in all of these areas were exposed to this kind of
dust, and these are recent pictures.  I left the facility slightly over
10 years ago, but these pictures are within the last two months.  So
this is current conditions that these workers are being exposed to on a
daily basis and oftentimes workers work an 8½ or 9 hour shift, but
they're often asked to work 12 or 16 and 6 and 7 days a week.  So this
is a fairly continuous exposure to this type of hazard that these
workers are facing.

		Another one of the jobs would be, on a semi-regular basis, a couple of
times a year, unless they could get away with it, if they took care of
them well, they would have to reline these furnaces which would mean
knocking them down, taking all that refractory out and repacking it with
new refractory so that they would operate properly and not have to worry
about burning through the bottom and causing a serious incident from
happening.

		When these workers did these relines of these furnaces, they would
climb up out of these furnaces and they would be covered in so much of
the refractory dust that they looked like somebody had literally taken
them and dipped them in a big bottle of whiteout, whether they're
African American or Latino or Caucasian, they all came out looking about
as white as this piece of paper here from head to toe.

		It would make its way under -- many of them would wear jumpsuits.  A
few of them would have suits similar to like you would use for asbestos
where they had the elasticized cuffs and stuff, but it will still go
through all that to their clothes underneath even still.

		I worked on the cleanup crew for a while which had to go around and
suck up the sand that spilled over the sides of these sand belts and
shaker lines that would move the castings down the line, and oftentimes
the binder would not be properly mixed in the sand and so when you would
go to pour it either from the hand pouring or from the auto pouring
machines, it would break through the bottom of the mold and then you
would have a bunch of sand and iron that would have to get cleaned up
before the next shift could come through because sometimes if the molder
wasn't working right, you might have a lot of them and you could
literally not get the line to move down because there was too much sand
piled up in that area, and it would stop production.

		And when we sucked up sand, we would use a vacuum hose that would be
six to eight inches in diameter, and it would still take the full
eight-hour shift and you could never get all of the sand up off the
floor.  There was so much silica sand spilled everywhere.  All you could
do was try and keep the rollers and the machines free to continue
working and try and keep that sand sucked up, and if for some reason you
were able to get a little ahead and maybe cleanup some of the rest of
the sand that was everywhere, but most of it was just cleaning up the
sand that would allow the machines to continue to operate.

		For a while as I recovered from a serious workplace injury, I worked
as a janitor or building maintenance worker.  I worked throughout the
facility and the sand and the dust was everywhere.  In the lunch rooms,
in the bathrooms, in the locker rooms, and in the offices.  It even made
its way over to the machine shops and the truck shop and the maintenance
areas which were separate buildings, not located close to the production
area.

		In fact, this molding facility covered approximately a square mile of
acreage in town, and most of the molding machines and the core room were
on one end, and the machine shops and the maintenance areas were at the
far other end of the facility, but the sand and the dust would still
make its way across that vast expanse.  Certainly it wasn't as
concentrated there as it was down in the production areas, but it was
still present and exposing the workers to it.

		So I'd like to talk a little bit about the proposed rulemaking.  As a
worker representative, I am heartened to see that OSHA is taking on the
silica health hazard.  I have been touched by silica-related death in my
family and hear from workers often and the workers' families that have
been exposed to it as well.

		I was recently contacted by a gentleman that I worked with for many
years and had retired not long ago.  He called me up to get some
information on silica and what it was, as he had just been told that he
had silicosis.  He was not told by his doctor but, in fact, he was told
by the surgeon that had been employed to remove some masses from his
throat.  After the surgery, the surgeon informed him that it was, in
fact, silicosis that he had.

		And, after that, we had to try and help him work through the workers'
comp system to file a claim as he had been retired.  So there's a lot of
paperwork to deal with trying to prove that he was exposed to this on
the job even though he had the surgeon telling him that this was
obviously a work-related issue.  He is still alive.  We don't know what
his prognosis is at this time, whether they were able to get all of it
and whether any of it will come back or not.

		I have known him to be a fairly upbeat person the entire time I've
known him, but this news seems to have shaken him greatly.  He is not
quite as carefree as I always knew him to be.  He is much more sullen
than he was before his future is very uncertain.  He worked a long time,
many hours over many years to try and get a retirement that he would be
able to take care of his family and he's now not sure how long he's
going to last.

		I've known a number of other workers from this facility that lived a
year or two years after they retired.  There were also a number of them
that while I was there died just before they retired or died after they
retired but before they received their first or second retirement check.

		Silicosis is a very real reality for workers in the foundry industry.
No one should have to spend their final years fighting to be able to
breathe and stay alive.

		I could go on today in much more depth in this discussion but I will
try to speak on just a few of the items raised in the proposal.

		The good things that I have seen in this proposal is that I'm glad to
see that the old methods for determining exposure levels which were
difficult to understand or calculated have been eliminated in favor of a
set permissible exposure limit.  I'm glad that it is much lower than
what was previously acceptable but would be in favor of an even further
reduction to the lower level that has been proposed in this proposal
we're looking at.

		I'm glad to see that the proposed exposure assessment requires testing
on all shifts and each job as oftentimes I witnessed workplace
monitoring take place on downshifts or while light production jobs were
run as well as other areas that weren't tested at all because it was not
considered to be part of their hazard in that workplace even though, as
the pictures have shown, they were clearly being exposed even if they
weren't working directly on those machines.

		I'm also heartened to see that the proposal mandates that the employer
provide protective clothing and equipment at no cost to the observers
that are doing the observation and the monitoring of the hazards in the
workplace.

		I'm glad that this proposal has great emphasis on instituting
engineering controls and work practices over PPE and that it excludes
job rotations as a means of reducing worker exposure.

		Furthermore, the requirement for employers to provide protective work
clothing to workers where there is a potential for work clothing to be
grossly contaminated is welcome, and something I fought for while
working in the foundry as nearly every worker would fall in that
category.  I feel that the clothing should not need to be grossly
contaminated in order to receive this protection, and it should include
shoes, boots, jackets, and other clothing worn while working in these
regulated areas.

		The bad parts about this proposal is I believe that the periodic
medical examine should be available more often than every three years.
Rather than being based solely on a time interval, it should also be
available whenever a worker is experiencing symptoms of exposure, and I
also feel that it should be available to these workers even after
they've left this type of work environment as it takes a long time for
silicosis and these other diseases to manifest.  They may not know until
they've retired that they have silicosis and many of them may not check
it out early on when they first have a feeling that something is wrong
and may not actually go and find out about it until it's very well
advanced.

		As a worker in this facility, I often was required to wear a
respirator.  While I was working as a furnace operator, I was able to
get them to give me a PAPR type respirator but in other areas, they
refused to provide that for me, and I think that myself and a number of
other workers there had facial hair and some of them were willing to
shave.  Some of us had religious reasons why we would not, and we would
ask for alternative respirator protection than what they were providing
us.

		And oftentimes we don't know that they were giving us the correct type
of respirator for what we were working in anyway, as we often did not
see the boxes.  They would often have the bags of respirators sitting
out on the counter where it was open and exposed to the same things we
were being exposed to.  So when you put the respirator on, sometimes
they would be upside down.  So it would have collected a bunch of dust,
and other times it would be face up and it would just settle on the top
of it, but you would still be sucking in the hazard even though you were
supposed to be being protected from it.

		I see no provision for classifying the work clothes worn in a
regulated area as hazardous materials requiring special or separate
storage and treatment by the employer or the laundries cleaning the
clothes.  As with asbestos, there should be some safe means for workers
to clean themselves and change into non-contaminated clothing before and
after their work shift.

		Currently in the state of Wisconsin, we're among the leading areas in
the country with hydraulic fracking taking place, and as Governor Walker
has been working diligently to dismantle the environmental protections
in our state, it will only increase and place even greater workers in
harms way due to their exposure to silica in this area as well.

		So I thank you for having us here, and I thank you for doing what
you're doing.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Thank you very much, Mr. Schultz.

		Two things.  You have a written copy of your testimony.  If you'd like
to offer that as an exhibit, you can and I'll have her enter it into
evidence.

		MR. A. SCHULTZ:  Okay.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  That would be Hearing Exhibit 111.

		As I indicated before, I've marked the photographs that were up on the
screen as Hearing Exhibit 110, and that's admitted into evidence.  You
didn't mention the last slide that's up, if you want to describe it.

		MR. A. SCHULTZ:  This is an area on the melt deck that was not visible
in those previous pictures, but this is a furnace operator actually
transferring iron out of the holding furnace into one of the ladle
trucks.  As you can see from the light generated by the iron, the
amount of smoke and dust in the air as well in that area.  We wouldn't
see that work taking place because of the vast amount of dust in the
other pictures, but it is everywhere in this facility no matter what job
you're doing.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Okay.  Thank you, Mr. Schultz.  And do you want to
hand me that copy of your testimony.

		MR. A. SCHULTZ:  I certainly will.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  And as I said, that's marked as Hearing Exhibit 111
and admitted into the record.

(Whereupon, the document referred to as Hearing Exhibit 111 was marked
and received in evidence.)

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Thank you for your testimony.

		At this time, I'll open it up for questions.  Can I get a show of
hands?  Several.  Okay.  Ms. Trahan, if you'd like to come up and start
the questioning.  State your name and your affiliation for the record.

		MS. TRAHAN:  Thank you, Your Honor.  Chris Trahan with the Building
Trades.  Thank you all for your testimony.  I just have a few questions,
I think first for Mr. Kojola.

		There's been testimony in these hearings regarding the training on
proper use of engineering controls for construction workers.  Given your
own experience with construction in the construction industry, I was
wondering if you could explain or articulate why you think this might be
important.

		MR. KOJOLA:  Well, you know, I think it's important because it is sort
of the core measure for controlling worker exposure is having
engineering controls present on the jobsite.  In construction, where
you're using tools that grind or cut or whatever, in order to control
exposure, you could use, you know, sort of two approaches.  One is a wet
methods approach and another is using a local exhaust ventilation system
with a shroud to reduce worker exposures to their breathing zones.

		Workers need to be trained on how to use this equipment properly, how
it's supposed to function, how they're supposed to use the equipment on
a construction site and to identify when the piece of equipment is not
function properly.

		These are all sort of the key elements of controlling exposure for
construction workers on jobsites, and in the absence of a mention in the
OSHA standard, that in addition to training on work practices and
personal protective equipment, these critical engineering control
measures for the tools that construction workers use is absolutely
essential, and I think the standards should be very explicit about that.

		MS. TRAHAN:  Thank you.  And, Mr. Hernandez, I thought your testimony
was very compelling, particularly the "I'm not snitching" and "I'm
afraid to get fired" quotes.  I think a lot of our experience in
construction is the same across all sectors, but what I did want to ask
you about, you described the work you did in the trench, and that in a
very short period of time, the trench would become filled with dust.
You were cutting pipe.

		MR. GARCIA HERNANDEZ:  Uh-huh.

		MS. TRAHAN:  And this was concrete pipe.

		MR. GARCIA HERNANDEZ:  Concrete pipes.

		MS. TRAHAN:  Okay.  And what type of tool?

		MR. GARCIA HERNANDEZ:  Well, typically you use a concrete saw and when
you're down in the trench, this is a portable fuel operated concrete
tools.  We call it concrete saw with a diamond blade on it.  So you get
in that -- when you're down in the trench, there is no way -- there is a
way but we're not -- hardly anybody connects the wet saw to a hose so it
would have a wet cutting system.  So we will be cutting the concrete
pipes dry.

		MS. TRAHAN:  So it was gasoline powered.

		MR. GARCIA HERNANDEZ:  Gasoline power.

		MR. TRAHAN:  Is it also known as a chop saw?

		MR. GARCIA HERNANDEZ:  It's also known as a chop saw.

		MS. TRAHAN:  Okay.  Thank you.  And there was a water hookup but --

		MR. GARCIA HERNANDEZ:  They come with a water hookup.  They have a
hose hookup on the side but I never seen anybody use the hookup down in
the trench.  Sometimes they use the water hookup when cutting pavement,
concrete sidewalks especially but typically when the owners of the
residence or the particular workplace, they complain about dust but
hardly ever you see anybody cutting with a water connection.

		MS. TRAHAN:  Okay.  And would you know why that is?  Was water not
provided in those circumstances?

		MR. GARCIA HERNANDEZ:  Well, water can be provided.  Usually my
experience is the lack of planning.  Managers doesn't often consider or
think about that particular step.  It can be done because I have over
the years have worked with companies who have taken measures whether
because they have been cited by OSHA or because they were actually
conscious themselves, but it can be done.  The equipment comes with the
-- this particular saw, it comes with an attachment that it could have a
hose hookup to it to have water so it's running.

		MS. TRAHAN:  Okay.  Thank you very much.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Thank you, Ms. Trahan.  Next, Mr. Snyder.

		MR. SCHNEIDER:  Okay.  Scott Schneider with Laborers' Health and
Safety Fund.  That's

S-c-h-n-e-i-d-e-r.  I have a couple of questions.

		First of all, at the hearings, we've heard a number of employer
associations say, well, we don't really need a standard or new standard
because silicosis is disappearing in this country, that we're not really
seeing any more silicosis.  I don't know if you could comment on that.
Jim, I don't know.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Mr. Schultz, identify yourself for the record when
you're responding please.

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  Sure.  James Schultz from WisCOSH.  Both as a
steelworker, I'm still active with our local and the retirees and
through WisCOSH, with our outreach, we hear from workers that have
silicosis.  I still see a fair amount of them coming through the door,
people asking for information on what it is, and what they can do about
it, and how they got it, and we talk about their work history and find
out that they were working in construction, they worked in foundries or
mills.

		And, many of them have passed away although very few of them have died
directly from the silicosis but they've died from diseases or other
causes that were brought about because of the silicosis such as my step
grandfather who died of a heart attack because it was so hard for him to
breath because of the silicosis he had but the death certificate said
heart attack.  So I think there's a lot of workers out there that are
still experiencing silicosis and may never have been checked out by
their doctor because they worked in a foundry and while you work hard,
you get aches and pains and you just deal with it.  You don't go and
check it out.  Even today, young workers don't feel that way either,
that they need to go and find out why they're hurting.

		MR. SCHNEIDER:  Right.  Okay.  Thank you.  So your dad had said
something about how when they heard that there was an OSHA inspection
coming, they would clean the facility up, and it was a lot less dusty.
So were there any controls in use during in the facility or could they,
you know, turn them on or turn them off when they heard OSHA was coming
or how did that work?

		MR. A. SCHULTZ:  This is Allen Schultz.  I'm also here for WisCOSH.  I
guess I forgot to mention that.  I was there when they converted over
from the old fashioned primarily hand labor to the new automated
machinery, so they could speed things up and reduce the number of people
they needed.  And most of the machinery all came with tight fitting
hoods and they had exhaust ventilation built into them and all this.

		But very shortly that disappeared, the various conveyors and shakers
and all these different machines, they would get plugged up with sand
and/or castings.  We'd have to take all these covers off in order to get
in there to work on them, and they wanted to start production up right
away.  They didn't want all these production people standing around and
iron maybe getting cold, whatever.  So over a short period of time, they
didn't have all the proper covers and guards and air collection devices
weren't all reused.  They were set aside, and then after a little while,
they'd be in the way and they'd just get thrown away and all these
things would be running so-called naked I guess you could say.

		The manufacturers that made the machines, most of those came with all
of these things to the best of their ability at the time when they
designed them and built them.  They did have some apparatus for trying
to keep the dust contained within the machine and into the baghouses and
other collection machinery, but they just weren't maintained that way.

		But it was very easy for the company, if they knew when they were
going to get an inspection, they'd have certain jobs that were very
clean but the vast majority of them weren't, and they'd have everybody
working overnight, whatever, cleaning everything especially the main
walkways where they would try to get the OSHA inspector just to walk
down the middle where it was the cleanest and not go back behind the
machines.  There were various layers of machines.  It wasn't just one
row, and there's also machines up above.

		So they'd know which ones used the least amount of sand and which ones
did the least amount of shaking, they'd get them cleaned out and all
this, and they would run those during their perceived inspection times.

		MR. SCHNEIDER:  Okay.  Thank you.

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  James Schultz from WisCOSH.  From my experience
working in the knockoff area and the shakeout rooms, they did have water
systems installed on several areas of the shakeout lines that would keep
the dust down but they were very poorly maintained and the pipes would
break from the heat and it would take a while to get fixed.  So they'd
have it turned off for a long time but even when they had them turned
on, they didn't really have a sufficient amount.  You could tell a
definite difference in the amount of dust in the air when they were
working and if they had more of them installed along the lines and had
them better maintained, it could have reduced a lot of the dust in the
area by a significant amount.

		MR. SCHNEIDER:  Uh-huh.  Thank you.

		MR. A. SCHULTZ:  What he's talking about, I tried to get them to have
a push/pull system.  They had some suction fans in front of their work
areas that were somewhat efficient, but there was still so much dust
rolling off of these shaking conveyors.  I tried to get them to put fans
behind them and blow the dust away from them into these collection
areas, but they never wanted to invest more in that.  They didn't feel
that was necessary.  So it just stayed dusty.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  For the record, the additional comments were provided
by Allen Schultz.

		MR. A. SCHULTZ:  Sorry.

		MR. SCHNEIDER:  You sound like an industrial hygienist.  That's
exactly what they should be doing.

		MR. A. SCHULTZ:  Right.

		MR. SCHNEIDER:  Was any training provided at all in the facility about
dangers of silica or --

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  No, they never -- James Schultz speaking here.  They
never really talked to us about silica, and over the 15 years that I was
there, I know of two times where they did any kind of training on
wearing a respirator and how to properly wear it, although both times
that I was involved in that, they didn't go fully through the process.

		And there were a number of workers that told me after the thing was
done, that they could smell the different aromas coming through but they
had told them that they couldn't smell them because they could see on
the looks of their faces that that's what they wanted to hear.  So
that's what they told them but they could smell one or more of the
chemical aromas even though they had gone through the hood test and
stuff, but they didn't mandate any kind of medical exams or anything
like that.

		We talked to them about providing smaller size respirators for the
females and things like that, but that was an additional expense, and
most of the women didn't want to wear a respirator anyway, so they were
not going to bother with it, was their respond.

		MR. SCHNEIDER:  And you said that they did sampling at times, and did
they give the results to anybody or make that public or workers access
to that or did it change anything at all or --

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  James Schultz speaking.  I don't recall ever seeing
the results posted anywhere and I've been working with my local to try
and get any recent monitoring testing that they've done to see what the
levels are there now, and it's been very difficult to get that from
them.

		MR. SCHNEIDER:  Yeah.

		MR. A. SCHULTZ:  This is Allen Schultz.  I have 30 plus years
experience there, a little bit before Jim, but we had a number of times
that they did testing but they did it in such a way as to make it look
as good as possible for them.  They would possibly go and test somewhere
in the lab where they try to keep it as clean as they can or they'd test
on a downshift or quite often, most of the time, in fact, they would
hire these outside firms who they believed would give them the very best
test results.

		And I would walk around with this guy and watch.  He would put the
pickups under the collars, face them backwards instead of forwards, so
that they wouldn't get any dust or anything into them if possible.
They'd put them under their jacket.  Many of the guys wore jackets.  It
was very, very unreliable testing as far as being truthful and accurate
testing.  They did do some testing --

		MR. SCHNEIDER:  Yeah.

		MR. A. SCHULTZ:  -- but I had my hands full trying to keep them as
close to being truthful as possible, and I'd never, I can't say never,
but very seldom got to see the results and I really believe that the
results were actually doctored on the paper with a pen regardless with
what they came up.  They wrote down what they knew the company wanted
them to write down.

		MR. SCHNEIDER:  Yeah.  Well, thank you very much for your testimony
and for your work, your efforts.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Thank you, Mr. Schneider.

		Who else had questions?  Ms. Nadeau, is it?

		MS. NADEAU:  Yes.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Thank you.  Please state your name and your
affiliation for the record.

		MS. NADEAU:  I'm Liz Nadeau, and I work for the International Union of
Operating Engineers.

		In the pictures it's dark.  How often is it dark so that you're
combining the dust with the dark?

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  James Schultz.  I would say mostly 90 percent of the
time.  Even in the daytime, it's very dark in there.  Because of the
large amounts of dust that they produce there, they are constantly under
the scrutiny of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the
EPA.  So there are monitors all around our facility, and so their way of
keeping from getting cited by them was to make sure that all the windows
was closed, all the doors were closed at all times.  So it kept it very
dark in there almost all the time.

		MS. NADEAU:  I noticed that there was a ladle truck in one photo.  Is
there other heavy equipment being used in operated with the dust and the
darkness?

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  Yes.

		MS. NADEAU:  And can you name some of the other pieces of equipment?

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  Well, they have different sizes of ladle trucks.
They have a transfer ladle that would take the iron from the furnaces to
the holding furnace, and they also had like the one in there that would
take the iron from the holding furnace to the ladles to be poured into
the molds, but they also had stacker drivers for loading the castings
and the pattern molds and stuff in the shelvings.  They had other
heavy-duty fork trucks and medium-duty fork trucks.

		There were a lot of -- management would typically get around the
facility on go carts which didn't have any type of warning light or any
type of siren on there to let people know that somebody was coming.  And
there were times outside vehicles driving their trucks or cars onto the
facility because they were outside contractors working on some part of
the facility.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  For the record, that was James Schultz responding.

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  Sorry.

		MS. NADEAU:  So in terms of the proximity to the operators of the
equipment or trucks to workers, can you sort of describe where the
workers were located in relation to the heavy equipment that's being
operated in the dust and dark?

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  Sure.  James Schultz speaking.  Generally they had
lines on the ground showing where the truck lines, aisles were supposed
to go through and there might be 6 to 10 inches on either side of it
between that walk area and the wall or in this case, it would be against
the furnace where the people are expected to walk.

		Just before I left there, they did build an outside tunnel for people
to walk without being directly in that area, but they only had one or
two exits.  So you'd have to walk all the way out and then you'd still
have to walk back through the work area to get to where your work area
was because they didn't have enough access points to this protective
tunnel that they put in.

		MS. NADEAU:  Did you ever see any near misses?

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  Quite often.

		MS. NADEAU:  How often?  I mean just sort of quantify it.

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  I would say on a daily basis there would be several
near misses.  I was involved in one myself where there was some workers
walking through an area that was restricted from workers.  There was
supposed to be an iron truck delivery aisle only and workers came down
there and I managed to refrain from hitting them or spilling any iron
but it was very, very narrow.  The truck was probably three and a half,
four feet wide, and the aisleway was maybe five and a half feet wide.
So you had to go very -- right down the middle of it and they would shim
along the sides of it, turn sideways to keep from getting too close to
you, but that's why they weren't supposed to be there in the first
place.  So it happened on a very regular basis.

		MS. NADEAU:  The plumes of dust at one point you said it took 15 or 20
minutes to settle.  Now was there an effort to wait those 15 or 20
minutes so that visibility was increased before the truck or other
equipment was moved?

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  No, there was no time for that.  The sweeping
machines would run almost constantly from one area to another area and
back through.  They'd make a loop throughout the whole facility.  They
only had a couple of them and these sweeping machines had the ability to
add water to do wet sweeping but they never used it.  They had one large
one that they did that with on a rare occasion but that was up in the
machine shop, and they did that more so they could clear the slick
compounds off the ground in that area, but out in the foundry, they
always dry swept.

		MS. NADEAU:  I have a couple of questions for the gentleman from
Philadelphia if that's okay.

		I was wondering if you could name some of the -- you mentioned the
trenching job that you worked on, if you could name some of the
operations that you were involved in as a laborer.

		MR. GARCIA HERNANDEZ:  Well, we do a lot of demolition.

		MS. NADEAU:  Oh, good.

		MR. GARCIA HERNANDEZ:  If we were going to a facility, say we had to
demolish a building.  Often we did have a -- we would hook up to a fire
hydrant, right.

		MS. NADEAU:  Uh-huh.

		MR. GARCIA HERNANDEZ:  But there was not always the -- we didn't
always have a fire hydrant nearby or we often did not have enough hose
to reach the areas where we were actually working.

		Besides the concrete piping, the demolition, other areas that I have
worked I have worked as a drywaller doing drywall and you see a lot of
dust on drywall.

		MS. NADEAU:  Can we get back to the demolition for a second because
I'm --

		MR. GARCIA HERNANDEZ:  Okay.

		MS. NADEAU:  Yeah.  In terms of the type of equipment, heavy
equipment, what was being used?

		MR. GARCIA HERNANDEZ:  Well, you could use a breaker, an excavator
with a breaker attachment to it.  Even then when you have a fire hose,
at the time of, let's say you're talking down a wall from this facility,
the water hose would be here on it, but at the time of the impact, when
the wall's collapsing, it would pick up a lot of dust.

		MS. NADEAU:  Uh-huh.  And so you had operating engineers.  And how
many laborers did you have working in the crew?  So you had -- name the
people you have.

		MR. GARCIA HERNANDEZ:  We typically have one operating engineer or
two.

		MS. NADEAU:  Uh-huh.

		MR. GARCIA HERNANDEZ:  One running the excavator and the other running
the loader, the front loader.

		MS. NADEAU:  Okay.

		MR. GARCIA HERNANDEZ:  And we would have typically five laborers.  We
would have a pipelayer.  We would have two tapmen or one tapman and
another guy running around.

		MS. NADEAU:  And where were you, the laborers, in relation to the
dust, in terms of distance, in terms of feets or yards or how far were
you from the dust source?

		MR. GARCIA HERNANDEZ:  Usually typically very close to it.  We were --
our hands were right in the dust.  If we're cutting the pipe, the
concrete pipe in the trench, our face is so close to the concrete blade,
we have to physically see where we need to cut the pipe to make a
connection, right.  So we're in it.

		Another thing that we do, we have to -- the manholes in the streets,
we have to patch the manholes.  So that involves mixing up the cement to
do the patching, to patch around the pipes.

		MS. NADEAU:  Uh-huh.

		MR. GARCIA HERNANDEZ:  We have this cement that we have to mix, and
often we mix the cement inside the manhole --

		MS. NADEAU:  Uh-huh.

		MR. GARCIA HERNANDEZ:  -- because you don't want to be trucking up and
down the cement, depending on the size of the manhole, we'd be down in
the manhole or the trench mixing up our mix to patch around the pipes or
the manhole seams.

		MS. NADEAU:  Now in terms of the relationship between the operating
engineer and the laborer, they're operating the heavy equipment with
dust around it.  How did that work in terms of looking out for the
protection of a laborer?  Were they able to operate around you or how
did the dust impact that?

		MR. GARCIA HERNANDEZ:  Again, the laborer is highly exposed to it.

		MS. NADEAU:  No, I'm talking about what the operating engineer had to
do to avoid hitting you potentially because of the dust.  Was that an
impact or no?

		MR. GARCIA HERNANDEZ:  That was -- let's pretend we're excavating a
trench.

		MS. NADEAU:  Okay.

		MR. GARCIA HERNANDEZ:  The laborer has to be physically right in front
of the excavator bucket to make sure that the operator does not hit any
utilities, and as he's excavating, the laborer has to be or pipelayer
has to be physically right in front of the bucket itself.  The operator
is about 20 feet away from the bucket operating the excavator typically.

		But since you brought up the operators, the operators are often very
highly exposed if they don't have the right, the proper equipment.  If
the excavator is not enclosed, also as they're digging, they're taking a
lot of this dust.

		MS. NADEAU:  Thank you.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Thank you very much, Ms. Nadeau.  Any further
questions for any of the panel members from the audience?

		Seeing no hands, I'll turn it over to OSHA.

		MR. PERRY:  Thank you, Your Honor.  First, on behalf of the Agency, I
want to thank each of you for appearing today and providing us very
informative and moving testimony.  We certainly appreciate it.  We'll
start our questions with Ms. Schifano.

		MS. SCHIFANO:  Thank you again, gentlemen, for your testimony.

		My first question is for Mr. James Schultz.  Was there any medical
surveillance program available in the foundry where you worked?

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  I am not aware of one.  My father might be able to
speak of one as he was on our safety committee.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  And that was James Schultz responding.

		MR. A. SCHULTZ:  Could you repeat the question?

		MS. SCHIFANO:  Was there any medical surveillance program in the
foundry where you worked?

		MR. A. SCHULTZ:  No, no ongoing surveillance medically of anybody.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  And that's Allen Schultz response.

		MR. A. SCHULTZ:  Yes, Allen R. Schultz.

		MS. SCHIFANO:  Great.  Thank you.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  If you would please, if the question isn't directed to
an individual, just identify yourself when you're responding.  All
right.  Thank you.

		MS. SCHIFANO:  And this also is for Mr. James Schultz.  You mentioned
your experience in cleaning operations and you mentioned using a vacuum.
 We've heard from other testimony the last couple of weeks about the
infeasibility of using a method other than dry sweeping or using
compressed air to clean around the equipment.  What is your experience
with those methods of cleaning and others to remove the dust?

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  Well, in my experience, they could have eliminated a
lot of the stand spill by better engineering of the equipment and
keeping the guards in place that were originally designed for use on the
machines.  But as my father mentioned, a lot of this was predicated on
the fact that they wanted to continue production as much and as often as
possible, so only do what was absolutely necessary.

		If they had larger cleanup crews and they kept the safety guards in
place that were there to begin with, much of this could have been
eliminated to begin with.

		I don't know on that level that you could be using wet sweeping, but
I'm not an engineer.  So I can't really speak to that.  It's a
possibility.

		MS. SCHIFANO:  But you did say that you used vacuums --

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  Yes.

		MS. SCHIFANO:  -- to do some of those cleanup operations.

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  Yes.

		MS. SCHIFANO:  Okay.  Great.  Thank you.

		MR. A. SCHULTZ:  Could I add something?

		MR. SCHIFANO:  Oh, absolutely, Mr. Schultz.

		MR. A. SCHULTZ:  Allen Schultz.  The vacuum that they used was the
size of a pretty big forklift and they could pull it around with a
forklift, and like you said, it had a big hose, and it would suck up the
sand but the filtering mechanism on it wasn't very efficient or maybe it
was too old.  I'm not sure.  I didn't work on repairing the vacuum
cleaner, but it would be blowing dust out the top, picking up sand off
and floor and off the machines but it would be blowing dust out of the
stop.  So you'd get probably 90, 95 percent of the sand and then blow
the rest out through the top and it would be all over the place.

		MS. SCHIFANO:  Great.  Thank you for that clarification.  That's very
helpful.

		My next set of questions is for the NCOSH representatives, probably
Mr. Dooley or Mr. Kojola.

		We've heard a lot about different local and state ordinances, fugitive
dust ordinances, other regulations, and we were wondering if you've
compiled any of those local and state ordinances, laws that would deal
with silica exposures.

		MR. DOOLEY:  Yes, and we did have some comments in our submitted
testimony particularly about the experience in California and some in
New Jersey --

		MS. SCHIFANO:  Uh-huh.

		MR. DOOLEY:  -- where in general we've had reports that contract, and
these are requirements to basically eliminate dry cutting of masonry
materials during construction, and that they had really been very
successful in getting contractors to incorporate wet methods and vacuum
tools into their operations and that some of that experience was shared
among contractor associations particularly we quote a California report
that we had gotten.

		So by and large, we have heard reports of very successful sort of best
practices getting developed in those states, and again, not that it was
widespread enough to be really applying to all of the jobs in those
states, and we heard testimony last week from construction workers in
New Jersey that basically were saying that they hadn't really seen those
kinds of best practices use don the jobs that they were working in, but
at least it did set a higher bar in terms of the application of those
methods to reduce dust on some of the construction jobs.

		MS. SCHIFANO:  Great.  Thank you very much.  And anything you can do
to elaborate on those best practices, case studies, in your post-hearing
comments, that would be much appreciated.

		My next question is about the employee request of PAPRs instead of
other respiratory protection.  Do you have any idea of the number of
workers that currently take advantage of those provisions in other OSHA
standards?

		MR. DOOLEY:  We don't have any quantitative numbers.  We know that it
becomes -- what our experience is, is that when workers get training
about the availability of those rights to be requesting PAPRs, that that
certainly increases, with the population that we do training with, that
increases the amount that people ask for it.  A lot of times, we find
that workers are not aware that that is an option that they have.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  And that was Mr. Dooley responding.  I wasn't sure
that was directed just to him, but I want to make sure the record's
clear.  Thank you.

		MS. SCHIFANO:  Very good.  Thank you.  And just one final question for
perhaps Mr. Dooley or Mr. Hernandez.  You both mentioned the
importance of training vulnerable workers, immigrant workers, day
laborers.  Could you speak a little bit about your experience of
training those populations and with regards to training them on silica
hazards, the sorts of information that you provided and they found most
helpful?

		MR. GARCIA HERNANDEZ:  Yeah, I think I speak from personal experience.
 As I mentioned, my relative, when we come, we don't really know what's
there to protect us and how we can use that information to protect
ourselves.  And since I've been trained now, I know that if I have an
issue, I can call OSHA and get some protection or get defended.  So the
trainings have a tremendous value in our communities.  Once workers know
that they don't have to work under those conditions, that they can call
OSHA for protections, it does empower the workers tremendously.

		And there was a question earlier that I'd like to add, this is Javier
Garcia, in terms of the response from OSHA to a facility.  If it's not
an imminent danger, OSHA doesn't always respond.  They would sometimes
send a letter, right, and when they send a letter to the employer, the
employer may say, well, I'm just going to correct this, what the letter
intended to do, but it may not necessarily address the particular issues
that the workers are actually complaining about, and that was not
relevant to your question but I wanted to make sure I addressed that
because we see that all the time.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Mr. Dooley, did you have anything to add?

		MR. DOOLEY:  Yes, this is Peter Dooley.  I did want to say that in
particular with, you know, education and training efforts with
vulnerable workers, that very, very often they are totally unaware about
the silica issue regarding common construction operations that they
perform and just this OSHA proposal for a new standard, we've been using
as a way to educate and train workers about that component, and we'll
continue to do that.  We see that that's again another benefit of this
proposal that is very, you know, sort of lesser recognized, but it does
create more awareness and raises the bar on the silica hazards that
exist.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Thank you, Mr. Dooley.  I think Allen Schultz had an
additional comment.

		MR. A. SCHULTZ:  I'd just like to mention that -- it just flew right
out of my head.  I would like to see some kind of mechanism where OSHA
could possibly contact the union safety person at that facility to find
out if the company actually does follow through with what they promise
that they're going to do when they get these.  I didn't find out about
it at the time, but I found out later when looking through records, that
they had been contacted a number of times on complaints from workers or
from the neighborhood, people complaining about the dust and dirt, and I
never was aware of it.  I could have followed up and tried to encourage
the company to do better if I had known that they had the calls or
whatever from OSHA.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Thank you, Mr. Schultz.

		MS. SCHIFANO:  That's all the questions I have.  Thank you.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  All right.  Any further questions from the OSHA Panel?

		DR. COBLE:  Yes, this is Joe Coble, and I have some questions for
Mr. Schultz, James, regarding, you mentioned that you had respiratory
protection available.  How frequently did you wear it and how did you
decide when you needed to wear it?

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Which Mr. Schultz?  James.

		DR. COBLE:  James, yes.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Okay.

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  Unlike most of my coworkers, I wore it probably
three-quarters of the time, and it would often depend on how dusty it
was in there.  As we mentioned, there are some jobs that don't create a
lot of dust and there are other jobs that create huge amounts of dust,
and some days it would seem relatively clean in there even though there
was a lot of dust in the air, it wouldn't seem so bad and because we
weren't really aware that this dust was silica and what the silica could
do to us.  Oftentimes I wouldn't wear it on some days when it didn't
seem so bad.  A lot of my coworkers didn't wear it most of the time.

		Basically we mostly had the face masks, they did bring in some PAPR
eventually, and there were a couple of places where like on the melt
deck where I was able to get them to provide me with one, although it
took several attempts to find the proper one that would last through my
whole shift, but then in other areas where I would ask for it, they
would tell me that they didn't have to provide that to me because it was
not a de minimis type thing.  It would cost them a lot of money to
install an airline dryer and things like that.  So they would require me
to wear the regular dusk mask as opposed to the more effective means of
protecting my respiratory.

		DR. COBLE:  Were there any tasks in which respiratory protection was
required by the company?

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  There were a couple of areas that after OSHA had come
through and done an inspection and cited them again for violating silica
exposure to the workers where they did make it mandatory to wear
respirators in the area, although they were also in theory working on
increasing their baghouse capacity and their ability to suck in more
air, but for the meantime, it was made a mandatory respiratory
protection area.

		DR. COBLE:  During your time there, did you see the company making
efforts to reduce the dust by improving the ventilation?

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  Nothing noticeable.  I would hear about them having
spent 40,000 or 50,000 or 90,000, but out on the floor, you really
couldn't tell any difference.  You didn't know what they had actually
done.  My father being on maintenance, I would ask him if he knew
sometimes, and sometimes it would be, well, yeah, they changed half the
filters in this baghouse and they've changed half the filters in that
baghouse, but I mean if you only change half the filters in the
baghouse, you're really not doing much to make any kind of a difference.
 It was more about hitting that monetary mark that they were required to
spend because of their citation.

		DR. COBLE:  Uh-huh.  Thank you.  For Mr. Dooley, I wanted to ask
about the statement you made on hierarchy of controls.  You support
that, and it's a foundation of the rule but under what situations would
you view use of respiratory protection as a suitable alternative to use
of engineering controls, let's say for example, short-term tasks?  Would
you see envisioning any exempt from the hierarchy for short-term tasks?

		MR. DOOLEY:  Well, I wouldn't see it as an alternative to, you know,
the hierarchy of controls as a professional health and safety person.
And incorporated in like the ANSI Z10 standard, you know, a hierarchy of
a control is literally identified as the principle in which we should be
using, you know, all the time in terms of trying to sort of control
hazards.

		There may be instances where short-term, you know, protection can be
afforded by, you know, respirators in addition to whatever efforts that
we're making to eliminate and control the hazards with higher level
controls.  So it may, you know, sort of compliment whatever efforts are
being used using the hierarchy.

		DR. COBLE:  Well, we've heard a lot of comments about that engineering
controls are excessively expensive for just short-term tasks that really
wouldn't require you to install a ventilation system, and situations,
for example, with sand spill and that sort of thing.  Could you see it
having an exemption for engineering controls, use a PAPR instead, a PAPR
being a very effective respirator?

		MR. DOOLEY:  Well, I don't think that that's an exemption for --
again, personal protective equipment is part of the hierarchy.  It's the
least desirable method to be incorporated in controlling the hazards.
So it's not that it doesn't exist.  But you're always thinking in every
situation, what's the best method per the hierarchy to control this
method, this hazard?  So that's the principle that has to be in play,
whether it's a short-term issue or a long-term issue.  But it's not that
it's excluded but it's the least desirable and least effective method.

		DR. COBLE:  Okay.  Thank you for that.

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  James Schultz, if I may add in.  From my experience
both in construction and in the foundries, they never had any of us do
any kind of medical examine before they handed us the respiratory.  They
would just hand them out as it came.  There was virtually no training on
how to use them properly, how to store them properly and nobody that I
know of there was actually required to have the medical examine which
the OSHA requires before the use of a respirator.  So if you allow them
to use the respirator for short-term exposure to things, it's even less
likely that anybody's going to go through the whole process of being
able to find out whether they can actually wear that respirator and
which kind they should have and so forth.

		DR. COBLE:  And then one last question on control of dust in foundries
using wet methods.  We've heard testimony that it's extremely dangerous
to have water around a furnace.  Could you comment?  Is that your
understanding?  And it sounds like there was some misting on the
shakeout operations where they're using water in a foundry, and we were
told that that's not done.

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  James Schultz speaking.  Well, on the melt deck, they
discouraged us from using water but in point of fact, pretty much all
the furnace operators did use water because they would need to cool off
the slag on the top so they could skim it off of the iron so it would be
clean before they would use it.  But there isn't really a lot of any
other area to use it in that place because you couldn't really mist the
area, but it is filled with dust.

		As far as the shakeout lines, they did for a number of years have a
few misters that would be on the shakeout lines to try and reduce the
dust but they were far away from, sufficient to actually make a large
difference, and they would often get caught in the tangles of castings
and stuff and get pulled off the wall, and then you'd just have a lot of
water running down and then making mud out of the sand.

		It's possible and with proper engineering, I think it could be very
feasible to include misting to control the dust in areas like that.

		DR. COBLE:  Okay.  Thank you.

		MR. A. SCHULTZ:  I would like to say a word about that.  This is Allen
Schultz.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Allen Schultz for the record.  Go ahead.

		MR. A. SCHULTZ:  Over the years, I got in quite a few arguments with
management about water on the melt deck.  In fact, officially the
company did not want any water anywhere near their furnaces but they
didn't want to slow down production either, and even though the furnaces
were all electric, hi tech computer controlled and all that, the
computers couldn't seem to quite get -- they like certain jobs poured
best at certain temperatures, plus or minus 10 or 20 degrees, whatever,
and the foremen, if the furnace was going too hot, somebody didn't catch
it and didn't adjust the computer, they were always adjusting them all
the time because I don't know if it was the dust or the heat or what.

		The computers didn't like where they were working either, and the
foreman would go out from the foreman's office where it's air
conditioned, and take the water hose and spray right on top of the
furnaces and then somebody would come running down and tell me that, and
I'd run back up and chew them out and he just kind of ignore me, laugh
at me because the company knew he was doing it even though it wasn't
allowed.

		And even though, I forget when it was, in the early '90s, we had a
furnace explode down in Texas in a foundry and it leveled a couple of
blocks of houses and stuff from what I remember, and I was constantly
getting on them not to put water on the iron, but as long as the water's
on iron, it's not a problem.  It's just when the water gets under the
iron, that's the problem, but when it's bubbling, you can't be sure when
the water's going to get under the iron.  Luckily we never had an
explosion.  Well, he had one unfortunately but it wasn't necessarily
because of them pouring water on it.  I agree that water and iron are
very dangerous together.  They should not be there.

		DR. COBLE:  Okay.  Thank you.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  Any further questions from OSHA?

		MS. LINDBERG:  Yes, Your Honor, just a few from me.

		This is for I think Mr. Kojola.  You mentioned in your written
comments that there are employers in California who noticed that their
insurance costs have gone down when they instituted a comprehensive
silica control program.  Do you know if this is a common experience for
employers who reduce health risks to their employees, that their
insurance costs are reduced?

		MR. KOJOLA:  You know, I didn't write that part of our written
comments.  So I'd really like to turn it over to Mr. Dooley.

		MS. LINDBERG:  Sure.  Thank you.

		MR. DOOLEY:  Yeah, this is Peter Dooley, National COSH.  We had gotten
that from a report from a contractor association.  So we don't know
whether  -- that was sort of an anecdotal report and we don't know how
widespread that might be within the industry.

		MS. LINDBERG:  Is there any way to get further information on that?

		MR. DOOLEY:  We will certainly try and find out if there's any
additional information and submit it with our written comments
post-hearing.

		MS. LINDBERG:  Great.  Thank you.  And then a couple of questions for
both Mr. Schultzes.

		Ms. Nadeau asked you about near misses caused by dusty conditions in
the foundries.  What about actual accidents?  Did you see those
happening?

		MR. A. SCHULTZ:  This is Allen Schultz.  I can remember a couple of
instances where people were hit by forklifts in those narrow aisles but
back in those days, there was no outside tunnel for them to go through.
They had to use the same aisles as the forklifts.  This foundry was
built in the footprint of a really old foundry going back to about 1902
or something like that, when everything was labor and wheelbarrows.  So
there wasn't much room to squeeze all this machinery, and that's why it
was on so many different levels within the building, and they designed
the foundry so that as they added the new machinery, they just allowed
enough room for the iron trucks to get through from one end of the
foundry to the other.  They had melt decks in the middle and then
foundries going off on each side with narrow aisleways for the forklift
and iron trucks to get through, and the people would walk alongside of
the walls to give the iron trucks as much room as possible but it was
dusty and several people were -- they weren't run over but they were hit
let's say.  They were injured somewhat.  Nobody died or anything like
that from being hit by an iron truck.

		MS. LINDBERG:  Do you have anything to add?

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  James Schultz.  Yeah.  I do know there were a few
people that were hit by fork trucks and it was a combination of both the
dusty conditions and that oftentimes the fork trucks' sirens and backup
alarms didn't work.  So you may not know they were behind you because it
was a very loud work environment, and you coupled that with the
difficulty in seeing much in front of your face.  There were a number of
people that were hit.  I don't know of anybody that was hit severely but
I do know a number of people that were hit both by the fork trucks or by
like the golf carts like the maintenance or the foremen would drive
around in because you just couldn't see them and they didn't make much
noise or at least not enough noise to overcome the machinery around you.

		MS. LINDBERG:  Thank you.  In general, do you think that safety in the
foundries would be improved if the dust was minimized?

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  James Schultz.  I think the safety in the workplaces
would be tremendously improved if the dust could be minimized or in some
cases, in some areas, it could be just about eliminated.  I think that
would make the workplace much safer on a day-to-day basis plus the
long-term health of the worker in that facility.

		MS. LINDBERG:  Thanks.  Another one for both of you, Mr. Schultz.  Do
you think that employers would discriminate against workers who they
knew had silicosis or another silica-related health condition?

		MR. J. SCHULTZ:  James Schultz speaking.  I think that that might go
either way.  They may discriminate against a worker that they know had
silicosis if they were looking to hire him in or keep him on but there
may be other employers who might take that opportunity to hire that
employee knowing he already has that disease from a previous employer
that they couldn't be traced to working for that employer at the current
time who may have as bad or worse conditions than where that worker came
from.  I think it could go either way that they might be kept out of the
workplace or they may be hired specifically because that might give that
employer the feeling that they've got a get out of jail free card.  It's
not my fault he already had it when he started working here.

		MS. LINDBERG:  Interesting.

		MR. A. SCHULTZ:  Yeah, I'd like to mention -- Allen Schultz.  The area
that we live in was a foundry town.  It had many, many foundries.  It's
probably more than half of them that have disappeared now but still
there's a number of foundries there, and they all have different, most
of management, as far as how they want to handle their workers but none
of them that I've seen really want to spend any money on protecting the
workers.  They just want maximum production.  That's why they put the
water on iron to cool it down because they don't want to wait for it to
cool down normally.

		MS. LINDBERG:  So if a worker had silicosis, they might see that work
as being less productive and then move them around or otherwise try and
minimize that issue?

		MR. A. SCHULTZ:  This is Allen Schultz.  I don't know how they would
find out that the worker has silicosis unless it was their own worker
and they tested them.  In the old days, when I first started at a
foundry, I was run over by an 18-wheeler and everybody as telling me how
lucky I was I lived, and then second they're telling me how lucky that I
got a job for life.  Now in the old days, if you were hurt on the job,
that meant the employer would feel bad enough that he would give you
some kind of job, sweeping or anything, for the rest of your life.  That
doesn't hold true anymore now.  If they have any kind of idea to think
that you're going to be a burden on their health insurance in the
future, they'll find a way to have you move on to some other employer.

		MS. LINDBERG: 	 So do you think workers would avoid trying to have
their employer finding out if they had a lung disease related to silica?

		MR. A. SCHULTZ:  Yes, I believe they would.

		JUDGE PURCELL:  That was Allen Schultz responding.

		MS. LINDBERG:  Just a couple of questions for Mr. Hernandez.

		UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:  He's got to leave.

		MS. LINDBERG:  Oh, okay.  Thank you.  Do you have a few more minutes?

		MR. GARCIA HERNANDEZ:  Yes.

		MS. LINDBERG:  And he's back.

		MR. GARCIA HERNANDEZ:  I have to back to work, to the dusty
conditions.

		MS. LINDBERG:  Okay.  We don't want to delay you from that.  I'm just
wondering.  You said that every morning you have to clear your throat
and chest after you, you know, before you go to work.  Have you ever had
a medical exam on your chest?

		MR. GARCIA HERNANDEZ:  I have not which perhaps I should after this
hearing.  I definitely should.  I do think it's chronic, the number of
times I were exposed to this.  If you imagine yourself going to work and