Document ID: OSHA-2010-0012-0048
Agency: osha
Document Type: Supporting & Related Material
Title: 
Posted Date: 2010-10-05T04:00Z

NACOSH Meeting                ) PRIVATE  

                              )

	

Pages:  257 through 463

Place:  Washington, D.C.

Date:   September 15, 2010  

IN THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION

NACOSH Meeting                )

                              )

			Auditorium

			200 Constitution Avenue, N.W.

			Washington, D.C.

			Wednesday,

			September 15, 2010

	

		APPEARANCES:

		Public Representatives:

		MICHAEL SILVERSTEIN, M.D., MPH

		Assistant Director

		Washington Division of Occupational Safety and

		  Health

		P.O. Box 44600

		Olympia, Washington  98504-4600

		(360) 902-4805

		LINDA RAE MURRAY, MD, MPH

		Chief Medical Officer

		Cook County Department of Health

		5344 South Hyde Park Boulevard

		Chicago, Illinois  60615

		(708) 836-8656

		ROY BUCHAN, Dr.Ph.D., MPH

		Colorado State University

		Occupational Health Section

		Department of Environmental & Radiological Health

		  Sciences

		5715 Pleasant Hill Lane

		Fort Collins, Colorado  80526

		(970) 223-7039

APPEARANCES:  (Cont'd.)

		DENISE POUGET

		Assistant Fire - EMS Chief

		Alexandria Fire Department

		900 Second Street

		Alexandria, Virginia  22314

		(703) 746-5242

		JOSEPH VAN HOUTEN, Ph.D.

		Senior Director, Worldwide EHS

		Johnson & Johnson

		410 George Street

		New Brunswick, New Jersey  08901

		(732) 524-2548

		Health Representatives:

		TIMOTHY J. KEY, MD, MPH

		Key Occupational Health Solutions

		1414 Overlook Road

		Homewood, Alabama  35203

		(205) 837-8441

		SUSAN RANDOLPH, MSN, RN, COHN-S, FAAOHN

		Clinical Assistant Professor

		Occupational Health Nursing Program

		University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

		Gillings School of Global Public Health

		1700 Airport Road

		CB#7502

		Chapel Hill, North Carolina  27599-7502

		(919) 966-0979

		Labor Representatives:

		WILLIAM BORWENGEN, MPH

		Director, Occupational Health and Safety

		Service Employees International Union

		CTW, CLC

		1800 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.

		Washington, D.C.  20036

		(202) 730-7385

APPEARANCES:  (Cont'd.)

		MARGARET SEMINARIO, M.S.

		Director, Safety and Health

		AFL-CIO

		815 Sixteenth Street, N.W.

		Washington, D.C.  20006

		(202) 637-5366

		Safety Representatives:

		EMORY KNOWLES III, CSP, CIH

		Manager

		Industrial Hygiene and Safety

		Northrop Grumman

		7323 Avialion Boulevard, MS 1401

		Baltimore, Maryland  21290

		(410) 765-9222

		PETER DOOLEY, M.S. CSP, CIH

		Labor Safe

		6301 N. Zeeb Road

		Dexter, Michigan  48130

		(734) 320-5160

		Committee Contacts:

		DEBORAH PAGE CRAWFORD

		Designated Federal Officer

		Room N3641

		(202) 693-1932

		VENETA CHATMON (Travel)

		Room N3657

		(202) 693-1912

		SARAH J. SHORTALL	

		Committee Counsel

		Room S4004

		(202) 693-5445

		PAUL J. MIDDENDORF, PhD, CIH

		CDC/NIOSH

		Office of the Director

		4675 Columbia Parkway

		Cincinnati, Ohio  45226

		(513) 533-8606

APPEARANCES   (Cont'd.)

		Committee Address:

		U.S. Department of Labor

		OSHA/Room N3641

		200 Constitution Avenue, N.W.

		Washington, D.C.  20210

	P R O C E E D I N G S

	(8:37 a.m.)

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I want to call to order today's meeting of the
National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health.  We are
missing one member, Denise, who should arrive a little bit later, but we
have a quorum, and I would like to begin.  We're joined this morning, as
you can see, by Dr. David Michaels, who is at the table, but is going
to essentially listen to the first hour as we recap some of what we did
yesterday, although he clearly is more than welcome to join in at any
point that he feels compelled to do so.  We would welcome that, David.

		Let me -- I did some thinking about where we are last night, and I
wanted to share that with you to get started, and I hope this will be
useful.  We've had as a -- at least since I've been chair, we have had
as a committee -- so the committee in this formulation has had now two
full days of meetings, and we've been exposed to a pretty wide range of
issues that are of concern to the agencies, as well as to each other. 
And I think it was inevitable that a good amount of our energy in these
two days was captured by issues related to the Gulf oil spill.

		I think that NACOSH responded pretty well in getting some
recommendations to OSHA and NIOSH almost immediately that we heard
yesterday were well received by the agencies and were useful.  And I
think we heard yesterday that the agencies themselves responded quite
well to the crisis, even with the limited authority that they've been
given.

		Now, we've got a need to focus on some other things.  We can't let go
of the Gulf oil-related issues, but we do need to focus more sharply on
at least some of the other matters that have been brought to our
attention.  And there were two potentially promising concepts that we
put on the table late in the day that I think both could be
characterized as strategic and high level concepts, yet would seem to
allow the flexibility to address specific subjects over a period of
time.

		So these may be concepts that could carry us through for an extended
period of time, but would be adaptable to particular issues as the need
or the interest arose.  So we might avoid the need to set up a special
workgroup every time a particular topic came up.

		Today, this morning, what I would like to do in the next hour is to
see if we can sharpen these concepts and make them work, or in the
alternative decide that they're really not that promising and that they
should be set aside.  And, of course, this early discussion will be
subject to the conversation that we'll have with Michaels after we do
this recap.

		By the end of the day, I would like to have two workgroups established
with one or two specific assignments that would fall under each one of
them, and some plans for how we would continue to put some effort in
during the interim so that we don't just function on a quarterly basis
without work in between.

		So here are the two concepts that were on the table.  And I may not
yet be able to articulate these in the most artful way, but I think it
gets us in the ballpark, and then we can go from there.  The first
concept or issue would be this:  what can the agencies NIOSH and OSHA do
to better deploy their resources in a way that really matches the most
pressing worker protection and workplace safety and health needs in the
country?

		Under that kind of umbrella, there can be a number of more specific
questions that can be addressed.  You know, are there important gaps
that should be filled on a priority basis?  Are there things that we're,
as a nation, ignoring that are really pressing, worker protection needs?
 Are the agencies adequately anticipating the future?  Are there
strategic plans that the agencies have anticipating the future?  Are the
agencies or NIOSH and OSHA coordinating resources so that with limited
resources, they're functioning at a most efficient and effective way
possible?

		So there are a variety of questions sort of under that general
umbrella about strategic planning and deployment of scarce resources.

		The second broad concept would be how can the agencies more
effectively draw the nation's attention to worker protection.  The
specific issue that we were discussing yesterday in this area was how
can we ensure that worker protections gets sufficiently high priority
during emergencies such as the Gulf oil spill.  And a subset of that had
to do with the way that the agencies are currently annexed in the
national priority plan, whether or not there is something that we could
suggest to the agencies that would help to establish an arrangement in
which the agencies were triggered into action in a more effective way.

		Then there are a variety of specific questions that or specific issues
that we talked about yesterday, I think, that could fall under either
one of these umbrellas.  So that's sort of where we arrived yesterday,
with an agreement that we would think about these overnight, come back
and have this discussion this morning, and then talk with Dr. Michaels
and see where that took us.

		So I'm optimistic that by the end of the day, we can define a couple
of workgroups and kick a couple of specific subjects under each one of
those that will carry us through to the next meeting.

		So with that as an introduction, comments, suggestions, thoughts? 
Yes, Roy.

		MR. BUCHAN:  Michael, I was thinking about this last night as well,
that you ordered us to do that.  And one thing we did not discuss very
much was the new initiative on injury and illness prevention.  That is
the essence of OSHA, in my opinion.  We don't know how far along that
program is, and I don't know if OSHA needs input there.  That's
something we would have to explore.  But I would be very happy to work
on something like that.

		I hate to add more to your list, but, you know, I was thinking about
OSHA in kind of a holistic fashion, and that is where they're supposed
to be with this new initiative, as far as I'm concerned.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Joe.

		MR. VAN HOUTEN:  Michael, I gave it some thought as well.  And I agree
with both of your suggestions.  I kind of penned a phrase here that said
one of our functions should be to review strategic direction for OSHA
and NIOSH and advise on complex worker protection issues.  And an
example that came up yesterday were the protection of healthcare
workers.

		Now, I can think of three main areas of concern, from ergonomics to
infectious diseases to fatigue, you know, based on the latest
information in the media regarding concern by residents about fatigue in
a hospital setting.  And these are multifaceted issues.  So my opinion
is that I think the best use of time at these meetings would be to take
a deep dive into some of these topics, maybe schedule a half day
discussion, set it up with some key issues, and then debate them and
offer some advice on complex issues.  So I think that's the best use of
our time.

		Regarding worker protection getting higher priority, you know, just
some thoughts that crossed my mind.  I was really -- I mentioned this
article yesterday about the public attitude towards and experiences with
workplace safety by Tom Smith.  And it's really disturbing that the
public is not outraged about 5,000 deaths a year in the workplace.  It
just seems as though it is accepted by the general public.

		So I think we're fighting an uphill battle in that the public doesn't
really acknowledge this as a critical issue.  And it might be something
for NIOSH to look into.  What is the public perception regarding
workplace safety and why is there an acceptance of this many deaths? 
And I don't even know what the exact number of disabling injuries is,
but it's certainly high each year.

		So I think all of those are worthy of the committee's attention, and I
think they are two good ideas.  Thanks.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Linda.

		MS. MURRAY:  Well, I want to support these two broad buckets. 
Obviously, it doesn't solve our problem because I would argue you could
fit anything in one of those two buckets.  So clearly those subgroups
are going to have to have some sense of priority that helps structure
the agenda.

		I think the key thing is that we know ahead of time, we know for the
next quarter, what we're going to look at, you know, early, and have an
ability to look at the exhibits.  Let me suggest this kind of division. 
When I heard you talking, the first one, the matching resources with
need, that seems to me to be a profoundly internal to the field of
occupational health and safety bucket, which is fine.  And then
controversial questions like, you know, what is the appropriate
respiratory protection in a hospital setting, et cetera, we could, you
know, order those in some way and look at those.

		The second one -- and I like how you've expanded it from what we were
talking about yesterday -- is to me an externally directed group, which
is -- and let me suggest a priority within that first.  Let's start with
people that at least care about health.  You know, how do we convince
other people who are not specialists that health and safety is an
important mission?  And we've talked about emergency settings.

		We also talked about yesterday, which I think would fit under this --
we talked about the role of health and safety in a broad public health
use of health and information exchanges.  You know, that's really trying
to convince our colleagues in health care that there are some things you
need to look at.

		Other things that we haven't talked about, but let me just suggest,
the expansion of the Patient Care Act and the attempt to emphasize
primary care.  Again, how do we involve our primary care colleagues
around the country in preparing them to be able to recognize health and
safety issues.  How do we put that piece in the regulatory accreditation
processes for hospitals?  Most of the federal health centers now, for
example, are a joint commission, JCAHO accredited.  So how do we make
sure there is some stuff there?  You know, how do we beef up those
accrediting agencies where healthcare workers work to make sure that
these health and safety issues are part of the accreditation process.

		So I could imagine an agenda that looked at that.  So I would argue
these two buckets are reasonable, but that we have to sub-prioritize
within the buckets.  And I think the key thing we need to do, and we
could do this in conjunction with the agencies, is to, you know, look
forward 9 months, 12  months, and sort of order our discussions so that
we don't -- just to come here and hear everything at once and then try
to react at once.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  I would agree with that, Linda.  Who else? 
Peter.

		MR. DOOLEY:  Yeah.  Just not to add to the list too much, but the
other concept that we did talk about yesterday was this issue about
worker rights, sort of a broader look at worker rights, whether it is
involved in the injury and illness prevention programs, or the whistle
blower protection, the need for revisions and, you know, sort of
rewriting that.  Because, I mean, one of the things that I think is
really sort of very apparent in a lot of -- and I appreciate the
agency's programs that have really reached out to and tried to address
worker rights, and including workers, yet on the other side the
environment that we're in, in terms of the economic environment and the
whole doing more with less, has really prevented a lot of workers from
participating in health and safety in the way that they might have done
20 years ago.

		So I think that that's going to need to have some advocates and some
discussion so that we can keep on raising those issues, and helping the
agency do what they are wanting to do in that area.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I'm hearing some support for having two groups at
that high level, with I think Linda's appropriate qualifier or notation
that almost anything can fit in one of the two, and that if it would be
useful to us as working tools, we have to have specific topics that
we're addressing.  I think this goes to Joe's idea of taking a deep dive
in each meeting into specific subjects.  And I would agree absolutely
that we have to plan long in advance.  We're going to need to ensure
that documents are prepared, that background information is available to
us so that we can study up before each meeting and use the time more
effectively.

		All right.  Other thoughts about this general approach?  Does it make
sense to people or are there some reservations about it?  Peg.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  I think the general approach is fine.  But just to
echo what Linda Rae said, I think we have to define at this meeting what
particular aspects of these two different groups are issues that we want
to, you know, get into.  And I would say keep in mind that our
responsibility here in the charter is to provide advice to the agency. 
It's not just to have a broad discussion about occupational safety and
health.  And so I think that that's something that, you know, we could
have great discussion about the future of occupational safety and
health.

		But the charge and our responsibility is to provide advice to the
Secretaries of Labor and the Secretaries of HHS.  And so it does need to
be focused in direct ways that come back to their programs and their
responsibilities and initiatives.  And so that would just be a comment. 
But within these two, I think the issue that we discussed yesterday, and
Peter just raised, looking at the whole issue of worker rights, that
that fits under this as well as far as this is a responsibility that is
covered under the statute, and what kinds of resources, priorities are
being, you know, put to that, and what kind of strategy exists around
that I think could be a topic within, say, you know, the first group,
and it could also be a part of group two because it has very much to do
with sort of externally here how do you push safety and health issues.

		One of the ways to push that is to have workers empowered to push it
forward.  So I think it could fit into both of these buckets.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Thank you, Peg.  Susan.

		MS. RANDOLPH:  I would also agree.  I think the two broad categories
are good.  I like the fact that, as Linda pointed out, sort of internal
to the agencies and also external, which could apply to a variety of
different topics in the future.  As Peg was saying, that we need to be,
you know, mindful of what our charter is, looking at the advice that set
a firm time frame, so that for the next year or year and a half, or
whatever that time frame is, that this would be hopefully accomplished,
with some sound recommendations, advice I guess is the word, to both
agencies.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Thank you.  Emory, did you --

		MR. KNOWLES:  Yeah.  One of the primary functions of the committee
that was already commented is to advise on the direction of the agency,
especially in the development of standards.  And we've discussed the
issue of resources in terms of both NIOSH and OSHA.  And I would
certainly urge continuation of the excellent relationship we're now
seeing between NIOSH and OSHA to move forward with the regulatory agenda
to develop new, enhanced standards.  So there has been a lot of
discussion on the healthcare worker issue.

		You know, one of things that certainly should be considered is perhaps
a vertical standard for healthcare workers.  NIOSH has an extensive
amount of research available.  OSHA has certainly looked at a lot of
these topics related to healthcare workers in the past.  Why not move
forward?  Why not develop a vertical standard?  If we have the
limitations on resources, why not move towards greater utilization and
draw up some national consensus standards in the regulatory context.

		So those are some other things that certainly should be considered
longer term.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Thank you.  Other thoughts?

		MR. BORWENGEN:  Well, I agree with the approach.  Again, I think that
as I said yesterday, OSHA has scarce resources.  We need to figure out
how we allocate those resources in the most effective manner possible,
again in line with BLS statistics that illustrate where people are
getting hurt and injured.  And I guess if I had to name the first
committee, it would probably be, you know, not your father's Oldsmobile,
you know.  Of course, I don't even know if they make Oldsmobiles
anymore, so maybe that's not a good analogy.

		But I really feel like OSHA for too long has been stuck in an
industrial mindset.  I think they did a good job in those industries
when those industries were major parts of the U.S. economy.  They still
are, but they aren't what they used to be.  And as the economy has
shifted, I think OSHA needs to shift in kind, and I don't think they've
done a good job of doing that.  And there is a whole toolbox of
resources that OSHA has available to them, and we need to figure out how
we allocate those resources to attack the biggest health and safety
issues workers in this country face, and do it in a way that is
prioritized.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I forgot to mention for the record that we were
joined a couple of minutes ago by Denise Pouget, who is now with us. 
And so all the committee members who were here yesterday are present
today.  Other thoughts?  Denise.

		MS. POUGET:  I have to apologize for being late, but emergency
incidents are never convenient.  I came in late, so I'm not privy to all
the discussion.  But I know one of our tasks was to go and think last
night about, you know, where we're at.  And again, from a broad
perspective, I just kept thinking about some of the discussion and what
Dr. Murray had said about the emergency situations.

		Whatever the case may be, I think it just seems to come back to these
workers who are pulled in who are not emergency workers.  You know, we
tend to get on the right track maybe somewhere midstream, and that was
just a concern that we consider thinking about their health and safety
because, as I said yesterday, one day you're a fisher person, the next
day you're cleaning up hazardous materials, and you don't have any idea
what you're doing.  You only know you've got work, you know.

		So that was just one broad perspective from any kind of emergency. 
You know, what are we doing to protect those people that we then pull in
to help clean up.  So that was just some of the thoughts I had last
night.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Good.  Thank you.  Well, I think that given the way
that I structured this discussion, it's inevitable that we have on the
table already a whole grab bag of ideas, not all of which we can
possibly address, although we have some conceptual framework in which we
could fit any of them.  So we're only -- I think we're making progress,
but we're only part way there.  I mean, for the rest of the day, we have
to have the much more difficult discussion that removes items from the
table and allows us to focus on a few remaining ones.

		So I think it's still fine for awhile to put ideas on the table.  But
keep in mind that we're going to have to start taking them off as well. 
So, Peg?

		MS. SEMINARIO:  One thing I think would be also useful to talk about
-- and I don't know if this is the appropriate time -- is some question
of what exactly we want these workgroups to do, and how do we envision
them functioning so that we have some idea of the level of activity,
work, exploration, work product, resources that are needed in terms of
agency resources, and figure out what is available to us before we leave
today.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  What thoughts do you have about that?  I mean,
you've had as much experience with NACOSH over the years as anybody has,
and you've seen it work well, and you've seen it work poorly.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  My experience has been that the workgroups -- the
workgroups that I've been on, they work.  They get into issues.  They
work closely with the agencies, staff.  I generally start out by being
briefed by the key agency staff who are involved in a particular area,
provided, you know, full -- the documents to get some background on what
it is, and then tried -- but also go into these workgroups with usually
some charge from the agency as to what is -- you know, what is the
question we're trying to answer?  We're just not trying to explore, you
know, something in general.  But what is the question that we're trying
to answer and the advice that we are trying to provide?

		So to have that defined beforehand so it ends up being something that
has a direction and a utility and it also timely for the agency.  But as
I said, it's important to get people sufficient background so you are
having a discussion about some concrete things rather than just your
opinions about things.  You get opinions later on, but have them be
informed opinions that have some relationship back to what is actually
going on, or else you end up with a real disjunction between the
activities, the discussions of the workgroup, and the agencies are here
and you're here, and that's not particularly useful for anyone.  And
then have some sense of what you think, having gotten into this, you
think the time frame is for the outcome.  And maybe there is a need for
the agency to have it done in a certain way.  So you structure your work
in that regard.

		So those are just some, you know, thoughts that I -- some experiences
in terms of dealing with it, and then coming out with a written product
at the end so there is something concrete that can be delivered.  It
doesn't have to -- sometimes they are very, very long reports.  NACOSH
was asked, just by way of example, in its early years to provide advice
to the agency on setting up all the system of benchmarking for
determining their required resources for state plans.

		NACOSH was developed to work with the agency to develop the first
cancer policy.  They drafted it.  NACOSH had extensive work done in the
whole area of hazard communication, this big hazard communication
workgroup.  We had a lengthy workgroup on injury and illness prevention
programs, so really getting into a lot of detail and meat of what the
agency's initiatives were.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  I think that's very helpful.  There is no
doubt that all of us as committee members are going to have to be
prepared to do a lot of reading and a lot of study on these issues if
we're going to have the kind of products Betty is talking about.  Emory?

		MR. KNOWLES:  Yeah.  I have to concur with Peg.  I was involved in a
workgroup on the Hispanic worker outreach issue a few years back.  And
the way that evolved in the meeting, the agency alerted the committee
that there was an issue of high numbers of fatalities and injuries among
Hispanic workers in this country.  And so a subgroup was set up to look
at that task, to look at that problem.  Involvement with staff personnel
at the agencies took place.  There were many meetings and telephone
calls between the meetings on that issue.

		What ultimately evolved out of that was again, as you commented, a
written work product with specific recommendations that the agency and
the working group had all agreed upon prior to publication.  That was
published, and those measures were then implemented, and at follow-up
meetings, the actions taken by the agencies were reported back to
NACOSH.  And it was very, very effective.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  Well, that's very helpful.  I think that it
probably makes sense for us to get into the discussion with Dr. Michaels
at this point.  Certainly, I think that the committee, under its charge,
could take on topics that the agencies are not interested in or would
rather ignore.  But I think we're going to be in much better shape if we
can address subjects that are of real importance to both of the
agencies.  And so we heard a lot from NIOSH yesterday.  We had some
discussion with OSHA.  And now we're looking forward to continuing that
with Dr. Michaels.

		So I hope this gives you some --

		DR. MICHAELS:  That's a wonderful transition.  Let me first thank you
all again for your service.  I know everyone here, you know, is more
than 100 percent occupied in their other jobs, and the fact that you
take the time off to come here and do this is something that I certainly
am very grateful for, and we appreciate your help.  And I also want to
thank the staff, Keith and Deborah and Sarah.  From the OSHA point of
view, I guess Paul, and Frank is not here -- NIOSH for your service
here.  It is very helpful.

		Let me apologize for not being here yesterday.  Needless to say, there
are several meetings every day I have to be at.  And yesterday I was at
the meeting with the OSHA review commission, and the judges --
unfortunately, it was in Charleston, South Carolina, and there is no way
to get there without spending the entire day doing it.  So even though I
only had a relatively small role -- maybe just --

		(Laughter)

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Just switch it with the other one.

		DR. MICHAELS:  Yeah.  Anyway, what was very interesting about that
meeting, among other things, was a little sense of how we're doing --
how the changes that we're making at OSHA and my vision are sort of
impacting out there.  And I heard a presentation from an attorney who
represents -- whose clients are employers who have some contact with
OSHA, usually people who we've issued citations.  And he said that he
felt uncomfortable saying that our new approach can be defined as
aggressive, but also very successful.  He particularly talked about our
-- what we sometimes talk about as regulation by shaming, and he used
that same phrase.  He said it's controversial, but he thought it was
being very successful, that when we issue a press release, we're very
specific about what we found from the employer, we put their name out
there, and we try to make it clear in the press what we found.

		In addition, as many of you know, for example, we try to approach
employers directly through letters, and we've done a letter campaign,
for example, after a number of really needless fatalities in the grain
handling industry.  And this attorney said that he is called by his
clients, who say, I saw this press release, I saw this letter.  What
should I do?  And, of course, he is able to say, well, fix their
hazards.  And that's exactly what we want to happen.

		The reason we do this, we send these letters out, we put out very
strong press releases, is we want employers to make changes before
workers are hurt.  And we want them to make the change before OSHA sends
inspectors because we have so few inspectors.  It's a way we leverage
our resources.  He was very complimentary.  I mean, it was nice for us
to hear that, that in fact, you know, taking OSHA public in this way,
making it clear what we're doing and what will happen if we find
hazards, is a very useful way to encourage employers to do the right
thing.  So I was very pleased about that.

		I know yesterday you talked a great deal about the Gulf.  And we're
eager to look at the lessons of the Gulf, and what we've learned there,
what we can do differently, what we can do better, what structures or
changes.  I appreciate your assistance on this.

		Certainly, one of the lessons we learned, which we see here as well,
is the importance of interagency collaboration.  And from the beginning,
we worked very closely with NIOSH, the National Institute for
Environmental and Health Sciences, and the Environmental Protection
Agency, as a sort of health subgroup.  And the Assistant Secretary for
Emergency Preparedness at HHS has sort of a health working group, and we
also as that group worked very closely with the Coast Guard and other
agencies as well.  And we hope to continue that through other -- in our
other activities.  And I know you heard from Dr. Howard yesterday about
some of the collaborative work that we're doing.

		Two of the issues that came up in the Gulf that come up on a regular
basis and, you know, as you discussed yesterday, are heat and fatigue. 
And they're issues that we're again reminded that OSHA does not have
standards on these two very significant hazards.  And certainly we would
welcome your input into ways we could approach these issues.

		In terms of heat, the incident command there insisted, and we helped
enforce, use of a matrix that was put together by the military that said
given certain heat and humidity, this is the work schedule you should
use.  And that matrix is -- you know, it is used in a very standard way
in Iraq for our military personnel.  But it became somewhat
controversial to use it in the United States for workers who were in
many cases older, have disabilities, are certainly not as healthy as our
soldiers in Iraq, and therefore had much greater risk for heat-related
illness.

		But it was a very useful lesson for us to look at, and I think as a
result of the application of that matrix and many other requirements to
protect people from heat, I mean, ensuring that there were shaded areas
in the regular basis on all the staging areas, that there was plenty of
fluids for rehydration, that workers took these regular drinks.  There
was a medic on staff in certain conditions, just to check vital signs. 
But even with that, we had hundreds of cases of heat -- we had signs of
heat illness, but we had relatively few cases of serious heat illness,
and we had no fatalities from heat, as far as we know.

		And there are fatalities from heat every summer in the United States
among farmworkers, construction workers, people working out of cell
towers, and so working in heat conditions often not as hot as where they
were in the Gulf.  So I think we learned a lot.  The question is what do
we do with that information.  How do we protect workers next summer, not
just in clean-up operations, but in all operations?  And we would love
your assistance on that.

		And similarly with fatigue.  We watched very carefully, we looked at
the literature, and we know that -- and we discussed this at our last
meeting, that in fact there is extensive literature that long work hours
have an effect on your ability to work safely.  You know, the operation
-- talking about operator error.  And there is no question after a
certain number of hours of work, you can't operate machinery as
effectively, can't protect yourself as effectively.

		I guess as Joe mentioned, we were petitioned by the organization
representing -- an organization representing medical residents and some
other groups as well to consider regulating the hours of medical
residents, who evidence has shown are at increased risk of lacerations,
needle sticks, and automobile accidents leaving work after working
extended hours.  And that again sort of raised this same issue.  But,
you know, this certainly isn't a problem unique to residents.

		There is a very larger employer, Alcoa, that has studied this pretty
carefully, and they do not allow workers to work more than 60 hours a
week.  They have seen through their own analyses of their own data that
actually in their case, they see in 64 hours a week the risk of injury
goes way up.

		So what should we do?  And this is an area again where we would love
your assistance on.  We're considering the petition for medical
residents, and we're looking at other information we have, where we
should decide what to do.  And that would be something we can certainly
use your assistance on.

		I know a few other areas that came up yesterday that we could
certainly -- we would be very grateful for your input.  In some ways,
one of the most pressing areas which I think we would like to address is
the question of injury tracking, injury surveillance, and incentive
programs.  They're all very much related.  As an epidemiologist, I know
that a great deal can be learned by studying patterns of injury, and
certainly by even looking at the individual instance in workplaces one
can learn a tremendous amount of information that is necessary to
prevent future injuries from occurring.

		Injuries that aren't examined, that aren't investigated, provide no
useful information.  From a public health point of view, it's an
abdication of responsibility.  When injury occurs, it's of fundamental
importance to find why it occurred so we can prevent them from occurring
in the future.  Sometimes you can investigate the individual injury. 
Sometimes you have to look at the pattern of injuries to understand what
is going on.  But we know that there are tools to do that, and we know
that many leading employers understand this and do this.  Certainly, all
the employers in the VPP program are supposed to investigate not just
injuries, but near misses.  And those investigations should be
accomplished not just by the safety professionals, but involving the
workers as well, and the workers who are directly affected by it.

		And so we know this.  We'd like employers to ensure that injuries in
their workplaces are investigated.  In addition, injuries are very
important for OSHA to make decisions, to target our resources. 
Certainly, we don't want to go to expend resources looking at workplaces
where injury risk is very low.  In fact, one of the ways we decide where
we're going to inspect is through our occupational data initiative,
where we ask employers, or we tell employers, in certain categories they
must send us the aggregate information from their OSHA logs, and within
that group, we look at the injury rate.  And among the highest -- the
employees with the highest injury rate -- we inspect a certain
percentage of those, you know, randomly chosen within that group.  And
we find that those inspections are quite productive.

		It's unfortunate that they're productive, but not surprising. 
Employers with high injury rates are places we're likely to find a
significant number of violations.

		The program has its weaknesses.  We collect information at the end of
a year, you know, since an employer will aggregate their injury rates --
injury reports in February.  They'll send it to OSHA months later.  By
the time we actually use it to target an injury, it occurred a year and
a half or two years before the inspection takes place.  And that's
obviously a very long gap, and problematic.  But we still find it
useful.

		By law, we can collect more information if we want to, and we've held
a series of stakeholder -- we announced a few months ago a series of
stakeholder meetings to think about modernizing our injury and illness
information collection system.  And we're thinking about this very
actively.  We've had some very productive meetings.  But we'd love your
input into this.

		What information should we be collecting from employers?  What
information should be put on the web?  How quickly information should be
given to OSHA?  You know, some states, state plans, have very different
requirements than OSHA does, and what can we learn from those state
plans?  We know that California requires reporting all hospitalizations
and amputations to the California OSHA program.  We don't require that
now.  Should we do -- things like this we would be very interested in
your input and thinking about this issue.  We think there is a great
deal to be learned by OSHA, but also by employers.  So how do we set up
a system so employers and workers have access to that same information,
and they can use it in a timely manner?  And that would be something we
would be very grateful for you to think about with us.

		MR. BUCHAN:  Dr. Michaels, from your presentation, I think there is
one shortcoming, and that is how do you target health issues?  You were
talking amputations and injuries.  How do you target something like
silicosis that is going to have a relatively long latency period.

		DR. MICHAELS:  That's a great question.  And I would throw that back
at you in some ways.  I specifically don't say even though our
statistics all say injuries and illnesses, I don't say injuries and
illnesses because I know that the employer reports of illness are very
limited.  I mean, sometimes they're quite useful.  And I'll give you an
example.  We recently issues a citation for an employer where there four
cases of pneumoconiosis among -- in a workforce of less than 20 people.

		Now, this is a facility which dealt with slag from a coal-burning
power plant.  And so the slag was an amalgam of different materials, not
including carbon because the carbon was all burned off.  So you
certainly wouldn't call it Black Lung.  But there was a pneumoconiosis. 
We didn't hear about any of those cases.  How should we hear about them?

		MS. SEMINARIO:  How did you get in there?

		DR. MICHAELS:  Well, we got in there -- the specific -- a complaint
led us there.  And several of those workers had left the workplace. 
They eventually filed for worker's compensation.  But we didn't hear
about it from the worker's compensation system of Illinois, where we
should have.  I mean, it raises all -- this case raised all those
issues.  And looking at that, we'd love your thoughts on that, too.

		We should be working with health state departments.  I know NIOSH has
done a terrific job with various state health departments thinking about
reporting.  But the health departments often don't know.  Sometimes it's
the worker's compensation system.  Sometimes it's the employer, but many
times -- I mean, this is something employers really don't know in many
cases.  In this case, the employers heard about them because people left
work.  They applied for worker's comp.  And so they should have
certainly sent that information to someone.  I mean, we don't require
that right now to be sent to us.  It wasn't on their logs.

		Anyway, it's a great question, and that certainly is a piece of it. 
But I specifically deal with injuries, but illnesses I would love to see
as well.  I just think it's a different answer.  And if you'd like to
take it on as well, that would be great.  But thanks for raising that. 
Yes.

		MR. VAN HOUTEN:  Dr. Michaels, regarding injury and illness data
collection, you know, as you were speaking, the thought crossed my mind,
could we tap into the worker's comp system to get you data earlier.  So
is that an option or not?

		DR. MICHAELS:  Well, I mean, I think other people here have had more
experience with that than I do.

		MS. MURRAY:  This is a meaningful use example.

		DR. MICHAELS:  Yeah.

		MS. MURRAY:  So again, in theory, with the health information
exchanges, you know what medicine I'm on, what my blood pressure is.

		DR. MICHAELS:  Right.

		MS. MURRAY:  It's going to be there in the exchange.  So it's just
like, whatever it is, some mysterious lung disease.  If you have a
worker's comp case, and you have where those people work -- you said 20
employees, 4 people, you know, that should be a flag.  So this is what
is meant by active surveillance and paying attention to these health
information exchanges that we're investing millions of dollars in.

		DR. MICHAELS:  We cannot require the worker's compensation system to
provide us with information.  By law, it's my understanding that we
can't require them to.  On the other hand, there is no reason to think
we couldn't work with them to get more information.  I think there are
some states where it is probably easier than others.  I suspect the
Washington state system has a --

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  We do have a unique arrangement in which we have the
equivalent of OSHA and NIOSH and the worker's compensation system all in
one agency, and we have been trying for years to take advantage of that
rather unique access to information.  And we do have some successes and
some failures that depending on where the committee goes may be worth
sharing in some detail.  I think --

		MS. MURRAY:  But the office of the national coordinator could require,
should they choose, that all HIEs that would be approved would have to
include worker's compensation data, for example.

		DR. MICHAELS:  No.  I think that's a very important issue.  And then
we know that worker's compensation reports for illnesses are not
particularly good.  And they're certainly better than the OSHA logs. 
But they also are not complete because there are lots of -- we have to
think about this certainly much more comprehensively.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Well, you know, if we're interested in examining the
match between resources and needs, this is an important area because we
know there are roughly 5,000 deaths a year from workplace injuries.  We
also know from the epidemiologic literature and other sources that there
are maybe ten times as many deaths from workplace illnesses, but they're
beneath the radar.  And the agencies spend very little of their
resources on -- they spend a disproportionate amount of resources to
deal with those illnesses and those deaths.  So it is an important area.

		DR. MICHAELS:  On the other hand, from the OSHA point of view, we're
less interested in the cases with very long latent periods because we
need to be able to make the information now.  On the other hand, there
is no shortage of cases we miss of little or no latency.  So how do we
get to those cases?  What do we do with them?  But that's an important
issue as well.  But I think that's one that NIOSH actually has worked a
great deal on, and probably one that before this group takes on would be
worth working closely with NIOSH and the various state health
departments that they have done.

		So I think in some ways that's a lower priority for OSHA right now. 
Related to this, though, is the -- you know, I believe from the data --
well, let me step back.  We know that many workplace injuries do not
make it to employer logs.  We know that from many different pieces of
evidence.  But in some ways, the most compelling one -- and I don't know
if we talked about this at the last meeting -- is a recent study done by
the researchers at Michigan State University, Ken Rosen and his group,
trying to look at this question of the accuracy of the BLS estimates of
workplace injury.

		Now, as you know, the Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn't collect all
injury logs.  What they do is they take a statistical sample of
employers across the country in every industry or every SIC code,
however they do it.  And they ask for the OSHA log, and they enter it
into the computer, and they make estimates of the actual injury rate
based on that sample.  So when they say, you know, the injury rate is
4.7 per hundred, that's actually not a measure.  It's an estimate.

		And so the researchers at Michigan State said how many injuries are
getting -- you know, how accurate is that?  And so they chose to look at
traumatic amputations, traumatic amputations being the group of
workplace injuries that perhaps are the least controverted in that
someone loses a part of their body that includes a bone, cartilage, and
the case occurred at work.  And so based on BLS -- the BLS estimate was
that there were 170 traumatic amputations in the workplaces in Michigan
in 2007.  And so Michigan State contacted the state worker's
compensation system, and said how many amputations that occurred in 2007
were filed and paid for.  And then they contacted emergency rooms and
hospitals throughout the state.  And they found close to 800.

		Now, of those 800, some of them were probably self-employed
individuals, and some may have worked on farms.  There are various
reasons they may not have made the OSHA log.  But certainly we note
there is a big gap between reported injuries, injuries that actually
make it to logs, and injuries that occur.

		So we're trying to -- we've looked a little bit at why -- what is
happening here, and obviously there are some cases where employers
decide not to do that.  But I think an area that has been suggested as
being very important -- and we'd like to look at more, and we will now
try to collect some data on this -- is the role of incentive programs,
where peer pressure is used to discourage workers from reporting
injuries.  And the most classic example of that is the safety Bingo or
Friday afternoon pizza party.

		At our Latino worker health and safety summit in Houston, I talked
about this at a meeting, where I said, you know, commonly we see an
employer who said, if no one gets injured this week, we'll all share a
pizza on Friday afternoon.  And afterwards, one of the housekeeping
staff of that hotel who was listening in said, you know, we do that
here.  And so think about it.  Here is a woman whose job is to, you
know, make beds by herself, and using these heavy quilts.  And we know
that there is a lot of reported injuries in that group.  I don't believe
that the promise of a slice of pizza on Friday will impact the way she
works on Tuesday or Wednesday.  On the other hand, it will impact on
whether or not she reports an injury because if she does hurt her back,
I mean, it's not serious enough that she has to leave work, she will
herself feel, and feel from her friends, if she says something,
everybody is going to pay for it.

		And so there is peer pressure not to report the injury.  And, you
know, it's often that the prize is much greater than a slice of pizza. 
It's often a raffle ticket for a pickup truck.  And so there is great
incentive for workers not to report injuries.  So we've made it very
clear that we are concerned about incentive programs because we think
that as a result of this, injuries are not reported.  And if injuries
are not reported, they can't be investigate.  And if we can't
investigate them, we can't prevent further injuries from occurring.  And
that minor injury that could have been reported and investigated could
have prevented something more major in the future.

		So while we think there are types of incentive programs that are very
useful and incentive programs that encourage people to find and evade
hazards, we think those are terrific, we've made clear, and I've made it
clear, for example, to companies in VPP, that I don't want to see those
-- the incentive programs that simply don't report injuries because I
think essentially what that does that is that discourages injured
workers from reporting injuries.  It doesn't encourage safe work.  And
there is an additional price to that.

		And so I'm very interested in talking this on because I'd love your
thoughts on how to pursue it.  We've discussed it now a little bit, but
obviously if you want to take this further, that would be great.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Why don't we hear from Peg and Bill, and then take
it from there.  Bill?

		MR. BORWENGEN:  I don't understand why that wouldn't be a relatively
clearcut 11C violation.  I mean, basically, you're treating people who
are reporting injury in a disparate fashion.  They're not getting
something that other people are getting.  And it's discrimination.  I'm
not a lawyer, but, you know.

		DR. MICHAELS:  Nor am I, but --

		MR. BORWENGEN:  But I think a couple of test cases and a couple of
these press releases that you've talked about could really put a dent in
this.

		DR. MICHAELS:  Well, press releases are easy.  But what I'm told by
our solicitor is that if a worker reports an injury and then is excluded
from that raffle, that is an 11C violation.  But if the worker him or
herself choose not to report, that is not a -- the existence of that
program itself, unfortunately, is not an 11C violation, and that's the
problem.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Peg?

		MS. SEMINARIO:  It is a problem.

		DR. MICHAELS:  Yeah.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  And it was an issue that was raised back in the
recordkeeping rule to make the practice a violation of the rule rather
than individual 11C violation.  And so I think in looking at the injury
and illness prevention program, that this is an opportunity to sort of
shift the orientation about what does an injury and illness prevention
program look like.

		There is a lot of activity going on right now at the same time, as you
know, in mining looking at these issues.  There is a lot of activity
going on right now in the rail industry.  There is a new advisory
committee that has just been set up in response to the metro incident
here in D.C. looking at safety management systems and trying to change
the culture in workplaces that would encourage people to report, and to
report near misses.

		Going home last Friday, I heard that CSX and a number of the rail
carriers are changing their practices now to basically try to change the
orientation from discrimination against people who report to advocating
reporting.  And this was actually an issue that came up at one of the
stakeholder meeting that I was at.  And what I would suggest is that
there is an opportunity at this point in time to try and make that
transformation in the occupational area through this rulemaking in
pulling in those experiences that are going on in other settings that
are dealing with the same problems.

		It came up, obviously, in the Gulf Coast.  It came up in Upper Big
Branch.  People were afraid to report, whether it was the hazards, the
injuries.  And what that, you know, presented was a whole of set of
circumstances that ended up being catastrophic.  In a lot of places, it
has not reached that level of catastrophe, but I would just say that
there is a different, I think, orientation that is going on and a shift
in looking at safety management systems than there was 10 years ago.  We
could take advantage of that and fully explore that in this rulemaking.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Just incidentally, I was in a Simmons mattress plant
a couple of weeks ago, where workers are actually recognized and
rewarded for reporting close calls.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Yes, change the incentives.

		DR. MICHAELS:  We would love to see that.  That's exactly right.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  But you have also -- again, I think in the injury and
illness prevention rule, there is an opportunity.  But you have to do it
as a matter of regulatory basis to change the practices.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Linda.

		MS. MURRAY:  Well, it would be nice to have an employer that would do
the right thing, and I'm always glad when they do.  But I remind people
what we said yesterday.  We know computer-based, anonymous reporting of
problems and near-misses works.  So she mentioned the fire chiefs.  So
in healthcare, in the occupational healthcare setting, where the danger
of medication errors, where you make people sick or kill them, there is
a major disincentive to report.

		In a national hospital system that I served on the board, Catholic
hospital system, when we put in place an anonymous, computer-based
reporting mechanism for medication errors and near misses, it went up
fifteen-fold.  It was anonymous.  You know, you could make some
information so we could figure out, you know, the kinds of settings, et
cetera.  And it was computer.  It was in the company's intranet.  People
were confident that there would be no attempt to find out, you know, who
made the report.  It went up.

		So again, to mandate anonymous -- and especially with today's
workforce, the technology of today, to have anonymous, computer-based
reporting of problems and near misses, you will see the reports go up,
and then we'll have some tools that we can actually come in and prevent
things.

		DR. MICHAELS:  Who would you have them report to?

		MS. MURRAY:  Well, you know, personally I would have them report to
somebody who can actually do something.

		DR. MICHAELS:  But within the company, not to OSHA or the health
department.

		MS. MURRAY:  No.  I think that's up for debate.

		DR. MICHAELS:  Well, that's what I'm wondering.

		MS. MURRAY:  I think it could be mirrored, and I think we should look
at that.  You know, I have subjective feelings based on my history that
not all companies do the right thing.  So I'm always happy to have it go
outside of the company, in addition to inside.  Clearly, you want the
company to know about it, because hopefully they will do the right thing
and work with workers to make the place safer.  But as a backup, since
it's supposed to be reported anyway, you know, again, electronically
this doesn't become a problem.  It can go to both places
instantaneously, either a state agency or some other mechanism.

		But the point I'm trying to make is that we shouldn't be thinking of
old-fashioned systems of reporting in today's age, and we should really
look at the anonymous electronic reporting where we know in many, many
settings you get more accurate information.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Peter.

		MR. DOOLEY:  Yeah.  Just a quick note about -- that the incentive
programs is one form of discouraging the bringing out, you know, the
hazards or the injuries or illnesses.  There are also other ways that
are in place in many workplaces that discourage reporting, which
includes discipline, drug testing, various ways.  And the newest -- the
latest thing that I've seen an explosion of in the last year or so is
these mandatory safety rules that are list -- that workers are required
to sign off on, which basically puts the burden of health and safety on
the worker, and then if they report an injury, of course, they have
violated one of those rules.

		So it's like, you know, a -- you know, it's a clear way in which
workers are going to be blamed for whatever gets reported.  So there is
a whole myriad of problems.

		DR. MICHAELS:  No.  We've seen that.  We've seen, you know, the one
strike and you're out --

		MR. DOOLEY:  Yeah, yeah.

		DR. MICHAELS:  -- all too often.  And we've actually also seen
programs that not only seems to be guaranteed firing the worker, but the
foreman as well, the supervisor, if that happens.

		MR. DOOLEY:  Big problem.

		DR. MICHAELS:  Yes.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Well, this is a very rich area that we're discussing
right now, and it has a number of different facets to it.  It seems to
me that the thing that ties it together -- the question that ties it all
together that not only the agencies, but employers and unions are
wrestling with as well would be how do we use information systems to get
attention directed to the right places at the right times.  I know
that's something that in my agency we're actively working on.

		So I think this is an area where there may be sufficient interest on
the part of committee members, as well as interest on the part of the
agencies that might rise to the top of an agenda.

		DR. MICHAELS:  If I could just add one more complexity to this, I've
been meeting with a number of large construction contractors who are
very dedicated to safety, and do not have any incentive programs like
this.  In fact, when some of their companies that hire them insisted on
those, they report them to me, and we deal with them.  But their
concern, which I think is a very valid one, is if they ensure that every
injury is reported on the log, their injury rates are higher than
companies that discourage them.  And as a result of that, they're
penalized.

		In some cases, they can't get jobs with municipalities that look at
the rate as one of the things they do to issue contracts.  And we have
to think about that.  It's a complex issue because they're penalized for
doing the right thing.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Well, I mean, the entire --

		DR. MICHAELS:  And we should again get to safety and health prevention
-- injury and illness prevention programs.  And what I tell -- as I've
met with purchasers of these large contracts, is to say don't look at
the injury and illness rate.  Look at the injury and illness prevent
program.  Look at the job safety analyses.  You want a robust program,
not just saying, you know, their injury rate is low because that -- but
there is a piece of it we really do have to deal with because we
certainly don't want to penalize the employers who do the right thing.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Yeah.  Go ahead, Bill.

		MR. BORWENGEN:  We've been focusing way too long on this lagging
indicator.  I mean, you know, safety and health directors for companies,
you know, there is just way too much weight placed on this lagging
indicator as a benchmark for their performance.  And, you know, we need
to reverse that.  And this is an opportunity in the I2B2 rule to figure
out a way to incentivize reporting of near misses and near hits.  And
it's critical, and it's a great way to also involve -- you know, deal
with the need for greater worker involvement in the rule.

		So, I mean, we need to somehow convince folks we're trying to work
with here that relying on this indicator is -- I mean, because also, the
more we rely on this indicator, the more games that are going to be
played about, you know, reporting as a result.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  This discussion so far, I think, is really helpful
in understanding some of OSHA's needs.  Yesterday, when we heard from
the OSHA panel, there were some other things that were put on the table.
 Debbie Berkowitz talked about some of the recent enforcement activity,
the SEEP program, for example, the attempts to use letters with the
grain handling employers, and the utilities that are using gas purging. 
We heard about where you are with the recordkeeping national assist
program.

		So we heard about a bunch of things in enforcement.  Mike Seymour
brought us up to date on the injury and illness prevention program
rulemaking, and Mandy Edens talked about where you are with the PELs
project.  I'm wondering if you could give the committee some indication
of your thoughts in these areas, and whether or not these are areas in
which you would really look to us for some advice, or if in some cases
you think that you've got enough stakeholder activity and other things
underway that we would be best advised to work on other things.

		DR. MICHAELS:  You know, we face the same dilemma that you do.  There
are so many different areas to work in, and we have to choose our
priorities and figure out to leverage our resources.  And frankly, I'm
worried that we're spread too thin already, taking on all these issues. 
But they're all out there.  I do feel we need to address them.

		I think for some of the areas, we have -- we are already getting
streams of input, and certainly the PELs project we have an informal
group that we've been getting input from.  And one of the things we're
trying to do is actually to look beyond our immediate advisory group,
people we have regular contact with.  You know, in some ways, we're
trying to shift our substantive thinking.

		You know, the smartest people may not be in the room, and we're trying
to put the information out, or the questions out, more widely, using the
Internet and using some new tools, and see if we can get some different
inputs.  For example, around PELs, we had this request out saying, tell
us what chemicals you think we should take on and why.  And we've gotten
some very interesting input with looking at that.  And I think we plan
to do that with all of these areas, you know, think about reaching out
through electronic means to get input from other people.

		On the other hand, having a group like this, which is well balanced
and very thoughtful about occupational health, is very, very useful to
us.  And I think the big issues, which I think we could really use your
help on, are these -- you know, these connected issues of injury and
illness prevention program, injury reporting -- I mean, they are all the
fundamental basis for the relationship of employers, workers, and
safety, and then how OSHA relates to that.  And it's larger, obviously,
than just OSHA.  And that's what we need help on.

		We could figure out the best way to do a heat standard.  It would be
great to have your input.  But having you all sit down together and
think about really this core of tough issues is what I would love to see
more than anything else.  That would be most productive to us.

		In addition, you know, any additional thoughts you have about safety
and dangers, there are lots of things out there which obviously we'd
love to hear from you.  But in some ways, having you all together in the
room debating that may be less useful than taking on these core
questions of safety and health occurs in the workplace.  What is the
role of OSHA and NIOSH?  That is what I would love to see.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  That resonates with me.  I mean, since my job is the
same kind of job you have at a smaller scale --

		DR. MICHAELS:  It's the same job.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I mean, that's exactly the thing that I'm wrestling
with every day.  So I understand the question you're suggesting.  Yeah,
Denise.

		MS. POUGET:  I believe in not reinventing the wheel.  And the
near-miss program that I spoke about yesterday is a program that reaches
across all -- not just one jurisdiction, but it's the International
Association of Fire Chiefs, firefighternearmiss.com, and obviously
firefighting is a very hazardous occupation and, you know, we're losing
so many firefighters every year for different reasons, line of duty
deaths.  And the long and short of it is, you know, this program was
based on what the FAA did years ago.

		I mean, I would love to, you know, offer to demonstrate it whenever
that is because I think it is a good starting point to at least look at
for a model because you're getting -- that particular agency, the
International Association of Fire Chiefs, runs this anonymous program,
and they do educational and cultural -- the need for cultural change and
so forth in the fire service.  And they're needs to be probably a
cultural change in the workplace, you know, making that work for all
walks of life.

		But it is an anonymous program, and its hold in the workers -- from
the workers' eyes, and they also give lessons learned.  And when you go
on, and you -- like, for example, we can search for, you know, house
fire incidents or highrise fire incidents or automobile accidents or
boating situations, whatever we want to look at, and we can, you know,
just go through.  And we use these lessons learned as kind of like
coffee table drills in all the firehouses.

		And that doesn't just take place in Alexandria or Montgomery County. 
I mean, it's an international program.  So it's just a thought, since
we're discussing that.  And, I mean, as I was saying yesterday, you
could go to -- just an idea -- at osha.gov and file your anonymous
near-miss, and then you could have your database that way.

		But again, if that's an interest or something, I would be more than
happy to show it to you, or demonstrate it.  I could even do it today
because it's Internet based.  But, you know, whatever.  It's an offer.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  We may have time to think more about that.  Yes,
Emory.

		MR. KNOWLES:  Just to comment back on the issue of exposure levels. 
You indicated that recently you've been canvassing various groups, you
know, which chemicals should be regulated.  Yesterday we heard that
there were probably about 15 chemicals that were being considered for
regulation.  And we all know -- you know, I've been on this committee
for a number of years.  I've been in the profession for a long time.

		The whole PEL process is broken.  It has been broken for years.  It
takes years to get new standards out.  Why isn't the agency aggressively
moving forward with approaches that have been used successfully by the
EPA, such as the implementation, or requirement of the implementation,
of best available control technologies when processes are being set up. 
And similarly with the utilization of a technique that is used
throughout the world fairly successfully today, and that's control band.
 Why aren't we using control band?  That's a critical question.

		DR. MICHAELS:  Well, I think it very much relates to our law.  And I
think there may be some piece of that we can do from a regulatory point
of view, but it would be very difficult.  And without a change of
legislation -- Congress told the EPA they could use the best available
technology modeling.  That was actually -- my understanding is that was
done by Congress after evaluating the previous approach, which was much
more setting numerical standards.

		Congress hasn't given us that authority as much as some people would
like them to.  We are in the unfortunate position that we have to look
at each chemical individually and do a tremendous amount of work to
issue the regulation if we want to choose to regulate chemicals.  It's
certainly worth -- you know, if this group wants to take that on and
think about it, it would be useful.  But my thinking more is it would be
worthwhile to think about control of chemical exposures in workplaces as
part of an injury and illness prevention program, and say what should
employers do, what can we require of employers to do in terms of looking
at the available evidence.

		I mean, we have standards on a relatively small percentage of
chemicals used in the workplace.  And of those, many of them ought to
be.  But there is tremendous literature on those, and certainly many
employers, and certainly many of the chemical manufacturing firms,
recognize that our standards either don't exist or are irrelevant, and
they say in their product stewardship programs, this is how you have to
protect workers.  And they are far more protective than anything OSHA
requires.

		So how can we integrate that, we incorporate that, into the safety and
health programs of the companies that purchase these chemicals?  We need
to think about this in different ways, other than just issuing
regulations because we probably can't, unfortunately, issue that
regulation saying you have to use the best available technology, or that
you have to -- you know, here are the control bands, and when a chemical
is put in that band, you have to treat it in a certain way.

		We can't do either of those, it's my understanding, without some
legislative changes.  So given that, you know, we're stuck with what --
you know, we have to abide by these current -- our current situation. 
So we've got to think about some imaginative ways to take that
information that's out there into account.  And that's an interesting
challenge we'd like to hear more on.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  You've given us a pretty strong suggestion to get
involved with the broad area of data systems, injury and illness
surveillance, the incentive programs that drive those, and how data is
used to direct resources.  On the other hand, you were pretty clear that
there are some subjects, like a standard for heat stress, that probably
are not -- don't really merit our attention.  With regard to the work
that you're doing on injury and illness prevention programs, we know
that you're doing a lot.  You've had a bunch of stakeholders meetings
with a lot of people engaged.  Can you talk a little bit more about that
and how you see that maybe fitting into the work that we're doing?

		DR. MICHAELS:  Well, you know, as I think everybody recognizes, the
basic idea of an injury and illness prevention program is one that many,
many groups within occupational health, from employers to unions to
professionals, embrace this.  But certainly I think each group probably
looks at it a little bit differently, and they have a different
understanding of what we're talking about.  And we've learned that in
our stakeholder meetings, where many different people stood up and said,
we think it's a great idea, but, or the devil is in the details.

		And so we have to weigh all this out.  And we have a long process from
the regulatory point of view.  Before we can issue a proposed rule, we
have to survey employers to what the costs will be, and we have to go
through a small business panel.  So we have a lot of opportunity to
between and the proposed rule to think about this.  And so we would love
your thoughts, thinking about what are the components, you know, in the
rule.  What should our requirements be?  You know, we can certainly --
we'd be happy to have someone like Mike Seymour or someone who is very
much involved in the process, if you put together a committee to work on
this, to meet with you.  We have notes from all of our -- we had four
stakeholder meetings.  They were very productive, and we certainly would
share this, to hear the issues that came up, and to have you thinking
about, you know, how we respond to these, what is important, what is
not.

		I mean, some of the issues that you've talked about this morning, how
do we incorporate that into a -- is it -- do we make that very specific,
just saying this is something that -- does the near-miss investigation
need to be described in detail?  I mean, all these things are important
issues.  And what do we learn in the past from this?  I know these are
areas that many people in this room have been deeply involved in for a
long time.  I mean, an injury and illness prevention program is not a
new idea.

		So we'd probably assign someone to work with you, and say, this is
where we are, this is what we've learned.  You're right.  We're not --
unfortunately, we're not at the point where anything is -- you know,
once we issue a proposed rule, then we have to essentially limit certain
discussions.  But we're not nearly at that point, so we'd love to get
input from this group and others as to what goes into that.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Susan.

		MS. RANDOLPH:  You know, when Mike Seymour talked to us yesterday
about the I2P2, he talked about the importance of management commitment
and the employer responsibility.  I mean, that's I believe the crux of
that.  If you had good employer responsibility and commitment, that goes
along with the injury reporting and looking at near-misses and how can
we put the controls in place to prevent injuries and any exposures
taking place.

		Now, and I don't know what the best answer to get back to that
employer commitment, management commitment.  It almost has to be some
sort of a culture shift in the way of thinking.  You know, many
employers go along with that in looking at how can we look at all levels
of prevention and put things into place, and others, you know, don't.  I
don't know if some thought has been given to that whole area.

		DR. MICHAELS:  It's a tough one.  And obviously, you can't regulate
commitment.  So that's something we have to think about.  But, you know,
I don't want to give short shrift also to the reporting issue because
that's in some ways one that I think the occupational community has put
less thought into, into how injuries should be -- you know, what are the
best indicators to look at?  What injury information should be
aggregated?  What injury information should be public?  What injury
information should be sent to OSHA?

		There are 3 million workplace injuries reported in a year.  I'm not
sure OSHA would know what to do with 3 million injury reports a year. 
So the question is what should OSHA receive.  What should be put on the
web?  There has been a great deal of research into the effectiveness of
posting of information in other areas and how that affects behavior, and
certainly behavioral economics is something that this administration is
very interested in looking further at.  Should we be requiring every
employer to post their injury rates on the web?  You know, there are
locations in Canada they do this for example.

		You know, lots of important questions that really -- that need to be
thought out some.  And we'd love your thoughts on that.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Other questions for Dr. Michaels?

		MR. BUCHAN:  Dr. Michaels, how far along are you on the injury
prevention initiative?

		DR. MICHAELS:  Well, what I say is we have come what we think very
far.  But before we can issue a proposed rule, we have to go through a
number of steps that will take time.

		MR. BUCHAN:  Yeah.

		DR. MICHAELS:  So I think while we've thought a great deal about it
and have got a lot of input, we are months away, many months away, from
issuing a proposed standard because we have to do a survey, we have to
have a SBREFA panel.  And so given that, there is lots of time to think
more about what we would put into a proposed rule.  But we have a staff
that has worked on this actually for years.  But when I arrived, and I
said I think this is an important priority, many people who work at OSHA
said, we've been waiting for someone to come and tell us that.  We've
been working on this for years.  They're already -- in fact, I was given
a memo that was written 10 years to the date before I was given it
saying here are the various options.

		So OSHA has been thinking about this for a long time.  There was just
a period where it was very clear that wasn't an option that was proposed
on a regulatory basis, and that has changed.

		MR. BUCHAN:  Could we get a copy of it and maybe see if there are some
thing that should be included that are not, or advise not to have
something?

		DR. MICHAELS:  Well, I can't give you a copy of what we're proposing
as a rule.  That can't be showed outside the agency.  On the other hand,
the basic ideas I think are out there, and you can certainly comment on
them and get your -- you know, we'd love your input.

		MS. SHORTALL:  Could I add one thing about that?  When OSHA goes
through the SBREFA process, the materials that they will have to provide
to the panel will be made public, of which some form of what the
standard will require is in it.  Although they're not going to be asking
for your comment, the panel will allow anyone to comment.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Well, I think Dr. Michaels offered just a little
while ago to share the information from the stakeholder meetings that
occurred.  The question for us is whether or not that's where we want to
direct our energies over the next few months.  And it is certainly
possible that that is to be decided later during the course of the day.

		MS. SHORTALL:  And I think Mr. Seymour said yesterday that all but one
of the stakeholder reports is already on OSHA's web.  So you can access
them already.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Are there other topics that any of you as
individuals think is particularly important or that have come up in
discussion over yesterday or our previous meeting that you want to put
back on the table while Dr. Michaels is still with us?

		MR. VAN HOUTEN:  Just pursue the topic that Dr. Howard mentioned
yesterday.  I think in his presentation on influenza, he talked about
protection of healthcare workers.  So I'd be interested in
Dr. Michaels' viewing as to is this an area that we should be looking
at.

		DR. MICHAELS:  I think it's an area of great interest.  And certainly,
if you have the time to take on this as well, it's beyond that very top
priority that I talked about; certainly on we would love assistance on. 
And we have a request for information out that we're gathering
information.  We are certainly looking very hard at how we can change
our regulations to protect healthcare workers, and we're interested in
looking at enforcement activities.  So I think any input you want to
give us on that would be fine.

		It's not at the top of the list for what I see this group is helping
us on, but it's certainly important to us, and I wouldn't want to
discourage you if you think you really have some expertise you want to
help us on.  That would be great.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Bill.

		MR. BORWENGEN:  Yeah.  We were particularly concerned about, you know,
the impinging CDC guidelines that proposed to weaken the application of
respiratory protection in light of the fact that the differential
pathogenicity of this H1N1 virus and the way that the hospitalizations
and the fatalities are primarily among people under -- 95 percent of the
people are under the age of 65, which is the exact opposite of seasonal
influenza.

		So, you know, we've changed what was basically a disease of retired
individuals into a disease of working-age individuals.  And we thought
it placed a special burden on NIOSH and OSHA since if we do weaken these
protections, we still haven't gathered information, for instance, on a
number of clusters from last year among healthcare workers, and we're
concerned about the impact that is going to have in light of the fact
also that the H1N1 vaccine we've learned recently is only 62 percent
effective.  And so, you know, we're delegating millions of healthcare
workers, even if they got vaccinated, to not have sufficient protections
if these guidelines are weakened, which we believe they're going to be
because that's what the proposal was a couple of weeks ago.

		So, you know, I know that OSHA was enforcing the CDC guidelines, but
if they get weakened, we're concerned about what is going to happen to,
for instance, the pregnant healthcare worker who maybe even got
vaccinated, but the vaccine didn't work, and she is directed to go into
a room of a coughing H1N1 patient, and she asks for a respirator, and
they say, well, CDC says you don't have to have one.

		We're just trying to figure out, you know, what is the role for OSHA
in this situation, where, you know, it's a reasonable accommodation to
provide people with sufficient protection.

		DR. MICHAELS:  Well, again, I mean, if this is their -- I mean, I
think in terms of the utility, we certainly would like your advice on
all of these issues.  Again, I think this top issue is really sort of
the relationship across all workplaces.  But that's certainly an area if
you want to think about the issues of safety and health among hospital
workers, which is a very big area and one that we don't do enough.  But,
I mean, there are ergonomic issues that are very significant, and we do
a relatively small number of enforcement activities in hospitals.  There
are so few standards that are applicable.

		But when we're looking at vaccines, how should we be protecting
hospital workers?  Your advice certainly would be helpful in that.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Yeah.  It's an area that touches many others.

		DR. MICHAELS:  Yes.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I know that one of the areas that OSHA has been
especially interested in over the last several months and has been
mentioned a couple of times before this committee is the work that needs
to be done to address the needs of vulnerable and hard to reach workers.
 And I was wondering if you could tell us sort of where you are with
that and whether or not this an area that we ought to be paying some
attention to.

		DR. MICHAELS:  And it sounds like this is a group -- you know, I'm
sorry I didn't know about the work of this group before that reaches out
to Hispanic workers.  I think I should actually go back and read that
report.  This is obviously a very important area to OSHA.  Currently, we
are looking at ways to reach out to vulnerable populations using methods
that OSHA hasn't done before, reaching out to workers and many
faith-based groups, through other sorts of public mechanisms to tell
workers what their rights are and tell them that OSHA exists, to give
them some information and encourage them to call us because we know that
those workers are at great risk of injury and illness.

		We are putting a great deal of resources into that.  Following our
national summit, a lot of our regions and area offices are having their
own meetings with organizations primarily representing Latino workers or
Latino families.  We've had those in a couple of different regions
already, and a few more that are being planned.  I think it's very
exciting.  I think it's an important area to work in.  It's going to be
hard to evaluate our success.  We certainly can count the people we
reach, but how that impacts injury rates will be difficult to see.

		We're working very hard with our area offices to set up ways that they
can respond more quickly when they get complaints in languages other
than English, which has been a great challenge to us.  There are workers
who don't speak English we need to be able to contact.  So they need to
hear about OSHA.  But then once they know about OSHA and they're
encouraged to call, we have to be able to understand what they've told
us and to respond.

		So we're looking at various different ways to get translation services
and to get our information out in different languages.  Again, it's
probably an area where we have a great deal of work going on, and it's
probably not the most important area for this group.  It's a very
important area to OSHA, but it's probably not the most important area
for this group to work on.  On the other hand, again, if there are
individuals -- or if you think there are ways you can help us, we
welcome that.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I appreciate the direct answer to that question. 
That's very helpful.

		DR. MICHAELS:  Yeah.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I notice, by the way, just incidentally, that a
number of the Susan Harwood grantees in this latest round are groups
that are not those who traditionally have received grant funds from
OSHA.

		DR. MICHAELS:  And then we should tell you that, you know, just
reaching out to people has a big impact.  There are a group of workers
from a Midwest meatpacking plant who drove to Houston because they heard
about this summit.  And at the meeting, we talked to them.  We gave them
a little card with OSHA's phone number and stuff like that, and they
gave them out at the workplace.  And the next day, one of the
supervisors said -- you know, someone has this card.  What's that?  He
said, it's OSHA.  Well, I guess we'd better have a safety meeting.  And
just the fact that people know about us and come to us, it begins to
have an impact.  And we want to reach out to workers and tell them, you
know, they have rights.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Other topics you want to talk with Dr. Michaels
about right now?

		DR. MICHAELS:  And let me underscore here, just because I've said, you
know, it's not the top priority for us to get your input, that doesn't
we don't care about the issue.  Obviously, this is an issue we are
working very hard on.  But we're pretty far down the road, where there
are other areas where we're -- you know, which are complex, and we have
further to go, and we can probably use your assistance on.  And just as
we have to leverage OSHA's resources, we have to leverage yours, too.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I appreciate that.  That's exactly what we need to
know.  So this is very useful.  Any other thoughts before we take a
short break?

		MS. SHORTALL:  I'm going to take care of one housekeeping item.  I'd
like to enter into the record as Exhibit .27 Dr. David Michaels'
statement to OSHA employees on "OSHA at 40:  New Challenges and New
Directions," dated July 19, 2010.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  Thank you.  Anything else?  Dr. Michaels,
anything else for us?

		DR. MICHAELS:  No.  Thank you all again for your work, and I look
forward to your thoughts.  And I'll be meeting with you more this
afternoon, I think.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Thank you.

		DR. MICHAELS:  Thank you.

		FEMALE VOICE:  Could you ask everybody to sign in?

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  In the audience?

		FEMALE VOICE:  Yes.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  For those who are in the audience back there, I
would appreciate it if you would sign in.  There is a sign-up sheet in
the back.  We're a bit ahead of schedule, but I think this is a good
time to take a 15-minute break.

		(Whereupon, a brief recess was taken.)

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  Let's go back on the record, please.  Yes,
Sarah.

		MS. SHORTALL:  I'd like to mark as Exhibit .28 a letter from Dr. David
Michaels informing employers of hazards associated with cleaning fuel
gas piping systems and natural gas; as exhibit .29, a letter from Dr.
David Michaels to grain storage facility operators dated August 4, 2010;
as Exhibit .30, Dr. David Michaels' statement on long work hours and
fatigue and worker safety dated September 2, 2010.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Thank you.  We're missing Bill, Susan, and Peter.  I
think we ought to just continue the discussions, even though they're not
in the room yet.  We're not going to make any decisions, so we don't
require a quorum for the next few minutes anyway.  Okay.  I'm told we
have a quorum anyway.

		I found that a very useful exchange with Dr. Michaels, and it should
be helpful to us in getting through the next few hours.  Dr. Michaels
and Frank Hearl from NIOSH are going to be back at about 2:45.  And I
hope that by that point we'll be able to tell them the direction we're
headed, and probably associated with that ask for some information that
will help us.

		I could just open it up for thoughts following the discussion with Dr.
Michaels.  Anything pressing based on the last conversation?

		MR. BUCHAN:  Based on what he was saying, it sounds like OSHA is going
to be targeting primarily injuries and not occupational disease.  Would
talking about having a group that would direct the agency more
effectively, given the resources that they have -- and I would really
like to participate on a subgroup that looked at that.  And my main
reason is that there are ways of targeting occupational health problems.
 And I just don't want to see occupational health dropped as an
important issue at OSHA.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I appreciate that.  I think there would be pretty
widespread agreement with that.  It seems to me that insofar as we take
up Dr. Michaels' suggestion that we pay a lot of attention to the way
that information and data systems are used to drive attention and
resources, we will get into that area because part of the information
gap that we face has to do with workplace illnesses, and we've got to
fill that gap.

		We had started out the day by talking about two broad areas where we
might set up workgroups, and I want to come back to that and decide
whether or not that still seems like an appropriate way to proceed, or
if based on the discussion with Dr. Michaels that we need to modify
where we were earlier.  We had talked about one group or one area of
focus that would address the question of what the agencies can do to
better deploy resources and match resources with need.  And I think
Linda characterized that as being relatively internally focused.  And
the second area was the one of how the agencies can more effectively
draw attention to the priority needs or the needs of the nation to focus
on worker protection.  And that was characterized as more of an external
focus.

		Do those still make sense?  Yeah, Peg.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Well, I guess I'm having a hard time trying to think
about the specific set of issues that Dr. Michaels talked about as far
as looking at an area of injury tracking, injury and illness programs,
injury incentive programs, incentive programs in the workplace, and how
that fits into -- I mean, it's a specific issue, and I don't know that
it falls neatly in either one of these.  But it's clearly one of the
things that is sort of at the center of a lot of his thinking, and a lot
of the agency's work that relates both to targeting enforcement,
changing culture behavior in the workplace.

		So I'm just having a hard time sort of matching in some respects what
he outlined as being some of where his particular priorities, the
agency's initiatives, with our broad frame.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  That's fine.  And I have got no pride of ownership
in this area, and I would have no particular problem jettisoning -- is
that the right word, jettisoning -- some of the prior thinking because I
think we got some good direction from Dr. Michaels, and we'd be
ill-advised not to pursue the line that he was suggesting.  And it does
not necessarily fit neatly into the other packages.

		Let's see if we can take a crack at articulating for ourselves what we
think Dr. Michaels was urging us to do.  Is that where you were going,
Peter?

		MR. DOOLEY:  Yeah, yeah, in the sense -- I mean, I was agreeing with
Peg in terms of what I heard from Dr. Michaels was a request for us to
help sorting out some of those issues about injury and illness
prevention standard and some of those -- all of the issues that are
connected with that proposal.  So I was going to suggest -- I mean, one
possible approach to this -- if that was perhaps the external -- the
number two that we have on our list, the external one, it may be an
issue that we could be dealing with as a full group when we meet.  And
then maybe the two committees would be the resources versus the need,
and this other one being working on the advising for the injury and
illness prevention program.  Because the only question I have about the
second one in terms of making health and safety a broader topic embraced
by the public, it seems like a very big issue.  And I think it's a
little bit outside of the scope of -- I think we can certainly be
contributing to it, but I think it is a huge -- it's a huge thing.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I appreciate what you're saying, Peter.  It goes
back to what Peg said earlier today about our charge being to advise the
agencies on things they can and should do.  So you're point is well
taken.  But who feels capable of kind of articulating what you think Dr.
Michaels was getting at?  It has a lot of different facets to it, but is
there a relatively straightforward way we could articulate it?

		I can take a crack at it, and I don't know if this gets it or not.

		MR. VAN HOUTEN:  I can try.  I think I heard that he was asking for
our input and advice on new directions for injury tracking and
surveillance programs.  That's what I heard.  There were three points,
one dealing with heat, one dealing with fatigue, and the third one,
which he spent most of the time on, was injury tracking and surveillance
programs.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Peg?

		MS. SEMINARIO:  But also, a piece of this, which isn't just injury
tracking and surveillance, has to do with the whole reporting of
injuries in the workplace, and the whole injury -- you know, the safety
and health incentive programs, which is what I think trying to figure
and look at that as a piece of a problem with respect to injury
reporting.  And again, that is something that also relates back to the
injury and illness prevention program, but also issues of recordkeeping
and also issues of looking at other sources of information.

		So I think what he was looking at were numbers of things that any one
of them has a lot of, you know, a lot of meat to it.  But I think that
what they're going to have to be grappling with in the injury and
illness prevention program and in all of these areas here is how do you
-- you know, what are the incentives for safety and health.  What are
the incentives for reporting, and not just reporting of injuries, but
reporting of hazards.  And I think looking at that whole issue is one
that would be important.  And the agency really, as you said, needs help
on that.  And as was said earlier, there is work on this.  I think
looking at the work that is going on in this area in other quarters is a
service that this committee, this subgroup, could provide assistance to
OSHA.  I mean look beyond just the walls of the agency in looking at
this, but as Denise would say, there is work going on in this area
amongst the fire departments.  There is work going on in this area
amongst FAA, amongst some of the others to try to get some handle and be
a conduit for providing some of that information to the agency I think
would be helpful.

		MR. VAN HOUTEN:  Yeah.  I think there is issues around timeliness of
data as well as accuracy of data.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Yes, right.

		MS. RANDOLPH:  And then you would have access to that for employers
and employees.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  How about this?  You might characterize the question
as how do -- how should -- I'm struggling with the word "we."  Let me
use a different kind of grammar.  I think that the area that he was
putting in front of us was the design and the use of information systems
and data on injuries, illnesses, and exposures, to drive policy
decisions and deploy resources most effectively.  And that would include
things like -- if you frame it that way, it would include things like
examining what are the incentives that are built into these systems, and
are those incentives driving behavior in the right way.

		Am I in the right ballpark?

		MR. KNOWLES:  I think you're in the right ballpark, but I think it
goes back to the fundamental question, and that is what is the data
going to be used for.  And if the data is going to be used for injury
and disease surveillance in order to identify programs and initiatives
to permit outreach to reduce the incidence of those, that's one
approach.  If the data is still going to be used for enforcement
initiatives, that's a whole different program.

		The use of what we put on OSHA logs to target industry companies for
enforcement intuitively leads to underreporting injuries and illnesses.

		FEMALE VOICE:  I agree.

		MR. KNOWLES:  So it is a conundrum that you have, you know.  You
really kind of can't have it both ways.  But I think the way you worded
that, I think that's important to then delve in deeper and think about
it, you know, what is the intent of the use of the data.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Keith.

		MR. GODDARD:  I just want to make you all aware of three stakeholder
meetings that we had on recordkeeping modernization.  The key moderator
of those meetings is going to be able to, you know, summarize and give
you his report.  There is another dimension that I'd add to you that Dr.
Michaels sort of alluded to.  What do we do with 3 million injury
instances records?  And we're struggling with something you alluded to,
Linda and Denise, a little bit with the near-miss thing.  What sort of
infrastructure do we need to handle this?  And it all tied very closely
to what are we going to use it for.

		FEMALE VOICE:  That's right.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Linda?  Thank you.

		MS. MURRAY:  Well, it seems to me that how you frame it in all of the
discussions that -- first of all, this fits in both buckets.

		FEMALE VOICE:  Right, it does.

		MS. MURRAY:  And Michael mentioned -- but I want to remind us, NIOSH
has done a lot of work, and especially some partnership work, with
states around some of these things.  I would suggest -- this is not
going to be a solution because we'll have to further define what the two
groups might talk about.  I would suggest that we emphasize this for our
next meeting, and that we, you know, get the background materials, you
know, as early as possible, and that we allow subgroups -- I'm not quite
-- you know, it's further on today to sort of further tease out some of
these issues.

		I don't want to -- you know, I have some ideas, but clearly we're not
going to be able to cover everything.  But we can pick some careful
things to talk about and to raise questions in a coordinated way.  So I
think this is a reasonable thing to start with for our next meeting. 
Like I said, I think it does -- can go in both buckets, but that we have
to sort of before the end of the day define it a little better so we
know which subgroups are going to work on which things.

		This might include -- I'm not saying it has to.  It might include
everything from looking at some of the state recording mechanisms that
NIOSH has been working on.  It might include bringing someone from the
ONC to talk about how meaningful use of how HIEs might, you know, be
able to link and compensate -- it can mean any number of things that the
subgroups could flesh out a little bit.  It might mean looking at
incentive programs and disincentive programs for reporting.

		So we could, hopefully before the end of the day, have a better notion
what might be on the agenda for the next meeting and how we would divide
it up.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Denise.

		MS. POUGET:  Something came to mind as we were talking.  And again, I
go back to something that the fire service is doing as well.  And it's a
broad kind of spectrum for what they call firefighter life safety
initiatives to try to tackle the problem of all the firefighter deaths,
and of course, the injuries, but an enormous amount of deaths that we
experience every year.

		So what they did was they had a summit of all of the fire service
professionals and talked about this problem, and they came up with -- I
want to say it was 19 life safety initiatives.  And one of the
initiatives was a need for a cultural change in the fire service,
identify the need for a cultural change towards safety in the fire
service.  One was the national database, you know, identify the need for
reporting systems and so forth.  Another was establish proper incentive
programs.  And we were just talking about incentive programs, but they
can be good if you state what the boundaries are, where we don't become
discriminatory; ongoing training on the importance of injury reporting
to the employees and the supervisors, what the supervisor's role is.

		So I'm just thinking maybe from -- I know our task is kind of broad. 
So if we also thought about -- because what I'm hearing us all -- I've
heard us talk about cultural change today.  I've heard us talk about the
reporting systems.  I've heard us talk about training, incentive
programs.  Maybe one thing we can talk about doing is establishing
worker health and safety initiatives for OSHA, recommending to OSHA that
they establish, you know, training programs for supervisors, you know,
proper safety culture in the workplace, and what their role is as a
supervisor, and for people not to be afraid to report injuries, and kind
of steer, if you will, kind of along the same lines as what the National
Fallen Firefighters did.

		But that's just a thought.  I mean, we're talking about a lot of the
things -- you know, it's kind of ringing a bell.  But if we established
initiatives as a recommendation for this is what we believe needs to
occur in every workplace, that here is what employers should be doing,
and so forth, you know, maybe that would focus us a little bit better.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Bill.

		MR. BUCHAN:  As far as surveillance goes --

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  No.  Bill.

		MR. BUCHAN:  Oh, I'm sorry, Bill.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  We'll come back to you, Roy.

		MR. BORWENGEN:  I'm going to go back to Emory's comment.  I mean, you
wonder what impact -- you know, because it wasn't always the case where
OSHA required employers to mail in their OSHA -- the 100 logs to -- I
mean, so you think it's had a significant impact in promoting
underreporting, the fact that people now have to submit their logs?

		MR. KNOWLES:  No, I'm not saying it has had a significant impact. 
What I'm saying is that if an employer has to report data, which is then
in turn used against that employer in targeting enforcement -- or as
someone mentioned earlier, in business, when you bid on a contract, and
you have to list your experience, log rates, and your OSHA incident
rate, or your lost work days rate, that becomes a disincentive for
reporting.

		MR. BORWENGEN:  Yeah.  I thought that was going to be the case from
day one.

		MR. KNOWLES:  Yeah.

		MR. BORWENGEN:  And I think that should somehow be de-linked, you
know?  And if we're trying to report again the reporting of near misses
or near hits, you know, maybe when OSHA cites an employer for a large
fine, instead of -- maybe reduce the fine and say, well, we'll reduce
the fine X dollars if you agree to set up a near-miss, a near-hit
program, you know.  I mean, to really try to set up some model programs
where we try to promote what Denise is talking about and others, to try
to change this culture.

		But I think we do -- this is a conundrum.  I think because OSHA has
such limited resources, they need to target the worst employers.  But
from day one, when I said, oh, you're going to -- once you start mailing
in those logs, we're going to start seeing people doing -- you know,
trying to reduce the reporting, and they're going to use incentive
programs to -- these disincentives to report are going to skyrocket, and
that seems to have happened, you know, with the safety bingo and
everything else we've talked about.

		But this injury and illness reporting is really at the crux, I think,
of what Dr. Michaels talked about earlier, and how do we decouple some
of these disincentives to report.  And I think this is one of them, I
think, that by linking this targeting to that, but it's the basis for
OSHA's targeting.  So it's a big issue.

		MR. KNOWLES:  There is one other side to it, too.  There are companies
today that are now setting up executive incentive plans based upon
performance to various environmental health and safety metrics.  So, you
know, there is discussion about employee incentive programs.  But also,
you have to keep in mind, there are management incentive programs in
this country that can create disincentives for recording data on
injuries and illnesses.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Yeah.  I think you're right.  There are lots of
examples.  Roy had something to say.  And then I'm going to try to take
a crack at identifying at least some major areas of questions that I
think are on the table.

		MR. BUCHAN:  I think in terms of surveillance to help through
targeting, I'm certain that NIOSH has a lot of information that would be
very useful to OSHA.  Now, I don't know if they can share that
information with OSHA.  But the two agencies are working very closely
together right now.

		Another thing that NIOSH has that would be very useful that would take
a great deal of analysis are the health hazard evaluations.  And if you
took a look at that historically, maybe over the past three years, you
would be able to target certain industries that have health problems.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Yeah.  I think you're right, Roy.  And I think that
we're in an area here that is equally applicable to both OSHA and NIOSH.
 They have very shared interests.  But as I'm listening, I'm hearing
three sets of questions that I think we might be able to address.  And
by doing so, I think that proposals or advice and recommendations to the
agency might become more clear.

		The first question would be how are our current workplace injury,
illness, and exposure data recordkeeping and surveillance systems
designed.  What are we doing right now, we in the broad sense?  What are
the agencies doing?  What are the requirements for employers?

		The second set of questions would be what are these systems currently
being used for.  What is the intent of them?  What could they be used
for?  What should they be used for?

		And then the third set of questions would be what are the incentives
and disincentives that are built into these systems right now that drive
behavior, either in ways that we approve of or ways that we think are
ill-advised?

		MALE VOICE:  That's a good summation.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Peg.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Well, so those are -- so that's sort of an exploration
of looking at the, you know, the what, right?  How are they designed? 
What are they being used for?  What are the incentives and the
disincentives?  But to what end?  I mean, what should they be?  I mean,
the question really is what should, right?

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Yeah, right.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Right.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Again, what I said, the second question is what are
they being used for and what should they be used for.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  No.  But also incentives and disincentives here, how
do we change them?

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Oh, okay.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  That's what I'm just saying.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Oh, oh, fine.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  But we've got to be thinking about how to -- you know,
what are the recommendations we are going to do, not just the findings,
right?  What are the recommendations to bring about the change.  And I
think, you know, that's really the focus.  We can do a lot of analysis
of what the current situation is.  But let's not get so focused on doing
such, you know, an in-depth review that we lose sight of the fact that
the point here is to look at how can they be improved and changed.

		And one other observation, just again from my other previous years on
NACOSH, that unfortunately, for whatever reasons, a lot of the workgroup
activity and a lot of the activity of the committee focused largely on
OSHA, and we probably neglected NIOSH.  And just to say that each of
these areas that we're working, I think we have to look at the role of
both agencies in terms of their involvement.  And, you know, in some
cases it will be a stronger OSHA role; in other areas it will be a
stronger NIOSH role, but not, you know, lose sight of that.  And as much
as we can, deal with them jointly because they do have joint
responsibilities.

		MR. BORWENGEN:  And to take advantage of a surveillance team at NIOSH,
which could probably be helping us in this area.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Sarah?

		MS. SHORTALL:  I'm just going to, I think, reiterate something Ms.
Murray said that might give you an idea of coming up with
recommendations for all three.  And this will be the first one.  You
said that the first would be how are current recordkeeping systems
designed.  And then the thing would be, what information do they
collect, and what information should they collect.  And that was an
issue that Ms. Murray had brought up.  So that could yield
recommendations.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  That's helpful.  Linda?

		MS. MURRAY:  I want us to be careful because we're not -- and I don't
think anyone is proposing -- I hope not -- that we become a study group
for this, okay?  We're an advisory group, which means in crude parlance
we get to shoot off at the mouth without a whole lot of -- you know, we
don't have to prove every point.  So to me, we don't -- of course, I
think we should have some overview of the data and all of these
questions.  But we don't have to have the definitive -- we can say you
two agencies should set up a process to definitively blah, blah, blah.

		So what we want to do is give direction and advice.  We're not the IOM
study group that looks at what is going on in health and safety data. 
So I want to encourage -- because we want to try to help shape the work
and help have a discussion that allows agencies to sort of have a
different view of what is going on, and for them to move forward.  So in
that spirit, I'd like there to be questions, as long as we don't think,
you know, we've got to have a peer-review available, you know, set of
answers.

		And in that same spirit, I expect that many of our recommendations
will not be that detailed.  We might say something, we think we should
look at methods that do not discourage workers from reporting, for
example -- which is very different than saying here are ten things that
the two agencies need to do to address this.

		So I just want to make sure that we're clear.  To me, an advisory role
is more flexible and more fluid, and it raises questions.  It's not
trying to provide a recipe that the agencies should follow to solve
whatever problem they're talking about.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I think that's fair.  I mean, there clearly is a
balance here.  We need to be making recommendations and providing advice
that's credible, and clearly represents some understanding.  But we
don't want to get paralyzed by the study that is going to be required. 
I think we would all agree with that.

		Let me add a fourth question, which is more along the lines of what
Peg and I think Linda were just suggesting.  So the way we go is -- the
way we would proceed is this.  We would examine -- we would take some
time to do some reasonable level of examination of the first three
areas.  How are the current surveillance and data systems currently
designed?  Secondly, what are they being used for?  And third, what
incentives and disincentives are built into them?  But then the fourth
question would be -- and this would really be directed at the advice we
would construct for the agencies.  How can these systems be improved and
changed in order to better accomplish our ability to find and fix
hazards and protect worker rights?

		And so it would require us going through some period of examination,
study, gaining some knowledge about these systems, being able to
describe them, and then a much more active process of constructing some
advice and recommendations.  Does that feel like it's making sense?  I
mean, that feels like it's something that would be a bit charged for us
as an entire group.  But then we could break into some smaller groups to
kick off pieces of this.  I see Keith and then Peg and then Peter.

		MR. GODDARD:  Yeah.  That seems tangible from my perspective.  Maybe
the key point, you know, how are they designed, I could give you
something immediately to look at.  You know we've been collecting 80,000
elements for 15 years, with specific names and addresses.  Intuitively,
you'd think it would be a discouragement.  My sense is that the
regulatory oversight has prompted people to try to be correct because we
follow up when you end up on our inspection list.  It's a more thorough
review of your logs and you attempt to get it right because you can end
up on our SST inspection.  And those have been lucrative inspections
even though people know that we're collecting that information.

		So I'll share some of the historic background of what we've been
seeing on these 80,000 elements.  That's not BLS.  It is
establishment-specific.  It's what is going on at that street address at
that establishment.  So I can pull together for each question that we've
come up with.  It seems tangible that I could, once you get into a
smaller committee group and get down into the weeds and -- this isn't my
shop, you know,  And then I'll share some of that stuff with you on
surveillance data for 30 years of sampling that we've done.  I don't
know if you want to get into that.  That's a different shop, but it's
things that we -- I'll share with you, and you can decide what you want
to --

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  All right.  Thank you.  I appreciate it.  We're
clearly going to have to make some data requests and avoid getting so
deep into the weeds that we never come back up for air.

		MR. GODDARD:  Yeah.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I think it was Peg next, and then Peter.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  The other thing I would say is that as far as the
recommendations, I think with some of these recommendations -- and I'm
going back to -- you know, Bill is reminding me of how many other
endeavors the NAS committee -- injury and illness, recordkeeping,
reporting systems, the keystone discussions around this.  We also have
to look at sort of the level of the initiatives that we're recommending.
 And I would suggest that we look at things, not always sort of big
things, because you can come up with a whole, yeah, let's redo the
entire system here.  Well, that's probably not going to happen.

		And so I think we have to be sort of thoughtful in terms of our
recommendations, that they also be sort of concrete and tangible, and
sort of the steps of getting there, because with a lot of these things,
it's not going to be possible to do them all in one bite.  And to think
about how do they fit in to some of the agencies' initiatives, and so
what can they be doing in other things that they're working on to
implement these things.  And so just to be as concrete and tangible as
we can be.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Yeah.  I agree with that, Peg.  And it's a good
caution for us to keep in mind as we get closer to making
recommendations.  We've got to avoid both ends of the spectrum.  If
we're so general and just say, OSHA should improve the incentives or
remove the disincentives, it's so general it's useless.  If we get down
to the detail of saying, well, there ought to be another column added to
the 300 log, then it becomes so specific, it can become almost trivial.

		So somewhere in the middle is where we're going to want to aim. 
Peter?

		MR. DOOLEY:  Yeah.  Just to remind us in terms of the timetable of
various things -- and what I heard Dr. Michaels say regarding the injury
and illness prevention program, which can capture some of these issues
very significantly -- I mean, I heard sort of a -- you know, maybe six
-- you know, sort of saying that within the next six months or so, there
is this opportunity to have some input into that while they're going
through these other steps with the proposal.  And actually suggested --
I mean, he suggested Mike being a possible staff person to work with the
committee.

		I mean, it seemed to be very, very specific and very time -- you know,
sort of time needed in terms of, you know, getting going.  So I just
want to -- whatever we do, I mean, I think we need to sort of have that
be in -- sort of in play in terms of the plan.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  Let me suggest that -- I think we're making
real progress.  Let me suggest that we set this aside for a few minutes
and address one other thing that I think we need to do a little bit more
work on before the end of the day.  We have one -- and that's back to
the Gulf oil and Gulf oil-related issues.  We have a workgroup that we
chartered at our last meeting, and we heard a report about where the
agencies are with regard to the Gulf oil response.

		We need to decide what we as a committee do next with that workgroup. 
And there are a couple of possibilities.  One is that we disband it. 
Another is that we wait until we hear what the agencies learn about --
what they come up with regarding lessons learned.  And then we relook at
that workgroup and see whether or not there is another task for it. 
Maybe there is another immediate task that we would assign to that
workgroup.

		One suggestion that Peg made yesterday that might make some sense and
I want to talk about would be as the next step providing some advice to
the agencies about some of the things that we want to be sure that they
would look at in this exercise of coming up with lessons learned so that
when they came back -- when there was a report about lessons learned, we
have some confidence that they were going to include some things we were
interested in.  Emory?

		MR. KNOWLES:  Just a suggestion, perhaps broaden the workgroup; rather
than just calling it, you know, the Gulf response workgroup, the
emergency response workgroup.  Again, I go back to a comment I made
yesterday.  You know, we had the World Trade Center disaster, which
presented a whole set of unique issues and problems that the agency had
to face, like all the responders did, immediately.  They had to make a
ton of decisions and implement innovative approaches to occupational
health and safety.  Now we have the Gulf disaster.  Again, they had to
regroup, rethink, do all that again.  Lord only knows what other
disasters we may face in the future, but sit down and think
strategically about how the agencies can proactively plan for the wide
array of potential disasters that they may face.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Right.  I think that Denise did make the suggestion
yesterday that we broaden the charter of that group, and perhaps even
change its name to be something along the lines of protection of workers
in emergency response situations, or how do we ensure that worker
protection takes higher priority during emergencies.  I mean, we can do
that, but it would still leave us with the question of what do we next
with that group.

		MR. KNOWLES:  Yeah.  I don't want to show my ignorance, but after the
World Trade Center, was there a lessons learned set of meetings
following that within OSHA, within OSHA?

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Yeah.  And they issued a report.

		MR. KNOWLES:  I don't remember.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  And the one thing that they didn't even address -- it
was called, "Inside the Green Line."  And it was more of a report than
it was a lessons learned.  They didn't mention the health effects in the
report, and we now have 15,000 people sick.  So I would say that they
missed a big piece of the issue.  Part of it -- at that point when they
issued the report, they didn't know the effects.  But clearly what
happened after the World Trade Center had a huge impact on the agency
now because in the World Trade Center, they look at just the PELs. 
Here, they knew -- you just looked at the exposure limits as being the
indicator of protective measures -- that they were going to end up in
trouble.  So they did learn, even though it wasn't in the formal report.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  A question for the group.  Shall we expand the
charter and rename that group?

		FEMALE VOICE:  Take a vote or --

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Yes or no.

		MS. MURRAY:  Can we expand it to what, to the second bucket or not? 
Or just --

		MR. BUCHAN:  Are you talking about the small --

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Yeah.  I was just thinking about that, leaving that
group in place -- we have a charter for it -- but expanding it, maybe
renaming it, and maybe it becomes -- 

		MS. MURRAY:  I'm asking you what are trying to expand it to, a third
subgroup or morph it into one of these two.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Would it work to morph it into one of the two that
we've been talking about or not?

		MS. MURRAY:  I don't know.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Peg?

		MS. SEMINARIO:  My sense is right now, from everything that we've
heard, that it would be better to spend some time, I think today, just
to talk about what we would like the agency to -- some of the things we
want them to consider in their lessons learned, and that should be
included in part of that evaluation so that they don't miss -- for
example, talk about health effects.  They won't here.  But the things
that we think need to be included in that evaluation and lessons
learned.

		As I think Emory said before, somebody said, let's wait to see what
comes back from that, to see what they say, to see then what is needed. 
Do we think we can provide some advice in terms of some implementation
on those lessons learned rather than just being in a vacuum, you know,
and disconnected from what the agencies are doing right now.  That would
be my thought, and just keep whether or not we want to have a workgroup
expanded on hold, not disband the current workgroup, but just keep that
issue on hold until we see what comes back from the agency.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I like that idea.  I like that idea, which if I
understand correctly, it would mean leaving the group the way it is for
the time being, fashioning by the end of today a few questions we would
ask that the agencies incorporate in their lessons learned activity, and
request that by our next meeting that the agencies come back and tell us
about the lessons learned, and then we can come back to see whether or
not that workgroup should continue, what it should do next, whether it
should be expanded.

		Does that work for everybody?

		MR. GODDARD:  I would tend to agree with that.  You know, I'm sitting
here looking at a report that is coming through for clearance to the
agency that goes to the President and the oil spill recovery.  We right
in the midst of getting these investigative reports.  We're getting the
reports to the President.  There is a lot going on on the recovery
effort, and this has ecosystem impact in it, but it talks about the
federal agency responses, and this would be useful information that that
we would have soon that we could act on later if we had to.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  Sarah?

		MS. SHORTALL:  Entertain a motion to the effect of (off-mic.).

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Sarah is suggesting a motion that would get us on
record with regard to what Peg was suggesting.  I'm not sure that we
need to do that because I think we're pretty close to being able to as a
group develop a request to the agency.

		MS. MURRAY:  It seems like we did that last time.  If we're just
leaving the group as it is.

		FEMALE VOICE:  Right, right.

		MS. MURRAY:  So Peg's suggestion is just don't change what the group
is doing, and we'll talk about it --

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Yeah.  We're not going to change the group, but
we're going to ask the agency to incorporate some -- to address some
issues in its deliberations about lessons learned, and to come back, and
to present the lessons learned to us.

		MS. SHORTALL:  My only thing for saying that is you asked does
everyone agree.  And we heard nothing from the group, and that doesn't
give us a chance for the transcript to accurately reflect --

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I understand, Sarah, but we'll get to that.  When we
have -- we're going to work on a set of questions to leave with the
agencies by this end of this meeting.  And before we actually leave it
with them, we'll either take a vote or we'll get some other sign of
agreement or disagreement.  So we'll take care of that.

		MS. SHORTALL:  All right.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I appreciate the attention to it.  Peg?

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Unfortunately, I just have to step out just probably
for about 15 minutes, but I'll be right back.  I apologize.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  So that's one task that we're going to need
to accomplish by the end of the day, and we may end assigning a couple
of people during lunch to come up with a draft of some questions that
we'll leave with OSHA and NIOSH.  And I think we'll wait until Peg comes
back to take that up again.

		Now, help me think through something here.  We've had two parallel
discussions, and I want to know whether or not it's possible to bring
them together or not.  The first was the discussion about two different
workgroups.  And then the second was the discussion about the ideas that
Dr. Michaels put before us, and we identified four different questions. 
How do those things match up, or don't they?

		MR. BORWENGEN:  I think Peter had a suggestion, right?  What was your
comment?

		MR. DOOLEY:  Well, I think the comment was to incorporate the work on
the -- basically to be an advisory committee for the injury and illness
prevention, or to provide advice, and to have that be in one of the
buckets, bucket No. 2 or whatever.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Well, what I heard Dr. Michaels saying is that any
advice that we provided that would help with what they're doing on
injury and illness prevention would be useful, but that that wasn't --
he was thinking at a broader level, in which the injury and illness
prevention role would simply be one piece of what we're advising.  I
didn't hear him saying we want you to give us advice about what should
be in the I2P2 rule.

		MR. KNOWLES:  Just a comment.  We have a dilemma with the I2P2 rule
anyhow.  It's already going through SBREFA rule.  So we're not going to
be able to change that.  If we change it, it's going to have to go back
through the whole review process again.

		MS. SHORTALL:  No, no.  That's not exactly accurate.  What goes before
the SBREFA -- and they're still months away from that.  What goes before
SBREFA is looking specifically at the issues as it pertains to small
businesses.  But as I said before, although they don't invite your
comment, you certainly are able to make comments.  And historically, the
agency has looked at all comments they've received during SBREFA.  And
it is anticipated that after SBREFA, the agency will make changes to
whatever they're doing, both in terms of whatever their PRFA, which is
the preliminary regulatory flexibility analysis, probably as well as the
rule or the proposed rule itself.

		Once you've gone through SBREFA once, you don't have to go back again
unless the power decided is so radically changed it isn't even
recognized as being the same thing.  It's just a one-time only.

		MR. KNOWLES:  Okay.  Thanks.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Let me see if I could be a little bit more clear
about what I was saying.  I think that if we directed our attention to
advice about what we think should be in this I2P2, if we actually did
some work on a proposed design for the rule, it would be a more narrow
focus than what Dr. Michaels is asking us.  If, on the other hand, we
looked at the bigger issue of how these systems are designed and how
they are used, and had some advice about that, it would inform the
discussion about I2P2, and it would be useful in that whole process, but
it wouldn't be the sole focus for us.  Is that --

		MR. DOOLEY:  Yeah, I guess -- I mean, I'm not suggesting that it
should be limited to that.  But I am suggesting that Dr. Michaels was
saying that they have a specific proposal that they would be -- that
they were welcoming some, you know, advice and input on, and even
suggested the staff person to work with, and that data --

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  No.  I actually heard him say they don't have the
specific proposal yet.  They are working towards one.  They would
provide us information that they are using in their discussion, but
they're not at the point of having a specific proposal.  Am I right?

		MR. GODDARD:  Yeah.  I think Mike's description of the -- Mike
Seymour's description of the -- is where they are, and it's not final.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  We can get a lot of information that will help us
understand how they're thinking, where they are in the process.  But
they are a ways away from a proposal that would go through this SBREFA
process and would eventually appear as a proposed rule.  Susan?

		MS. RANDOLPH:  What I heard Dr. Michaels say was that he wanted
information about the injury tracking and incentive surveillance systems
and how that information would feed into the hazard identification
assessment the companies do when they look at that same data, that it
would help with hazard control, you know, and prevention, that the
companies would look at it that way, but that when OSHA looks at that
data, they may be looking at that for enforcement and tracking and
whatever they're going to use that for.  But the injury and illness
surveillance would definitely fit into the I2P2, as Peter was saying. 
But it was just with a different set of eyes and purpose.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Yeah, I think you're right.  I think that captures
it well.  Joe.

		MR. VAN HOUTEN:  Mike asked the question about how this project and
these two questions fit together, or two areas fit together.  I think
that the project on an injury tracking and surveillance program is that
deep dive that I was talking about earlier this morning, and I think
it's part of focus area No. 1, which is looking at what is the strategic
direction for OSHA.  How do we advise on complex issues?  And this is a
complex issue that we can address.  So I do see them connecting.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  Agreement, disagreement with that?  And we
could put that in that first bucket, and then come up with some specific
areas that we would gather information on for the next meeting.  Where
does that leave us with regard to the second bucket?  How can the
agencies more effectively draw attention to the nation's needs in
workplace safety now?

		MS. MURRAY:  If we are going to stick with looking at data systems,
then in the second bucket, I think there are a number of things that can
be there, including some of these data links that we could ask NIOSH for
some information on for support they've given to certain states for
reporting mortality, et cetera, et cetera.  We can look at certainly the
issue of linkages to systems outside of the two agencies, like the
compensation system.  And as I keep mentioning it, I obviously would
clearly like to have some discussion around health information exchanges
and to what extent and health and safety specifically, not public health
in general, but how could health and safety leverage these new
electronic exchanges that are coming up to advance worker's health and
safety generally.

		So we could -- you know, if we're going to pick that data element up
for the next meeting, that's certainly something that second bucket
could flesh out.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  It occurs to me that that may be the right way to
go.  It occurs to me there may be another possibility here, which links
back to the Gulf oil discussions.  When I think Dr. Howard was talking
to us yesterday, he was talking about the frustration with the way that
OSHA and NIOSH are in the annex rather than having -- than being
triggered into action automatically when there are these national
emergencies.  And that might be something that we could look at because
this deals with the issue of where workplace safety and health fits in
the hierarchy of concerns that we have when there is an emergency.  So
we could gather a little bit more information on how the national
program works, what it means to be annexed.  And we might be able to
give some advice to the agencies about efforts that they could undertake
to come out from that kind of blanket.  Bill?

		MR. BORWENGEN:  Yeah.  It's really -- I think it's a major issue, and
we would also benefit from hearing from somebody like Chip Hughes, who
runs the worker trainer program at NIESH.  You know, those are the folks
that have been doing a lot of training for the Gulf workers, and they
were involved in 9/11.  And the fact that this annex is -- they have to
rely on other agencies before it gets activated has definitely been a
problem when it comes to guarding workers, you know, protecting workers'
safety and health from the get-go.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Does it continue to make sense to the group that we
think about proceeding with these two broad groupings, and that we put
these specific things into them?  Or following Dr. Michaels' discussion,
does that become less appropriate?

		MR. BORWENGEN:  I mean, the other way to put it, which is I thought --
I thought this is what I heard Peter say originally, was that we would
deal with these reporting issues as a full group, and then, you know, we
just have these other two subgroups.  That's what I was -- but maybe I
didn't hear you say that.  I mean, that's another way to cut it, right?

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  There are clearly a variety of ways we can do this,
and at some point we're going to make a choice.  I hope it can be -- the
less arbitrary the choice is, the better off we are.

		MR. BORWENGEN:  Because he also said he wanted our counsel on the
whole issue of fatigue as well.  He did say, you know, we can use your
assistance on the issue of this petition from the medical residents,
which is actually one of our locals.

		MS. RANDOLPH:  But that fits in with that broader issue about the
complex issues.  And so that group could continue in the future,
depending on what those issues are.  It could be for other workgroups
even beyond the ones that we're talking about now.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  What I'm kind of inclined to do is to establish one
additional workgroup now that would deal with that range of questions
regarding the information data systems and their use, and any incentives
built into them.  And that would sort of be what we've been talking
about as group number one.  How do we deploy resources?  What is the
strategic direction that the agencies use?  And that we use the -- and
that we set up that additional workgroup now, and that we use the other
existing group, the one on Gulf oil, to probe a little bit more about
the priority attention given to workplace safety and health, and that we
specifically get some more information about how this annex system works
and how it might be changed so that we might be able to provide some
advice to the agencies about what to do next.

		MR. BUCHAN:  I fully agree with that.  But I would like to be taken
off the Gulf oil thing and put on the surveillance subcommittee.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Well, our own deployment, that's a secondary
question because we haven't yet decided, you know, on what groupings
we're going to have.

		MALE VOICE:  We're going to have to deploy our resources.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I know that I'm bouncing around a bit.  So help --

		MR. BORWENGEN:  You didn't finish your thought.  Did you finish your
thought?

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I pretty much finished the thought, that we would
set up one additional group now, and it would be basically group one
that we had talked about earlier.  So it would be set up to have a broad
focus on how the agencies are using information and matching their
resources to needs, and that specifically -- and over a period of time,
that group may address any number of things, but specifically for the
next period of time, we address the issues we were talking about with
Dr. Michaels, and we have the four specific questions that we can dig
into.  That would be the new group we would set up.

		We have an existing second group on Gulf oil.  We would leave it
intact right now.  We wouldn't change its charter.  But we would pose
some questions for the agencies about the way that the annex process
works so that when we understand that a little bit better, we might be
able to provide advice about elevating the profile that safety and
health gets in national emergencies.  And then we'll also be asking for
lessons learned about the Gulf.  And when we come back at the next
meeting, we can decide whether or not that group should stay intact as
group number two, whether or not its charter should be broadened, or
whether or not we should disband it and do something else.

		Does that strategy seem to work?

		MS. MURRAY:  I think any type will work.  You know, I don't think
there is any one magic way to do it.  I think -- and I think we can do
some of this before we leave also.  You know, for me, the critical thing
is whatever happens, it's the shaping of the next agenda.  So we have
time before the end of the day to I guess break up in groups, if we want
to do that, or discuss as a whole, and try to shape -- you know, discuss
some of those details.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  So if there is no objection -- and again,
Sarah, I'm attentive to the fact that there are certain things that are
going to need either a vote or consensus on the record for, but I don't
think we're at that point yet.  If there is no objection, I want to
proceed to work on defining two groups with some specific tasks and
specific requests that we make to the agencies.

		One group would be the broad group that would address the questions
that we had talked about with Dr. Michaels.  The second would be the
existing subgroup, and that one would frame some questions to the
agencies about the annex process as well as the lessons learned.  Okay. 
Where are we on time?  We're at 11:30.

		MR. BORWENGEN:  So just to clarify, the first workgroup was on using
information and deploying resources to meet needs?

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Yeah.

		MR. BORWENGEN:  And the second workgroup is this Gulf oil that has
been morphed into looking at the annex process.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Well, that's part of the Gulf oil.  It would fit in
with the existing charter.

		MR. BORWENGEN:  Yeah.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  It would fit in with the existing charter.

		MR. BORWENGEN:  So where does the injury reporting go?

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  The first group.  I can be more specific.

		MR. BORWENGEN:  Okay.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  The nature of the first group -- and we have to come
up with some words to give it a name and to write a charter for it.  The
nature of the first group is how the agencies can do better at using
information to make decisions about deploying their resources in a way
that better matches the efforts to the needs.  That's broadly stated.

		More specifically, for the next period of time, that group will
address the following four questions.  Number one, how are our current
systems of workplace injury, illness, exposure, data recordkeeping, and
surveillance designed?  Secondly, what are these systems currently being
used for?  how are they being used?  Thirdly, what incentives and
disincentives to accurate data and information are in existence?  And
fourthly, how can these systems be improved and changed in order to
better accomplish our ability to find and fix hazards and protect worker
rights as written into the OSHA act?

		MR. BUCHAN:  I would like to add one thing.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Before you do that --

		MR. BUCHAN:  Okay.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Did what I just say capture what the discussion has
been?

		MR. BUCHAN:  Absolutely.

		MALE VOICE:  Yes.

		FEMALE VOICE:  I think so.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay, Roy.

		MR. BUCHAN:  I was just wanting to say that we might have new ways of
helping them target where they should be.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Oh, yeah, absolutely.  I think that fits into the
fourth question.

		MR. BUCHAN:  Okay.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  How can the systems be better -- how can they be
improved and changed in order to be more effective.  Bill.

		MR. BORWENGEN:  So I want to make sure -- again, it goes back to
yesterday -- that this group captures what I think it should -- again,
we're going to look at the current info, the BLS data.  We're going to
look at where inspections are occurring, where OSHA is doing
inspections, to see where injuries and illnesses are occurring in this
country OSHA is deploying adequate inspection resources in those areas. 
And then we want to really look at OSHA's overall budget, you know, and
look at their line items to figure out if there is the proper mix, if
OSHA is spending the proper amount of money in our opinion on
inspections, on, you know, employer consultation, on education, on, you
know, standards setting, in line of what we think should be the agency's
priorities.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I think the answer to that in the general sense is
yes, but with the very strong caution that Linda gave us, that if we
allow ourselves to become a study group, we will study these issues and
quarrel over the data forever.  And we can't allow ourselves to do that.
 So some of this stuff, while it may be appropriately under this
umbrella, is stuff we're going to dig into simultaneously.  We're going
to dive into the deep water, as Joe suggested, but not too deep.  It's a
matter of balance.

		MR. BORWENGEN:  Right.  And just to get to the nub of the issue here,
is that, you know, there is 13.7 million healthcare workers, right, 4.7
million hospital workers.  There are hospitals in this country that OSHA
has never inspected, you know.   And so, to me, that's the nub of the
issue.  That's like, you know, are we really deploying resources when
OSHA drives by a hospital that employs 2,000 workers to go inspect the
chemical plant down the road that they've inspected 50 times already
where 20 workers work.  You know, is that the best of the agency's
resources?

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I think that the healthcare issues that I know we're
all concerned about, and you're specifically concerned about, are
inevitably going to surface as part of the information that we're going
to be looking at and the deliberations we're making.  But having said, I
want to be clear that I'm not proposing that the subgroup be a group
devoted to figuring out what we're doing and what we should be doing on
healthcare.

		MR. BORWENGEN:  I agree.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.

		MR. BORWENGEN:  Because I think there is other -- there is a number of
other sectors that have been historically ignored by OSHA, where the BLS
data is screaming at you that they need OSHA's attention.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Roy a number of times has raised agriculture in that
context, and he's right about that.

		MR. BORWENGEN:  Well, his problem is that there are 10 or less
employees in most of the places.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  Is this beginning to feel right to people? 
Okay.  Let's see what time it is.  It's quarter to 12:00.  I think that
I want to break for lunch now, but it would probably make sense to give
some assignments during lunch, at least to a couple of people.  One of
the assignments has to do with the Gulf oil workgroup.  The next thing
that we're going to do with that group is pose a couple of questions to
the agencies for them to get back to us on.  Yes.

		MS. POUGET:  I'll do it.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  You'll do that.  Who will work -- and I'll try to
characterize a little bit more specifically what we're looking for.  But
who would like to work with Denise on this during lunch?  It's not going
to be a hard project.

		MS. POUGET:  Or we can, like, write down our own things and then come
together.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  You can do that, right.

		MS. POUGET:  Because I've got like six things already that I wanted to
kind of think about, and maybe make them --

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  The two that I have in mind are the
following.  We want to ask for OSHA and NIOSH to provide some more
information on how the annex process within the national -- what is it
called, the national what plan?   National what?

		MALE VOICE:  Response.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  National response, okay.  So how the annex process
and the national response plan works right now so that we can at some
point at the next meeting provide some advice to the agencies about what
they might do to raise the profile of worker safety and health during
national emergencies.  So that's number one.

		Number two would be posing to OSHA and NIOSH a couple of areas of
special interest to us when they go through the lessons learned process.
 And I think Peg had some more -- may have some more specific ideas
about what that bullet list ought to be.  Does that help, Denise?

		MS. POUGET:  And I actually -- I started -- they're all my bullets
here, but, I mean, I can get with Peg when we come back, and we can, you
know, massage it.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  The second assignment for lunch would be to
come up with a more sharply articulated name for this other group that
we would then bucket those specific questions under.  And I'll be happy
to work on that if there is anybody who wants to sit down and help with
that.

		MR. BUCHAN:  I will.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.

		MR. BUCHAN:  Something other than bucket two.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Yeah.  Actually, it's bucket one.

		(Laughter)

		MALE VOICE:  This is what we're going to do before we die.

		MALE VOICE:  I've got to tell you about a great movie.  I've got to
tell you --

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  But with regard to language, that in my own agency,
which is a state OSHA program, I am on a mission to get rid of the term
"targeting" because it is very frustrating to me and to our inspectors
when they go into a workplace and they say, we're here to do an
inspection, and the employer says, why are you picking on me, and the
answer is, well, you're one of our targets.

		(Laughter)

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  It does not establish that good working
relationship.

		MR. BORWENGEN:  Because you set us in your log.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Now, we're kind of -- you know, it's going to be -- 

		MALE VOICE:  You're special.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  There you go.

		MR. BORWENGEN:  Is it different than emergency preparedness response? 
Is that not a good name for that committee?

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  No, no.  We're leaving that committee by itself. 
We're not renaming it.  We're not changing its charter.  We just have a
couple of things that we're going to pursue under that umbrella.  Bucket
number one is the one that is dealing with the data systems and the
matching of resources to needs.

		MR. BORWENGEN:  Well, again, it's called using info and deploying
resources to meet needs.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Well, you're now part of that little subgroup at
lunch that will work on that title, Bill.  Anything else?

		MALE VOICE:  Maybe bucket number two.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Anything else before we break for lunch?

		MR. BORWENGEN:  Strategic deployment of scarce resources.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Yes.

		THE REPORTER: If the speakers could speak one at a time, I'd
appreciate it.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  If we could speak one at a time, just --

		THE REPORTER:  Thank you.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Thanks for bringing that to our attention.  We will
try to discipline ourselves.

		MS. MURRAY:  We were just telling bad jokes.

		(Laughter)

		MS. MURRAY:  Don't write that down.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  We're doing it again.  Let's break for lunch.  Let's
be back here at 1 o'clock.

		(Whereupon, at 11:48 a.m., a luncheon recess was taken.)

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A F T E R N O O N  S E S S I O N

(1:05 p.m.)

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  We will reconvene the afternoon session.  Okay.  We
had two workgroups assigned to do a little bit of preparation during
lunch, and I understand that Denise and Peg have done their work on the
issues related to next steps regarding Gulf oil and emergencies.

		MS. POUGET:  We have sort of a rough group of questions, about six or
so, because we were asked to present questions, are they looking into
these things.  And Peg is going to chime in on some.  We were wondering,
are they looking at what point were the workers briefed about the need
for proper PPE, what the dangers of the work they were about to do
entailed, and when was their physical abilities assessed for such work.

		Another thing is we were wondering if they're looking at if workers
received the health assessment, at what point did that occur.  Was there
an onsite safety officer assigned to each one of the work areas, and was
there worker accountability also enforced?  Meaning that we did
accountability checks on welfare.  We looked at things like
rehabilitation.  Did we look at, you know, making sure that we checked
in with those workers on a regular basis.

		As far as training, what type of training did the workers receive? 
Are we looking into that, and when did they receive that training?  And
a lot of what Peg and I discussed was the timing of a lot of these
issues.

		As far as injury reporting, what was the method utilized to report
injuries, and was it consistent, in other words, from work area to work
area, so that we can compare apples to apples.  Were the workers advised
-- we know we heard of heat related type and people being targeted, but
were they advised of the most frequently reported types of injuries and
illnesses, and advised on how to prevent them?  And also, is OSHA
looking at the tracking of the workers in some type of database so that
we can look at the long-term effects, if any, from the exposure to the
petroleum?  Because I know one of the things that they told us was that
they were unaware of what -- they didn't have any data on long-term
exposure to petroleum like that.

		And, Peg, did you have anything else to --

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Yeah, just a couple of other things.  I think one of
the key issues here -- and I don't know how we -- I'm trying to
formulate this.  As Denise was saying, it was sort of the timing.  There
is always the sense that we were several weeks in responding here.  And
so to learn from that as to what needs to be done so that the next time
around here, that there is actually more of a template in place, you
know.

		For example, there were questions that went on for the entire spill as
to what level of personal protective equipment.  And as Dr. Howard said,
OSHA and NIOSH did end up coming out with the joint guidance.  Look at
the data on it.  It was July 26th, right?  This is three months into the
spill.  So I think one of the questions just on timing is to -- were
these decisions -- is there a better way.  These things that were
learned from this experience that can be now put in place and be on the
shelf to help prepare and be ready for the next disaster.

		The other piece related to training was how was the decision made
about not just what was the level of training, but how was the decision
made about what level of training, and was it adequate?  So was the
training actually adequate for what turned out to be the exposures.  And
if not, then what should it be? Because again -- so that we don't the
next time around say, oh, we'll start fresh.  Well, that's what we did
Exxon Valdez.  That's what we did the Gulf Coast.  Maybe it wasn't
enough, but we don't really know what is enough.

		The other issue has to do with OSHA's role.  OSHA had, you know,
dozens of people.  I don't know exactly how many people were deployed
onsite.  They took on a role of being monitors, you know, finding and
then ordering the fixing of hazards.  They don't do that anywhere.  I
mean, that's not what OSHA does.  OSHA inspects, they investigate.  It's
not like they move into workplaces and become the eyes and ears on
safety and health for months.

		And so I think the question to look at here is again the level of
resources, and is that the appropriate role for the agency to play in an
emergency.  Is that the role that they should play?  Is that the best
model or is there some other way to, you know, require the company to
bring in people, to pay them to provide that oversight and monitoring
role?

		So that would be another thing that I would say to, you know, look at.
 And this was a little bit of a different situation because here you did
have the government, the Coast Guard, and BP in joint -- in a unified
command, so they were running the overall response of it.  So it took on
the flavor all the way down the road, all the way down the line in all
the different activities.  But I think that's a reasonable question to
ask for again lessons learned in the future.  Is that the model and is
that the role OSHA should be playing in these disasters, and what does
that take away from with respect to their other activities.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I assume you would broaden that to what role did
OSHA and NIOSH play.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  NIOSH play, yes, yes.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Linda.

		MS. MURRAY:  I wanted to add the lessons learned about surge capacity.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  About?

		MS. MURRAY:  Surge capacity, which is always a major problem.  But
with these major national disasters -- you know, I don't know, I'm
predicting that everything -- many other things came to halt in the
agency.  I don't know for sure, but -- so and whether -- and I think
NIOSH has more commissioned core people by accident almost than OSHA, I
think.  But to explore other methods of addressing the problems of surge
capacity, a reserve group of health and safety professionals at the
state level or in the private sector that could be called quickly when
necessary.  So some thinking about surge capacity and how to address
that problem in the future.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  See, the other issue here is it's not just the surge
capacity.  It's how do you -- the implications of dealing with long-term
disasters.  And so this is something --

		MS. MURRAY:  Right.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  -- went on, you know, for months and months and
months.  And so the conditions were always changing, so it was a dynamic
situation.  And I would ask them to look specifically as how was this
different.  Was this different than, let's say, from the World Trade
Center, where you had an event, you had continuing exposures, and it was
somewhat dynamic because of all the cleanup and continued work that went
on.  But here you had a situation where, you know, the oil was moving
and was continuing.  So I would ask them to look at were there
differences in issues that came up here versus other disasters where,
you know, the event has been more of a singular event, and not as
prolonged.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  I think that the way that we want to take
this list or some reworking of it -- we want to take this list, and I
think this is the context we want to put it in.  I think that we will
want to direct a -- want to give OSHA and NIOSH a recommendation.  And
the nature of that recommendation would be a statement that NACOSH is
aware that OSHA and NIOSH are examining lessons learned from the Gulf
oil recovery efforts.  We advise the agencies to consider at least the
following questions as they go through that exercise, and we would list
these questions.  Then we would say that we hope to receive some
feedback on this enough in advance of our next meeting so we can discuss
it with you.  Does that capture it?

		MS. RANDOLPH:  I think it's also tying it into the lessons learned
that they're also reviewing.  You want to make sure that these points
are addressed as well as the other lessons learned.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  So how do we refine this list?  I mean, we've
got a good start.  And some of this stuff I wrote down, but not all of
it.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Well, maybe we can -- do we have a break coming up
here?

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  We can do this is in a few minutes.  It may require
that we break down into a couple of smaller groups and can work on that.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Right.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  And what we're aiming at is having this done by
2:45, which is the time at which I think Frank and -- David Michaels is
going to be joining you, Frank.  Okay.  So that's where we're going with
that one.  With regard to the other task, we worked on some language
that would establish a second workgroup.  And let me tell you -- let me
read to you some proposed language here and see if we're on the right
track.

		NACOSH has established a subgroup to advise OSHA and NIOSH on the
design and use of recordkeeping and surveillance systems to guide policy
decisions and the deployment of resources.  Among the questions the
subgroup will address are the following:  How are the current workplace
injury, illness, and exposure data recordkeeping and surveillance
systems designed?  How are these systems currently being used?  What are
the current incentives and disincentives that affect the accuracy and
completeness of reporting and recordkeeping?  And how can these systems
and policies  be improved and changed in order to better accomplish the
ability to find and fix hazards and to ensure worker protection?

		So are we close?  Are we not close?  Do you want me to read that
again?  I just typed it up two minutes ago, so there wasn't any
opportunity to do anything with it.  So this would be a subgroup to
advise OSHA and NIOSH on the design and use of recordkeeping and
surveillance systems to guide policy decisions and the deployment of
resources.

		Among the questions the subgroup will address are the following, and
there are four of them.  One, how are the current workplace injury,
illness, and exposure data recordkeeping and surveillance systems
designed?  Two, how are these systems currently being used?  Three, what
are the current incentives and disincentives that affect the accuracy
and completeness of reporting and recordkeeping?  And four, how can
these systems and policies be improve and changed in order to better
accomplish the ability to find and fix hazards and to ensure worker
protection?  Bill?

		MR. BORWENGEN:  So the second bullet I think I would say -- read the
second bullet.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  The second is, how are these systems currently being
used?

		MR. BORWENGEN:  Being used to prioritize and allocate resources,
prioritize agency -- you know --

		MR. BUCHAN:  After used, Bill, you're going to put in the language.

		MR. BORWENGEN:  Yeah.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  No.  I understand that.  But he was saying that, and
Peg was shaking her head.

		MR. BORWENGEN:  Well, again, it's like how are we using the BLS data
to figure out -- are we going after the most hazardous workplaces where
the most workers work?

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Well, I open to something that would add a clause
after this.  It would be how are these systems currently being used to
do something.  I'm not sure what the right something is to put in there.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  I would just say that that's not their only use,
right?  I mean, it's not just to set priorities.  It's actually carry
out the programs.  And maybe what you want to say is how are they being
used, including how are they being used to identify priorities and --

		MR. BORWENGEN:  Allocate resources.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Allocate resources.  I mean, if you want to highlight
that --

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I don't know.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  No.  But he was saying that the use was for that
purpose.  The use is for lots of purposes.  And so that's just one of
the purposes, rather than getting into a whole --

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Well, what is wrong with just saying how are these
systems currently being used?

		MS. SEMINARIO:  I think that's fine.

		MR. BORWENGEN:  Well, again, to me the crux of the whole committee is
to review -- you know, again I go back to yesterday's comment, which may
or may not be accurate, that OSHA, you know, conducts 85 -- I know this
was true, you know, ten years ago, that 85 percent of their inspections
are conducted in manufacturing and construction, and there is only
11-1/2 million manufacturing workers in this country, and there is 13.7
million healthcare workers.  And there is a lot of other service sectors
and other sectors of the economy where OSHA is largely irrelevant, and
they become irrelevant every day OSHA doesn't adapt itself to address
the hazards in the growing sectors of the economy.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  But I think you're jumping a couple of steps ahead
in formulating conclusions that indeed we may reach, but not until we've
asked these kinds of questions and done some review, taking into account
Linda's caution about not spending the next two years on that.

		MR. VAN HOUTEN:  Michael?

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Yeah, Joe.

		MR. VAN HOUTEN:  I don't think you need to add anything to the end of
that question because I think it narrows the focus.  One thought I had
was what if we reversed the questions and said number four first, to say
the purpose of this is to answer this question, and in order to do that,
we are going to look at how are the systems currently being used, what
are they being used for. 

		MS. MURRAY:  Oh, okay.  That might help.  That might help what you
want to do because it puts the emphasis back on that.

		MR. BORWENGEN:  Yeah.  I'd like to do a -- without becoming -- again
doing a massive study, I'd like to look at the line items to figure out
where the money is going, and what are using it for, and what sectors of
the economy are being addressed, based on what we know about BLS injury
and illness rates.

		MR. BUCHAN:  More than BLS, though.

		MS. RANDOLPH:  But it's also broader than just BLS.  It's also NIOSH
data or Sensor, or it could be CFOI.  I mean, it could be a wide variety
of deaths.  So it isn't just OSHA death.

		MALE VOICE:  I agree.

		MR. BUCHAN:  It could also be exposure information from NIOSH and
OSHA.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  Two things that are on the table
simultaneously.  Let's deal with one at a time.  The suggestion that Joe
made was that we switch the order around a little bit to state that -- I
guess the way it would work is this.  We'd say the subgroup is to advise
OSHA and NIOSH on designing the use of these systems to guide policy
decisions and deployment of resources.

		The committee will -- or the subgroup will, what, examine the --

		MR. VAN HOUTEN:  What you might want to say is the key question being
--

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  The key question.

		MR. VAN HOUTEN:  -- addressed by this subgroup is -- state numbers,
state --

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Yeah.  The key question will be how can systems and
policies be improved and changed --

		MR. VAN HOUTEN:  Exactly.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  -- in order to blah, blah, blah.

		MR. VAN HOUTEN:  In order to do that, we will examine this, this, and
this.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  Does that sound agreeable?

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Right.  And I think the workgroup should consider
whether or not explicitly as part of the things you're going to examine
is how resources, the current allocation of resources, is put to address
--

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Wait.  Hang on for one second, Peg.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Whether the current allocation of resources is
appropriate to address hazards, injuries, and illnesses, right?

		MS. RANDOLPH:  Exposures.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Yeah, I said hazards.  That's fine.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  So in order to accomplish this -- I'm going to come
back in one second, Peg.

		(Pause)

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  So here is the way it now reads, and then
I'll come back to what Peg was saying.  It now says, the subgroup will
advise OSHA and NIOSH on the design and use of recordkeeping and
surveillance systems to guide policy decisions and deployment of
resources.  Oh, I left something out.  The key question that the
subgroup will examine is how can the existing systems be improved and
changed in order to better accomplish the ability to find and fix
hazards, and to ensure worker protection.  In order to accomplish this,
the first issues the subgroup will examine are the following.  And then
we have, how are the current systems designed?  How are they being used?
 And what are the incentives and disincentives.  And then I was typing
while you were talking, Peg.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  I just said is the current deployment of resources
appropriate, yeah, or appropriate to address the --

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  To address the --

		MS. MURRAY:  Reality to the American economy.  How about that?  Or the
realities of the workforce, or something like that.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  I was just thinking about is it appropriate to address
the --

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Well, the distribution or --

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Distribution of the injuries, illnesses, and
exposures.

		MR. BORWENGEN:  Is the allocation of resources commensurate with the
distribution of resources or something.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Yeah, okay.

		MALE VOICE:  The word "optimal" comes to mind.

		MR. BORWENGEN:  Right.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  But let me just say here, I think there are other
issues than just how many issues are occurring in a workforce.  That's
part of the decisionmaking, right?  And so I don't think it's just a
question of how many or whatever.  I mean, that's an important piece of
it, but it's certainly not, you know, the only piece.  So I wouldn't
just say that it's --

		MR. BORWENGEN:  But it has been ignored for a long time.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  I'm not saying it hasn't been ignored.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Here, okay.  All right.  Try this version.  This is
getting better.  This will be a subgroup to advise OSHA and NIOSH on the
design and use of recordkeeping and surveillance systems to guide policy
decisions and the deployment of resources.  The key question for this
workgroup will be how can these systems and policies be improved and
changed in order to better accomplish the ability to find and fix
hazards and to ensure worker protection.  In order to accomplish this,
the first issues the subgroup will examine are the following:  One, how
are the current workplace injury, illness, and exposure data
recordkeeping and surveillance systems designed?  Two, how are these
systems currently being used?  Three, what are the current incentives
and disincentives that affect the accuracy and completeness of reporting
and recordkeeping.  And four, is the current deployment of resources and
the design of policies appropriate to address the distribution of
injuries, illnesses, and exposure?

		MALE VOICE:  That sounds good.

		MALE VOICE:  Sounds good.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  It does sound good?

		MALE VOICE:  I like that last sentence.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  Well, then we're going to have to use this to
direct some requests for information from the agencies before the end of
the day.  But let's -- I will accept a motion for the group to establish
this subgroup.

		MR. BUCHAN:  I so move.

		MS. MURRAY:  Second.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  We have a second?  Okay.  Is there any discussion?

		(No audible response.)

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  Can I see a show of hands for those who are
in favor of setting up this subgroup?

		(Show of hands)

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  That is a unanimous decision.  Great.  Let's
do two things.  I think what we need to do now is to break into two
smaller groups, one of which will come up with the bullet list of
questions regarding the Gulf oil follow-up.  And then we'll come back
and listen to that, and if we're doing well, I'll entertain a motion to
convey those questions to OSHA and NIOSH.  And I think the other group
will come up with some specific questions for information from OSHA to
NIOSH to help this other subgroup get started.

		Does that make sense?  Was that coherent?  Okay.  So certainly Denise
and Peg, and anybody else want to work with Denise and Peg to come up
with the Gulf oil questions?

		MR. KNOWLES:  Yes.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  You'll help, Emory?

		MR. KNOWLES:  I'll help on that.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  And who wants to sit down and come up with
the requests for information regarding first subgroup?  Okay.  So,
Sarah, can we do this, just break into two groups for discussion?

		MS. SHORTALL:  You're going to go off the record.  OSHA's policy is
that all subgroup meetings are open to the public.  So any member of the
public can attend either/or.  And the only thing the subgroups are
authorized to do is to report back to the parent group for any further
action.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  So let's take -- it's 1:30.  Let's take about
a half an hour for that.  Peg?

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Question.  Is there any possibility of getting access
to a computer?

		MS. MURRAY:  For what, do you mean?

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Just to type up the list.

		(Whereupon, a brief recess was taken.)

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  Let's go back on the record.  The committee
is back in session.  And while we're waiting for the electronics to
arrive, let's at least begin housekeeping, the discussion about the next
meeting and whether or not we should have it before the end of the
calendar year.  My sense is from body language that people would like to
attempt to schedule another meeting before the end of the calendar year,
understanding that it may be very difficult.

		So I think what I'm going to do is ask each of you to send to Deborah
your calendars for November and December so that we can see what is
possible, and she will also have to check with both OSHA and NIOSH
senior staff to see what is possible for the agencies.  So let's try to
do that.  I think that we will lose some momentum if we don't have
another meeting relatively soon.

		Now, Joe, I think you were interested in the question of what the
workgroups can do between meetings.  And part of that, we have to ask
Sarah what is permissible and what is not.

		MS. SHORTALL:  The workgroups certainly can meet between the full
meetings.  However, it is OSHA's policy that workgroups be open to the
public.  So if you meet by phone, which I think is most likely the way
you would be doing it, you need to let OSHA know so we could make a room
available here for people to be able to gather and participate by phone,
particularly if we have so many people that are interested that we need
to do that because we don't have enough lines available to get people
plugged in.

		I think what would be the best to do is for OSHA to take its sign-in
sheets for the most recent meetings and send e-mails to those people
informing them of the workgroup meetings so that they can attend.  There
is no requirement for us to do anything in the Federal Register, but in
order for the public to participate, they have to be aware of the
meetings.  So that's one way we could do it.

		We could also potentially put a notice on the web page, but that may
take so long that that time has passed.  So sometimes doing things a
little bit more informally is what works.  Usually what we'd say in that
type of thing is we're going to hold a workgroup meeting.  This is how
the public can participate.  If you have anyone else you know of that
would like to participate, this is how they can, too, so we get the
information.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  For those who have been on the committee in the past
and have been part of subgroups, how have they worked and how have they
not worked?  I know, Peg, you've done some.  Emory has done some of
this.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  I don't recall the workgroups ever being open to the
public.  I don't know when this -- I mean before, as far as -- so we
would -- when there was a committee meeting, we would have a lot of time
for a workgroup, when there was a two-day committee meeting.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  During the committee meetings.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  During the committee meeting.  And then a couple of
times, when we had extensive work to do, the workgroup came in in
between because we had to meet with agency staff from different
agencies, and maybe we worked for a day.  So when we really got into it,
we would have sometimes separate meetings here of the workgroup in D.C.,
and then other times we would have discussions on the phone to circulate
documents in advance.  But that was how it worked.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  What is your recollection, Emory?

		MR. KNOWLES:  Yeah.  I don't recall ours being open to the public.  I
certainly don't recall anyone from the public participating between the
meetings.  We did have a number of telephone conference calls with the
members of the workgroup and then OSHA staff participating in those
telephone conference calls.  We didn't have separate meetings outside
the actual scheduled NACOSH meetings.  But the second day of the meeting
was dedicated to the workgroup sitting down and working for three or
four hours at a time.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  And that was kind of a dilemma with our Gulf workgroup
because we didn't know when -- Deborah and I were talking.  We didn't
know how to make -- we would have to make it public because I wanted to
have a meeting over the summer, and it just didn't pan out because of
that fact, because I asked her how, you know.

		MS. CRAWFORD:  I mean, there is a difference between what maybe past
practice had been and what is actually required under FACA and other GSA
regs.  And to tell you the truth, GSA is becoming much stricter in terms
of monitoring the agencies to see that they comply.  In NACOSH's own
regulations, if we were to be most following the regulations, 1912.813
actually for subcommittees requires that we put a notice in the Federal
Register and we transcript them.

		So that's why we've been calling them subgroup, something to get --
you know, so we can do something a little bit less formal.  But it has
been OSHA's interest to allow the public to participate in those
subgroup meetings, although they do not have the right to vote.  The
only ones who'd have the right to vote in those subcommittee meetings or
subgroup meetings would be the members of NACOSH.

		MR. KNOWLES:  Yeah.  I just don't recall any announcement to the
public.  It may have been made.  I just don't recall.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Well, we will certainly have an interest in having
at least one of the subgroups meet before the entire committee comes
together again.  Maybe the way to do that is to schedule a two-day
meeting, the first day of which is for subgroups, and maybe conference
calls with some access to the public is another way to do it, although
that's quite awkward.  But we're certainly not going to violate the
requirements of the law.

		MS. CRAWFORD:  The other advisory committees do exactly as Michael has
suggested.  FACOSH, MACOSH, and ACOSH, they set up their workgroup
meetings the two days prior to the meeting, and then they have their
meeting.  That allows them time to sift through things and put together
the reports that they would like to give to the parent committee.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I mean, that's certainly a possibility.  So we'll
have to examine that.  I think the thing to do right now is to provide
the -- for everybody to provide their November, December calendars to
Deborah as soon as possible, and then we'll work on -- we'll look to see
what is possible for either one or a two-day meeting, with or without
subgroups, and we'll examine with staff here what the options for less
formal phone conversations in between meetings.

		So everybody got -- yeah, Joe.

		MR. VAN HOUTEN:  Just one more question regarding meetings.  Would it
be possible to schedule them a year in advance so that we can put them
on calendars, and this way schedule around for business purposes?

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I think that's a great idea, if we can possibly do
it.  Let me work with staff to see what we can do.

		MR. VAN HOUTEN:  Yeah.  Because I know three months out, my calendar
is booked, and it's tough to move things around.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I'm frankly amazed that so many people could make it
to the first two meetings with relatively short notice.  Does everybody
have a copy of the proposal from the Gulf oil?  If everybody would take
just two minutes and read through this, and then we can discuss it. 
These would be questions we would give to the agencies at the end of
this meeting.

		(Pause)

		MS. MURRAY:  Mike?

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Yes.

		MS. MURRAY:  I apologize I had to be away.  I hate to go back.  I know
you all discussed this.  But this assignment of sending availability for
November or December sounds to me like a -- I can't even contemplate
such a thought, unless we have a -- and even if we use a meeting wizard,
which I would suggest is more efficient than this thing, everybody send
in their dates.  The meeting wizard has to be solved quickly because,
you know, my calendar fills up with these meeting wizard holes.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I understand.  I think that most people -- we had a
brief discussion while you were out of the room, and most people agree
that if it were possible, it would be advisable to have another meeting
before the end of the calendar year in order to maintain and build
momentum.  It may turn out that it is impossible to do it.  But I think
we would be remiss in not at least checking.

		MS. MURRAY:  Well, if we have time before we leave, without doing harm
to the agenda, perhaps we could like at least narrow down some time. 
You know, again, I just can't imagine going through my calendar and
holding all the present -- I don't how I'm going to be there.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay, okay.

		MALE VOICE:  Especially since most of us are here, right?  I mean,
we're missing a couple people, right?

		MS. MURRAY:  Yeah.  So maybe we could, you know, old fashioned, pen
and pencil -- you know, for example, we're going to knock out
Thanksgiving week, right?  So we might as well say that now.  You know,
let's -- we don't have to do it this second.  But, you know, if we have
time.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Let's try to do that before the end of the meeting. 
What is a good way to do that?  We can -- we don't have a monthly
template that we can pass around.

		FEMALE VOICE:  We know December 6th through the 8th are off the table
because that's the ACOSH meeting.

		MS. MURRAY:  You know, maybe we could quickly printout the monthly
template and knock off some dates, and then go from there, because, you
know, November and December are busy months anyway.  There are not that
many work days.

		FEMALE VOICE:  I carry a calendar.

		MS. MURRAY:  Do you want us to scribble on it?

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  What are you suggesting, Peg?

		MS. SEMINARIO:  I was just saying that if you want to just go through
dates, I mean, just which ones would we just knock out.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  We'll do that.  But I want to get through
this substance first.  Okay.  So we're looking at the page where the
seven items from the Gulf regarding the Gulf oil spill response. 
Everybody should have had a chance to look at this.  Reactions,
suggestions, comments?  Does anybody have a problem with anything that
is on this list, thinks that it should be -- I'm not finished reading
because we were discussing meetings.

		(Pause)

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I do have -- there is one other thing that we had
talked about that doesn't appear on this list.  I'm wondering if you
discussed this in small group.  And that was asking OSHA and NIOSH to
provide more information about the annex provisions in the national
response plan.  Could that be simply added as another question?

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Yes, yes.  And what specifically do we want to --

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I'm not sure how to -- since I'm not familiar with
it, I don't know exactly how to frame the question.  But I think we need
information about how the annex procedures work and what options replace
it.

		FEMALE VOICE:  Or what triggers the plan?

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Right.  Well, in this --

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Frank?

		MR. HEARL:  Do you want me to come up?

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Yeah, come on up.  Excuse me, a question.

		THE REPORTER:  If I could I just remind you to speak one at a time.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  One at a time.  Thank you.  Just keep hounding us
about that if you will, and maybe we'll get it together.  Okay, Frank.

		MR. HEARL:  Yeah.  I think the -- I'm not an expert on this particular
thing myself, but I believe it's triggered an invocation of the Stafford
Act and a declaration of an emergency, which didn't actually happen in
the Gulf oil spill situation anyway.  But I think once that happens,
then the different emergency support functions of the ESF stick into
gear.  There is one, the ESF-8 for public health that NIOSH is usually
involved in to some extent.  Then the worker safety and health annex is
a part of that plan.  So that's with administrative procedures, and
that's how it gets activated with the different secretaries in charge of
the different parts of the plan.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Just let the record show that Mr. Frank Hearl is at
the table now, and David Michaels has arrived.  David, we did not start
the discussion with you and Frank without you.  We asked Frank a
specific question that drew him up to the table.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Perhaps what we could say here is then in keeping in
line with these questions here, was -- based on their experience and
lessons learned in the Gulf response, do the agencies have
recommendations for modifications that should be made in the national
response plan to give workers safety and health issues, to make them a
higher priority or --

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  I didn't write that.  You were writing that
down.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  I am writing.  That's what I'm just saying.  Based on
the experience in the Gulf oil spill response, do the agencies have
recommendations and any modifications that should be made in the
national response plan to, well, improve worker safety and health, or to
improve --

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Let's do this.  We're in the ballpark.  Let's find
out from OSHA and NIOSH representatives what might be most helpful to
them as a way to frame this.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Okay.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  So let's skip -- go back a step.  And now we're in
the 2:45 session, although it's slightly premature.  If we had a few
more minutes, we'd be a little bit more coherent in what we're going to
present to you.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  But they're on time.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  But we'll do.  Frank Hearl, we'll do fine.  We've
got two documents that we are considering providing to the agencies at
the end of this meeting, and we wanted to share them with you and talk
to you about them before we make them formal.  The first is the one we
were just talking about, which would be a communication on behalf --
from the committee, but under the umbrella of the workgroup on the Gulf
oil recovery efforts.  So it would be some further action with regard to
Gulf oil recovery.  And as a committee, we took note of the fact that
the agencies are developing -- are going through a lessons learned
activity.  And we thought that it would be especially useful if the
lessons learned activity addressed the questions that are on this page.

		These are the questions that are of most to the committee members. 
And so we wanted to go through those with you and get your off-the-cuff
reaction, and also see what your suggestions are about how we can make
the most useful -- provide the most -- draft the most useful question
regarding the annex provisions of the national response plan.  So if you
want to take a couple of seconds to look at this.  It's a little bit
long, but maybe it's useful to read these things out loud.  Does that
help or not?

		FEMALE VOICE:  Well, this will put this in the record.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Well, if I read it out loud, it goes in the record. 
It goes in the transcript.  When we reach some consensus on what version
of this will go to the agencies, then that will go in the record as
well.  It may be different than what I'm about to read.

		But the workgroup -- and I think it should actually NACOSH.  This is
going to be a recommendation from NACOSH.  So it would say, NACOSH
commends OSHA and NIOSH for their efforts to protect workers during the
Gulf oil spill response.  In order to learn from this experience and be
better prepared to respond to emergencies or disasters in the future, we
recommend that as part of the agency's lesson learned and evaluation
activities that they examine the following questions and issues.

		First, what processes and information were used to make decisions
about the appropriate personal protective equipment and level of
training to perform the work.  If these decisions deviated from
requirements under existing standards, what criteria were used to make
these decisions?

		Two, were health assessments of all workers conducted, and if so,
when?  What type of assessment, and by whom?  We obviously have a little
bit of grammar.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Right.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Who was responsible for overseeing safety and health
of the response personnel?  Did the incident commander appoint a safety
officer, and if so, who was that person?

		Four, what was OSHA's role in ensuring safety and health in the oil
spill response?  How many staff were deployed in the response?  Is the
intensive oversight role that OSHA played, which is different from the
agency's normal investigation and inspection role, necessary or
appropriate.  Did the agency consider recruiting or relying upon other
resources, for example, FEMA task forces, state agency personnel, SGEs,
which I think is special government employees?

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Yes.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  And safety and health volunteers to perform or
assist in this activity.  Does the agency have ideas or recommendations
for enhancing surge capacity for addressing safety and health issues in
future disasters or emergencies?

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Michael, just one thing I would just -- in looking at
this now and just reading it, I would propose a modification to this.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  To the whole document or --

		MS. SEMINARIO:  No.  Just to this particular point.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  To number four.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Yeah.  Do you want to just go through the whole thing
first?

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Let me just read the whole thing and --

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Right, fine, okay.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  -- then come back to whatever people want to talk
about.  Number five, what were the challenges presented by dealing with
a prolonged, dynamic incident, and were there differences in the issues
presented in this disaster response and the response of the World Trade
Center.

		Six, what steps will OSHA and NIOSH be taking based on experience and
lessons learned to better prepare for the next disaster.  Is it possible
to develop more formalized plans regarding the provision of appropriate
training, personnel protective equipment control measures, injury and
illness reporting and surveillance systems, in order to be better
prepared for the next disaster.

		Seven, does NIOSH have specific plans to recommend or to conduct any
follow-up surveillance on these workers similar to the follow-up
surveillance and monitoring conducted at the World Trade Center.  And
then there would be a number eight, which Peg was drafting a few minutes
ago regarding the national response plan.

		A general question.  Do people have an overall comfort level with this
list?  Anybody have significant reservations about it?

		MR. VAN HOUTEN:  I have one point.  I would be interested in knowing
or a critique of OSHA's relationship with BP.  It doesn't seem to be --
there is no discussion about the relationship with the company
throughout the disaster.  What were the lessons learned?  You know, as
someone who was in industry, I'd like to know what went wrong and what
--

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  So it would be what were the lessons learned about
the relationship --

		(Simultaneous discussion)

		MR. VAN HOUTEN:  -- and the company, private companies involved.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Yeah, one person at a time.

		MR. VAN HOUTEN:  Sorry.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Say that again?

		MR. VAN HOUTEN:  No.  I interrupted.  I'm interested in knowing the
lessons learned regarding the relationship between the federal agencies,
or all government agencies, not just the federal agencies, and the
private companies involved throughout the emergency response.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  As it pertains to safety and health.

		MR. VAN HOUTEN:  Right, yes.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Are you interested in just between the agencies and
the private companies?  Do we also want to ask them lessons learned
about the coordination amongst the agencies, given that we have those
whole issues of jurisdictional -- different jurisdictions?  I think that
is probably another appropriate question.

		MR. VAN HOUTEN:  I would agree, yeah.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Right.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Before we -- I'm reluctant to add too much more
because this is getting to big already, and before we go any further,
I'd like to get initial reactions from OSHA and NIOSH.  Peg?

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Just the other issue was just a small amendment to
number four, that we should be asking about what was OSHA's role/NIOSH's
role in ensuring the safety and health, and that did OSHA or NIOSH
consider recruiting or relying upon other resources.  And where it says
"did the agency," I would say OSHA or NIOSH.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Oh, did NIOSH or OSHA.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  And then the last sentence, does OSHA and NIOSH have
ideas or recommendations.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  I'd like to get initial reactions.  Are these
the kinds of questions that you feel will be helpful and appropriate?

		DR. MICHAELS:  Yes.  I mean, as you know, OSHA staff right now is
involved in that sort of lessons learned exercise.  And as a result of
that, we will have materials that we will put out -- I'm not sure in
what form yet -- to answer some of these questions.  But we're certainly
happy to have some of the others.  I think actually now we are beginning
to -- the crisis is beginning to resolve because I'm told that the well
will actually be permanently capped over the weekend, symbolically a
wonderful moment, it's appropriate to go and think about these issues,
and we're certainly happy to answer them.

		I have a little wordsmithing, and I think Frank does as well that he
might suggest.  But generally, I think it's fine.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.

		MR. HEARL:  Yeah.  I think these are good questions and so forth.  I
think my concern actually in looking at the way they're phrased is in
the context of our addressing these in an after-action report.  Some of
them are just like eliciting information about what did you do.  And it
seems like if the questions were worded more along the lines of was the
information that was available to you at the time good enough.  And the
things that you sought to use, what would have been helpful to have as
additional information that might have been available, and then, you
know, the lessons that we learned from here, the kinds of information,
does that engender the idea that we should put together some kind of a
package that would be available, so that that information might be
available the next time there is a major response.

		So I think kind of crafting it that way rather than, you know, just
what happened and who was assigned, and, you know, maybe the question of
did that work, you know, was it really successful in terms of overseeing
health and safety.  Did the incident commander appoint a safety officer?
 If so, who was that person?  And then did that work as a system.  And
then I think a lot of the things that might be of interest in an
after-action report also might be how did we interact with the unified
area command.  How did we interact with the OMB and the White House in
getting information cleared?  Because a lot of what we did was
information development and making those things available.  And how did
the review process work for it?  Did it improve the product?  Did it
maintain a timeliness?  You know, were the documents that we produced
effective?  And we had evidence of that.

		I think those kind of -- I think crafting it a little bit in that
sense might be more useful.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  We should be able to do that.  We're
beginning to have a race with the clock, and that's the limiting factor
here.

		MR. HEARL:  You may be able to phrase that in terms of the global
overall thing, and then these are the points underneath of that.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.

		MR. HEARL:  I think the global questions might be, you know, was what
you had when you were faced with a decision enough to be able to make a
good policy decision.  What would have been helpful to have in addition
to that?  And then, you know, are those things -- are there ways of
building those into -- for future use, and then apply to these
questions.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Did anybody write quickly?  No.  Okay.  My sense is
that with regard to both the committee as well as the two agencies,
we're in the right ballpark here.  Let's set this aside for a second
because I want to assess -- I want to allocate the rest of the time so
we get everything done that we need to.  So set this aside for a second
and take a look at this second sheet.

		We have decided as a committee to establish a second workgroup, a
second subgroup.  And this document describes what that subgroup would
address, and also indicates some of the requests that we would make now
to OSHA and NIOSH for information that will help get that group
launched.  So let me read this.  I think it -- I may be wrong, but I
think it does help to hear these things out loud at least once.

		The NACOSH is establishing a subgroup to advise OSHA and NIOSH on the
design and use of recordkeeping and surveillance systems to guide policy
decisions and the deployment of resources.  The key question for this
workgroup would be how can these systems and policies be improved and
changed in order to better accomplish the ability to find and fix
hazards and to ensure worker protection.  In order to accomplish this,
the first issues the subgroup will examine are the following:

		First, how are the current workplace injury, illness, and exposure
data recordkeeping and surveillance systems designed?  Two, how are
these systems currently being used?  Three, what are the current
incentives and disincentives that affect the accuracy and completeness
of reporting and recordkeeping?  Four, is the current deployment of
resources and the design of policies appropriate to the address the
distribution of injuries, illnesses, and exposures.  And five, how might
the recordkeeping and reporting elements if injury and illness
prevention plans be best designed to encourage accurate and complete
reporting of injuries, illnesses, hazardous exposures, and close calls.

		And then NACOSH would request from OSHA and NIOSH the following:  a
copy of the report from OSHA stakeholder meetings on recordkeeping
modernization; two summary reports that are available regarding where
people work where injuries and illnesses are reported, and where OSHA
and NIOSH conduct research, enforcement, and regulation; three, the
current OSHA and NIOSH strategic plans; and the fourthly, the committee
would request that OSHA and NIOSH put together a small panel that would
be available next NACOSH meeting to discuss the above questions with the
committee.

		So reaction first from committee members.  Not all of you have seen
all of this.  Is there anything that is particularly troublesome or
doesn't seem quite right.  Emory?

		MR. KNOWLES:  Not troublesome, but you used the term "close calls,"
and within the profession, it's near-miss incidents.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Yeah.

		MR. KNOWLES:  I would suggest changing that.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I understand.  I use the term "close calls."  I take
it it's more accurate.  I've never understood grammatically among other
things what near-miss means.

		MR. KNOWLES:  Right, right.  It's a double negative.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Right.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  While the language, as Mike Seymour said, that was
proposed at one of the stakeholder meetings, which I thought was
appropriate, was near hits.  It is more appropriate than a near miss.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Roy.

		MR. BUCHAN:  Roy Buchan.  I mentioned this during the subgroup
meeting, but I don't think we really want to ask them for the design of
the recordkeeping and surveillance systems.  These things are very
sophisticated, very detailed, and it would be very difficult for us as a
group to really assess the design of these programs.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Well, I want to make it clear that we're not
requesting anything about the -- we're not asking OSHA or NIOSH for
documents describing the full design of these.  What we've indicated is
this is one of the areas that we're interested in and that we want to
explore.  But I want to be very careful about -- we discussed this in
the little subgroup discussion we had.  I want to be very careful that
we don't inadvertently ask for a massive data dump that is going to be
too big for us to handle.  So I appreciate the point you're making, Roy?

		Are we okay on close calls?  Is it an issue that needs to be discussed
further?  Are you willing to live with that?

		MR. KNOWLES:  I can certainly live with that.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  Thank you.  Peg?

		MS. SEMINARIO:  I would just suggest another piece of information that
I think is quite helpful, and it should be easy for both OSHA and NIOSH
to provide, is information on their budget.  And I would suggest that if
people want to go and look at this and have it as a resource that the
congressional budget justification is a very good document that goes
into each area of the program and the resources that are deployed.  And
so it's a good resource for the committee to have if you're looking at
both priorities backed with resources.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  So the specific request would be -- 

		MS. SEMINARIO:  For the copies of the congressional budget
justification, which are online.

		DR. MICHAELS:  That's easily provided.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Just you can give a link, right?

		DR. MICHAELS:  Yeah.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Copies of the --

		MS. SEMINARIO:  And if there is a summary document that you think is a
better document to explain how the resources are deployed in the
different programs for the agencies, that would be, I think, helpful to
give people a sense of what the realities are.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  So the actual language of the communication would be
a request for a copies of the congressional --

		DR. MICHAELS:  Budget justification.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Yeah, budget summary, both budget summary and a copy
of the congressional budget justification, which I think for both
agencies is online.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  So copies of the congressional budget justifications
and budget summaries?

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Yeah.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  For OSHA and NIOSH.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Right.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  We decided to establish a subgroup because we
thought this was a way of addressing the broad questions that you
specifically, David, raised with the committee earlier today, but I
think also addressed a lot of the concerns raised by John Howard
yesterday.  And we think that this is a subgroup whose subject matter
really pays significant attention to both agencies.

		Does it ring true to the two of you?  If we proceed along these lines,
is this going to generate useful advice?

		DR. MICHAELS:  Absolutely.  I would only ask for one slight perhaps
expansion.  In the fifth point in the issues you're examining, you're
looking at how various programs and plans can be best designed to
encourage accurate and complete reporting of injuries and illnesses. 
But I would say reporting and investigating.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.

		DR. MICHAELS:  Because you want to go beyond reporting.  And you're
not -- you don't have to talk about how they should be investigated, but
what would encourage the investigation of them.  I think that would be
useful.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.

		MS. SHORTALL:  I have -- 

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Sarah.

		MS. SHORTALL:  -- one important suggestion, and that is in the part
that gets to the request that you have here, that you indicate that
NACOSH requests that OSHA and NIOSH provide the following to NACOSH.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  Now, Sarah, let me ask you a question.  I
think that the way this worked at the first meeting that we had, the
previous meeting, was that we had documents like this that the committee
had agreed on, but required a little bit of editing without changing the
substance following the meeting, and that we then conveyed an official
document to the agencies.

		MS. SHORTALL:  Yes.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Is that the way we can proceed here as well.

		MS. SHORTALL:  What you want -- what you need to do to make sure that
this reflects what NACOSH --

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Oh, I'm going to do that.

		MS. SHORTALL:  -- is recommending is first vote on it.  And that will
get in the record.  And then the report that you prepare will be
submitted to the -- I mean it will be put in the docket after we receive
it.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Right.  Now, I had not forgotten about that.

		MS. SHORTALL:  Okay.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  We're going to make sure that this -- the things we
do represent the entire committee's desire.  But that will then allow us
to do a little bit of fine tuning after the fact before we submit.

		MS. SHORTALL:  I think what you'd simply do is ask to have the
recommendation approved by NACOSH, as edited.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.

		MS. SHORTALL:  You have to be careful, though.  If you do significant
editing, that could negate the vote.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I understand.  I'm talking about minor grammar. 
Okay.  I think that we're pretty close on the new subgroup and the
document that I just read and we made some changes to.  And let me tell
you what the changes are that I think we discussed.  The first is that
bullet number five, in the second to the last line, where it currently
says, accurate and complete reporting of injuries, it will now, accurate
and complete reporting and investigating of injuries, et cetera, et
cetera.

		Then in the request to OSHA and NIOSH, it will now say, NIOSH [sic]
requests that OSHA and NIOSH provide the following to NACOSH.

		MR. VAN HOUTEN:  Did you say NIOSH requests?

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I said NIOSH.  I've done that before.  I'll probably
make that mistake again.  I meant to say NACOSH requests that OSHA and
NIOSH provide the following to NACOSH.  And then finally, there would be
a number five in the request list that would say, copies of the
congressional budget justification and budget summaries for OSHA and 
NIOSH.

		Oh, and then, right, Deborah points out that in the very first
sentence -- the very first sentence would be amended to say, NACOSH is
establishing a workgroup to advise OSHA and NIOSH.  Okay.  I will
entertain a motion to establish the workgroup as described in this
document and to address the request to the two agencies, and to convey
this to OSHA and NIOSH following the meeting, after we do minor editing
for grammar and clarity.

		MS. RANDOLPH:  So moved.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Is there a second to that motion?

		(No audible response.)

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  It has been seconded.  Is there discussion?  Roy.

		MR. BUCHAN:  I'm still concerned about the word "design."

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  About the word --

		MR. BUCHAN:  Requesting for the design of the surveillance systems. 
If we think that's essential, I'll go with it, but we may get more than
we want.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  No.  But you're answering the question.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I would point out again that we're not requesting
voluminous documents having to do with system design.

		MALE VOICE:  We're not requesting anything until we get down to the
last paragraph.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Again, one person needs to speak at a time.  And so
I think what we're going to have to do to discipline ourselves better --

		MR. BUCHAN:  This is Roy.  I withdraw what I had to say.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Thank you.  In order to preserve the sanity of the
staff who is compiling the transcript here, I would ask now for the rest
of the meeting that if people will please wait to speak and raise hands
so that I can call on you.

		The motion has been made and seconded that we establish this workgroup
as described in this document, and we convey this information to the
agencies following this meeting.  May I have a show of hands in favor?

		(Show of hands)

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  That is unanimous, and we will follow up on this
following the meeting.

		MS. SHORTALL:  I'm sorry.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Sarah.

		MS. SHORTALL:  I have to play my legal role here.  You have
established the workgroup.  Now, the second thing you have to do is make
the formal request to OSHA and NIOSH to provide certain information.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I believe that the motion we voted on was to
establish the workgroup and to convey the request as articulated in this
document.  So I think we already did that.

		MS. SHORTALL:  I did get that the motion had all this other language
in it.  So this is helpful that now it does have it.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  Now we need to turn our attention back to the
document on the Gulf oil spill response.  And I think we've got time to,
as a group, come up with some language of the sort that Frank was
suggesting, that would make this precise enough so the agencies can
respond adequately.  Is there anybody other than Frank who thinks that
they can craft such language at the beginning rather than revising the
entire document?  Peg?

		MS. SEMINARIO:  What I wrote down from what you said was what
information did the agencies have,, or was it available -- what
information was available to the agencies.  Was it adequate?  I would
add, was it available in a timely manner.  And what information would
you like to have?

		MR. HEARL:  Yeah.  I think I have just something like what would have
helped at the time --

		MS. SEMINARIO:  What would have helped.

		MR. HEARL:  -- to facilitate the kind of decisions we were faced that
might not have been available at that time.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  And this language would appear where?  Before number
one?

		MS. SEMINARIO:  I would put it before number one.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  So, Peg, you're still writing that?  Roy has his
hand up, so let's hear Roy's question or comment, then we'll come back
to Peg.

		MR. BUCHAN:  Roy Buchan.  Frank, I got the impression that you
objected to the way this was written in general, and that you'd like to
see bullets more so than questions.  Am I incorrect in that?

		MR. HEARL:  I think what bothered me about some of the questions, not
necessarily all of them, was that they're getting at a kind of a report
information for the committee rather than -- which is something that you
said you didn't necessarily want, as I was listening to your discussions
over the last few days, whereas what the questions were supposed to be
was to help us to craft our lessons learned evaluation, what kind of
things that we needed to think about in those terms.

		So, you know, I'll say, for -- I mean, number three is kind of right
on point for showing what I mean.  You know, who was responsible for
overseeing safety and health of response personnel.  Did the incident
commander appoint a safety officer, and if so, who was that person. 
Well, that's really just information about what happened.  And what I'm
thinking, the questions that would be helpful for us to have to address
-- I mean, I'm making work for us maybe.  But the questions would be,
you know, did we have enough information to make the right decisions on
these questions at that time.  If not, what would have helped us to have
been able to make that decision better?  And then the third aspect is
can we develop -- is there something that we can develop so that if a
future event happens and we get to this particular issue, what would
have facilitated a better decision at that point.

		And so in terms of lessons learned from an after-action, it's more
like that rather than just reporting what did you do, who was appointed,
and, you know.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I'm wondering if we had a paragraph like that at the
beginning, would it then be useful to follow that paragraph by saying
among the considerations that the agency should -- among the things the
agency should take into account are the following.

		MR. HEARL:  Right.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  And then this list could still be there, but framed
a little bit different.

		MR. HEARL:  I think that would work.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Peg?  Peg and then Linda.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  I think there are two things, and maybe we're trying
to combine two different requests to the agency.  One is in looking
somewhat at the lessons learned.  But the other is an attempt to inform
the committee about some of the things that happened since the committee
didn't meet since the last time, maybe some of its follow-up questions
to what we had yesterday for -- when Debbie Berkowitz and John Howard
were here -- that go to both the questions of what actually happened
here, and was it adequate.  I mean, it's both of those things because --
and that's one of the reasons -- and it's to sort of help you think
about that in terms of the structure of the response.

		It was -- at least from maybe your being on the inside here, but from
the outside, it looked like there was difficulty at getting the safety
and health responsibilities established early on because people had
different, you know, jurisdictions and responsibilities.  And so I think
both in terms of laying out what those were and then also were there
problems, or did it work, or what changes would you make.  Maybe that's
what we want to try to get at so that whatever is done here provides
some, you know, useful information for the next time, both for
internally within the agencies, but also externally because that's part
of the lessons learned as well.

		MR. HEARL:  I think you've captured exactly what my concern was.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Okay.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Linda?

		MS. MURRAY:  Okay.  Well, maybe it's solved.  But I was going to say
we almost are there, it's just that our language is sloppy.  So in that
second paragraph, if you read it, you know, I would interpret that as
saying that you want it, which is, you know, we just want you to
consider these questions.  We could go through and reword every
question, but I would suggest that would be a waste of time.  So I
argue, unless you don't think it's clear, that this second paragraph
says, as you prepare your lessons learned evaluation -- you've had one
meeting.  I'm sure you're going to somehow encapsulate some of that
stuff.  Glance at these seven questions and make sure that they in their
broad sense are addressed.

		So, for example, let me look at number three.  Now, we happen not to
be sure about the answer to number three, and that's probably a
30-second answer.  But what we really are interested in, more so than
what happened in the Gulf oil incident, is a question of, whatever
happened, what should happen in the future in disasters in terms of
people responsible for health and safety.

		So if you all think it's reasonable to excuse our sloppy English, and
if we have to beef up the second paragraph, we're really just asking
these questions to be in the minds of the agencies as you prepare what
you're going to do anyway, which is your lessons learned document, if
that seems reasonable to people.

		Now, I assume that -- for example, again I don't want to know right
now.  But if there was no health and safety officer appointed by the
incident commander, for example, I assume that that will come out in
your lessons learned document.  And if there was one, but they -- it
worked well or it didn't work well, that will also be addressed.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Peter?  David?

		DR. MICHAELS:  Yeah, if I could just comment.  I think that question
three actually goes to the question of what was the relationship between
OSHA and NIOSH, the incident command, and BP.  And you might just want
to expand that because really that's a sub-question of who appointed a
safety officer, who they reported to, how do we relate to them.  And
maybe if you could expand that, it actually would get to the -- give you
the information you wanted, along with other information.

		MS. MURRAY:  Right.

		DR. MICHAELS:  And if I could make two other very brief --

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Please.

		DR. MICHAELS:  I actually think you should talk about training rather
than the level of training.  The content -- there are lots of aspects of
training.

		MS. MURRAY:  What number is that you're talking about?

		DR. MICHAELS:  I'm sorry.  Number one.

		MS. MURRAY:  Number one?  Okay.

		DR. MICHAELS:  You know, you talk about the content of training.  You
talk about the types of training, and the format and things like that
that are really -- the level.  I'm not sure what health assessment
means.

		MS. MURRAY:  I think that meant physical -- people's assessments,
among other things, of people's ability to safely work wherever they --

		DR. MICHAELS:  Yeah.  Well, I guess you may want to define it.  I just
don't know what you're trying to get at here.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Let me suggest something.  We're scheduled to go
until 4:30.  I know Paul has to leave sometime soon.  Anybody else that
has to leave before 4:30?  Okay.  I think that we can accomplish -- this
is what I think we have left to do, and I think we can accomplish it. 
We have to fine tune this document.  And I'm going to propose -- and I
think we have time to do this.  I'm going to propose that we take a
10-minute break while two or three of us play with this language and
then come back to the whole group.  I think that's going to be more
efficient than doing it in the group as a whole.  I think we're very
close, and we can do it that way.

		MS. MURRAY:  And we can give you our calendar finally.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  So I'm going to propose that we take a 10-minute
break to do that, and that we then reconvene.  We finish up with this
document, and the recommendation.  We then see if there is additional
discussion that we need just to wrap up this meeting with the two
agencies, any final thoughts from Frank and David or from the committee
to them.  I think that would be a short discussion.  And then there are
a couple of housekeeping items that we need to do.  We need to see who
-- we'll have two subgroups, and I want to make sure that we know who is
going to be on each one.  And it does not necessarily follow that
everybody who is on the Gulf oil workgroup before when it was the only
one now will be on that group.  So we can do that.

		And then we have to have a conversation about the calendar and a
future meeting.  And I think we can do all of that by 4:30?  Does that
sound reasonable?  Okay then.  Who would like to work on the language? 
I think that Linda and Peg and Frank are probably the ones who have this
most closely in mind.  So can we take 10 minutes for the three of you to
work on that, and then we'll reconvene?  First of all, Bill, you have a
question or a comment?

		MR. BORWENGEN:  I want to make sure that everybody -- are we supposed
to be mentioning the annex in this language or no?

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Yes.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Yes.

		MR. BORWENGEN:  Okay.  Because that was my other question.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Maybe we should ask Dr. Michaels about that now,
because we were having that discussion when he walked in --

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Go ahead and ask the question.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  -- before we -- and Frank Hearl as well.  And this has
to do with --  you know, based upon your experience in the Gulf Coast
response, and based upon both agencies' experience, do you have a -- are
there any recommendations for modifications that should be made in the
national response plan to improve the response to worker safety and
health issues during disasters?

		DR. MICHAELS:  Well, I mean, that is certainly an issue that we're
looking at, and we'd be eager to have your thoughts on that as well. 
So, I mean, you certainly can ask us.  But, I mean, we'd love to see how
your subgroup responds to that.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Yeah.  I think that the sequence here is that we
would ask these questions of you regarding your lessons learned.  When
we then hear from you about the lessons learned, we'll give you -- we
may give you advice about how to follow up.

		DR. MICHAELS:  You're an advisory board.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  We'll take a 10-minute break.  It is now
3:27.  So we'll take a 13-minute break and convene at 20 of. 

		(Whereupon, a brief recess was taken.)

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Did Dr. Michaels have to leave, do we know?

		MR. HEARL:  I believe he said he was coming back.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  He will be coming back?  I think he would approve of
us continuing the discussions.  So can we hear back from the small group
that just met?

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Based upon the input from the committee members and
from the agencies here, we made amendments to the document.  We haven't
had a chance to print them out.  Do you want me just to read through --

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Yes.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  NACOSH commends OSHA and NIOSH for their efforts to
protect workers during the Gulf oil spill response.  In order to learn
from this experience and be better prepared to respond to emergencies or
disasters in the future, we recommend that as part of the agencies'
lessons learned and evaluation activities that they examine the
following questions and issues.  We hope these questions are examined in
their broad context and for possible impact on future emergencies and
disasters.

		Number one, what processes and information were used to make decisions
about the appropriate personnel protective equipment, control measures,
and safety and health training?  If these decisions deviated from
requirements under existing standards, what criteria were used to make
these decisions?

		Number two, how were workers assessed for their ability to work
safety?  What medical assessments might have been useful before
placement of workers, during the emergency, as well as after the
immediate incident?

		Number three, how did the unified area command oversea safety and
health personnel, and how did the coordination with the BP, NIOSH, OSHA,
state, and other agencies occur?  What was the effectiveness of the
coordination, and what should happen in the future?  How can the
national response plan better address worker safety and health safe
issues during future emergencies and disasters?

		Number four, what were OSHA and NIOSH's roles in ensuring safety and
health in the oil spill response?  How many staff were deployed in the
response?  Is the intensive oversight role that OSHA played, which is
different from the agency's normal investigation and inspection role,
necessary or appropriate?  Did the agencies consider recruiting or
relying upon other resources, e.g., FEMA task force, state agency
personnel, SGEs, safety and health volunteers to perform or assist in
this activity?  Do the agencies have ideas or recommendations for
enhancing surge capacity for addressing safety and health in future
disasters or emergencies?

		Number five remains the same as in the draft.  Does number six remain
the same?

		MS. MURRAY:  Well, we didn't change it, or seven.  And seven stayed
the same.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  And seven stayed the same.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  Do people feel the need to have this printed
out and distributed so you can look at it on paper right now, or do
people feel comfortable in continuing the discussion?  Okay.  I'm seeing
enough nods, so I think we can -- people are comfortable.  Are there
specific questions that anybody has regarding what Peg just read?  Are
there any of the changes that she read that you have questions or
concerns about?

		I would entertain a motion then for us as a committee to adopt the
document as Peg Seminario read it, and to communicate it as a
recommendation from NACOSH to OSHA and NIOSH.

		MR. DOOLEY:  So moved.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  It is so moved.  Is it seconded?

		MS. POUGET:  Seconded.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Is there discussion about it?  Yes, Susan.

		MS. RANDOLPH:  Just like we had in the other document, are there any
requests that we want from either agency outside of the lessons learned
report?

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  What do people feel about that?

		MS. RANDOLPH:  Or should that report be -- request for that report be
included in the document, like we did with the first one, as a formal
request?

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  That's true.  As I think about it, the -- I'll hold
my sentence and see what Joe has to say.

		MR. VAN HOUTEN:  I think you requested it yesterday as part of the
report out from NIOSH and OSHA, that when the lessons learned report was
available, that it be provided to NACOSH.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I may have said that, but I don't think that we
actually adopted that as a formal request to the agencies, which I think
is required.  And this document simply says -- as it is written right
now, it simply says we'd like to be sure that OSHA and NIOSH look into
these issues as part of the lessons learned.  But it doesn't have that
sentence in it that says, and we would like you to provide us the
following.

		So is there a final sentence we could add that would make a specific
request?

		MS. SEMINARIO:  NACOSH requests that OSHA and NIOSH provide copies of
their -- are you calling them lessons learned or --

		(Pause)

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Lessons learned evaluations, right?

		FEMALE VOICE:  Or report.

		(Pause)

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Response?

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  Please read what you have.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  I said, NACOSH requests that OSHA and NIOSH provide
copies of their lessons learned evaluation of the Gulf Coast oil spill
response as soon as they are available.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  I think that to be precise, I would entertain
a motion to amend the previous motion.

		MR. KNOWLES:  So moved.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  So moved.  Seconded?

		MS. SHORTALL:  Second.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Second.  Discussion?  And the motion is to -- I'm
not --

		MS. SHORTALL:  Amend the main motion to add the following.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  So the motion is to amend the main motion to be a --
the main motion -- if we vote on this amendment, the main motion will be
amended to communicate the document as Peg just read it to the two
agencies.  And the motion has been --

		MS. SHORTALL:  No, no.  The motion would be amend the document, and
then you'll vote on the whole document.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  Thank you.  So may I have hands on the motion
to amend the main document as just read?  All in favor?

		(Show of hands)

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Any opposed?  The motion is carried unanimously. 
Now we can vote on the main motion, which is to convey the document as
amended to OSHA and NIOSH.  Any further discussion about that?

		(No audible response.)

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  All in favor, hands.

		(Show of hands)

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  No opposed.  The motion is carried unanimously, and
we will prepare the document and convey it to the two agencies following
the meeting.  Thank you.

		Okay.  That concludes the main business of this meeting of NACOSH.  We
have a couple of housekeeping items to attend to.  But before doing
that, I want to see if there are any final comments from either Frank
Hearl or David Michaels, or if any of the committee members have final
comments or questions for them.  Frank or David?

		DR. MICHAELS:  This is David.  I'm greatly looking forward to working
with both of these subgroups, and I appreciate your help on these
things.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  Anything else that we'd like to convey to Dr.
Michaels or Frank Hearl?  Bill.

		MR. BORWENGEN:  Bill Borwengen.  So we're the parent organization,
obviously, that petitioned to OSHA to look at the committee of interns
and residents hours of work question.  And I know that you had asked
yesterday also for our advice on that area of worker fatigue, and I
didn't know if you wanted to expound upon that anymore at this point in
time, or if there is anything else that we as a committee could do to
help you evaluate this important issue.

		DR. MICHAELS:  Well, I mean, this is one of the many issues I think we
would love help on.  You know, I know that you have limited resources. 
I think there are two subgroups that are very active.  On the other
hand, that's an area that we do have great interest in.  And so if any
of you do feel the energy to discuss this or to get back to us directly,
I would love your thoughts on this.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.

		DR. MICHAELS:  It is certainly not an area that OSHA has spent much
time thinking about in the past.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  Thank you.

		MR. BORWENGEN:  We were impressed by the -- Bill again.  We were
impressed by the press release that talked about how this is an issue,
too, you know, across many industry sectors.

		MS. SHORTALL:  Excuse me.  At this point, we should probably stop
conversation relating to your position other than on NACOSH.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I think that's consistent with the advice we had
regarding ethics at the beginning of the meeting.  We wear two hats, one
of which is a NACOSH committee member, and the other is the normal hat
we use in the course of our regular business for the agency.  So, Frank,
were you going to say something?

		MR. HEARL:  Yeah.  I was just going to say I want to thank the
committee for the careful deliberations that you had today, and echo
what Dr. Howard said yesterday, that we welcome any advice that you
would like to give us on any of these matters, and look forward to
working with you in the future.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Thank you.  Peg?

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Just a question, and I don't know what mechanisms have
been set up for communication between meetings of just ongoing agency
activity, and whether or not the committee, all the members of the
committee, are essentially on OSHA and NIOSH distribution lists, that
get the regular reports.  I mean, I know that I do as a member of the
labor movement, that we get these communications.  But I would just ask
that the OSHA staff make sure that everyone who is on the committee is
regularly receiving, even if you don't want to, the releases, reports,
because it does give you a sense of what is going on, and I think will
help, then being in a place for the next meeting of having just regular
background.

		So it's not really to create a lot of work, but it's just to make sure
this committee gets plugged into the normal communications of the
agency.

		MR. HEARL:  Yeah.  I hope everyone on the committee has subscribed to
NIOSH's e-news because we do put out a lot of our regular activities
through that e-news e-mail distribution.  If you haven't, please come to
the NIOSH website and subscribe to e-news.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  Is that something we needed to act on?

		MS. SEMINARIO:  No.  And I guess in that, if there are particular
things that are going on that you want to bring to the attention, FYI,
of the committee, that if you'd set up an easy way of just pushing a
button to do it, I think it makes it easier just to keep us informed. 
And again, I'm not asking for a lot of extra work.  But I think that
would be helpful as you're thinking between meetings as to what
information would be -- you want to flag to the committee.

		MR. HEARL:  So I think that's something that Deborah and Paul can work
on with other agency staff.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  One final thing for the two of you.  We had
brief discussion among the committee, and there seems to be a shared
view that if it would be possible to have another meeting of NACOSh
before the end of the calendar year, that would be a good thing to do in
order to generate and maintain momentum.  We don't know if it's going to
be logistically possible, given the holiday schedules, et cetera, coming
up.  We're going to be sharing calendars.  But I would ask that the two
agencies think about whether or not it would be possible from your
standpoint to have another meeting before the end of the calendar year,
which probably means the end of November, beginning of December.

		We would also ask you to think about or just share with us any
thoughts or decisions about the frequency of meetings for the next year.
 We're going to need to do some advance planning.  We don't know at this
point with respect to either budget or policy what your tolerance is for
the committee coming into town and having more than one or two meetings
a year.  So we need some guidance from the agencies about that.  And I
don't expect you're going to just give it to us right now, but I'd ask
you to think about that and communicate back with us.

		DR. MICHAELS:  Yes.

		MR. HEARL:  Yes.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  Thank you.  Is there anything else for the
two agencies before we take care of last housekeeping things?  Okay. 
Thank you very much.

		(Pause)

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  The next housekeeping thing is who is going to be --
it's the deployment issue.  Who is going to be on the two subgroups?  We
have the Gulf oil response subgroup, and we have the subgroup that we
established today.  So let's see if we go around and ask for preference
if we divide relatively evenly or not.  And if we don't, then we'll go
from there.  But what are we going to call the new workgroup for
convenience?

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Recordkeeping and surveillance?

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  For the purpose of this immediate discussion,
we'll refer this as the recordkeeping subgroup, although it's broader
than that.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  And surveillance.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  So let's start with Susan, and indicate if you'd
like to be on the Gulf oil or the recordkeeping subgroup.

		MS. RANDOLPH:  Recordkeeping, please.

		MALE VOICE:  Yeah, I would say recordkeeping.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Peter?

		MR. DOOLEY:  Recordkeeping.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Oh, I see how this is going.  Okay.  Emory?.

		MR. KNOWLES:  Gulf one.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  And Denise.

		MS. POUGET:  Gulf.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Linda.

		MS. MURRAY:  I don't care.  You can put me wherever you want, to even
it out.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  Roy?

		MR. BUCHAN:  Record.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Bill?

		MR. BORWENGEN:  Recordkeeping.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  And Peg.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  Recordkeeping.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Linda, I think you go on the Gulf oil group.

		MS. MURRAY:  Fine.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  And everybody else is -- Emory, Denise, and Linda
are on the Gulf oil group.  Everybody else is on the recordkeeping
group.  And I will try to contribute to both.

		MS. SEMINARIO:  And how are you going to assign the people who aren't
here to even accept --

		MALE VOICE:  I may not be here.  I need to be confirmed again.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Yeah.  We do have -- there may be some changes in
committee membership by the next meeting.  But we'll go with what we
have right now.  So who is -- we're missing two but --

		FEMALE VOICE:  Tim Key I think was on the oil group before.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  We're missing -- well, who are we missing that we
know is remaining on a committee?  We're not certain.  All three of the
people -- two people are missing?

		MS. MURRAY:  And we know that Emory -- not Emory.

		FEMALE VOICE:  Ken Schwarz.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Tim key and Jim Schwarz are the two that are
missing.

		MS. MURRAY:  They are missing.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  And both of them have expiring terms, and we don't
know a that moment if they will be renewed.  So it doesn't make a lot of
sense.

		MS. MURRAY:  So we won't worry about it.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  So Denise, will continue to chair the Gulf
oil group?  And I don't think that -- I mean, you're welcome to have
discussions, you know, between the meetings, as long as we set them up
properly.  But there may not be anything to do until we hear back from
OSHA and NIOSH.

		MS. SHORTALL:  I have a suggestion based on how ACOSH operates.  Once
ACOSH set up the number of workgroups they had, people found they wanted
to be attending everything.  And so when they set up the workgroup
meetings that coincide with the regular meeting, they just made sure
that the meetings were consecutive, and that way people could
participate in every workgroup if they were so interested.  That's a
suggestion to here.

		MS. MURRAY:  They were mentally here.

		MS. SHORTALL:  Pardon me?

		MS. MURRAY:  They were mentally ill.

		(Laughter)

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  That's right.  Right now, we have two workgroups.  I
don't think we have a huge challenge in that regard.  We have -- okay,
one, two, three, four, five, six people who are on the recordkeeping
group.

		MR. BUCHAN:  Michael, I expire in October, so --

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Right.  And we don't know what will happen.

		MR. BUCHAN:  We don't know what will happen.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Among those whose term is not expiring, is there
anybody who would step forward and offer to chair this subgroup?  Joe,
would you be willing to do it?

		MR. VAN HOUTEN:  Sure.  I'll need help, though, with this, just the
logistics of staying on track.  I'd be happy to do what I can.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  And if we need to modify that, appoint a
cochair or get additional help or change chairmanship at some point, we
will.  But we need something to get us moving.  And perhaps you and I
should talk at some point relatively soon to think about what if
anything needs to be done in the interim.  It may be that we wait for
information -- response to the request for information, and we convene a
subcommittee -- a workgroup meeting at the same time that we have the
next full meeting.

		So the interim homework may be for all of us to read documents and
sort of get up to speed on some of these issues as we get response to
our request from the agencies.

		Okay.  The final thing that I have to cover is calendar for possible
next meeting.

		MS. MURRAY:  So let me ask the typical government question.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Yes.

		MS. MURRAY:  Is it possible for us to have a meeting before the end of
the year, financially or what?  You know, whatever is required from --

		MS. CRAWFORD:  I think that we can.

		MS. MURRAY:  Okay.  That's enough, that's enough.  That's good.  I
didn't want to waste time if it wasn't possible.  So okay.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  It would require some administrative stuff with the
Federal Register, et cetera.  Peter?

		MR. DOOLEY:  Just a question.  In terms of the subcommittees -- 

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Workgroups.

		MR. DOOLEY:  Is there any possibility of having staff people assigned
to assist those committees?  I've heard that that has happened in the
past, right, where committees have had staff, OSHA staff people,
assigned to -- we should just be thinking about that.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I think that's an excellent question, and I think we
ought to talk about that.  I'll follow up on that with Deborah and Paul.
 Yes, Emory.

		MR. KNOWLES:  Emory Knowles.  Just a comment on that.  When we had the
standing worker task force, there were assigned specialists in that area
from the agency who helped us put together the report and gave us
excellent suggestions and recommendations.  So it has happened
previously.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I think it's a good idea, and it should be possible,
and we'll follow up with a discussion.  Okay.  So Deborah handed out a
calendar, and I think the request is for everybody to put your name on a
version of this and to cross off dates in November and December that are
absolutely impossible for you.  Is that the best way to do it?

		MS. CRAWFORD:  I think so.

		MS. MURRAY:  I think we should lean closer towards -- if we're
thinking November, towards the very end.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Yeah.

		FEMALE VOICE:  Deborah, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you
said that ACOSH has scheduled the week of the sixth?

		MS. CRAWFORD:  Right, the sixth, seventh, and eighth.  Those dates are
out.

		FEMALE VOICE:  That would take the whole week out.

		FEMALE VOICE:  Of December?

		FEMALE VOICE:  Okay, December, right.

		MALE VOICE:  Sixth to eighth of December?

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  We're all talking at once again, and these guys
can't keep up with it.

		MS. MURRAY:  Maybe it's better if we adjourn.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Stop.  Let's do one at a time.  Raise your hands. 
I'll call on you.

		MS. MURRAY:  I move we adjourn, and then talk about the dates.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Can we do that?

		MS. SHORTALL:  You don't have to have that particular thing on the
record.  The only problem is the agency -- the only way you can have a
closed meeting of the agency is to get prior permission.

		MS. MURRAY:  That's not a --

		MS. SHORTALL:  Pardon?

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  The question is this.  Can we adjourn --

		MS. SHORTALL:  You can adjourn.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  -- now and continue discussion about a date for next
meeting.

		MS. SHORTALL:  Yes, so long as we don't remove anyone from the room.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.

		FEMALE VOICE:  Or let new people in.

		MS. SHORTALL:  Pardon?

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  Is there any other business?

		(No audible response.)

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.

		MS. SHORTALL:  The motion to adjourn is not debatable.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  I wasn't going to take a motion.  I was simply going
to adjourn.

		MS. SHORTALL:  She moved that we adjourn.

		MR. SILVERSTEIN:  Okay.  All right.  I'm going to adjourn in a moment.
 But before I do that, I will apologize to these two guys at the table,
and really think hard about how we can discipline ourselves the next
time.  So the meeting is adjourned.

		(Whereupon, at 4:30 p.m., the meeting was adjourned.)

//

//

//

//

//

	REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE

DOCKET NO.:	N/A

CASE TITLE:	NACOSH Meeting

HEARING DATE:	September 15, 2010

LOCATION:		Washington, D.C.

		I hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence are contained fully
and accurately on the tapes and notes reported by me at the hearing in
the above case before the Department of Labor / Occupational Safety and
Health Administration.

				Date:  September 15, 2010

				                             

				Chris Mazzochi

				Official Reporter

				Heritage Reporting Corporation

				Suite 600

				1220 L Street, N.W.

				Washington, D.C.  20005-4018

 

 

	TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

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