My desk was piled six-feet high with data and everything else just went to hell. Professionals with engineering or science backgrounds are easily turned off by the grandstanding and uncertainty of politics. And the political game is just too illogical for many professionals. There's also the idea that politics is dull and irrelevant, a feeling that goes far beyond the safety and health field these days. I read some of these proposals, get bored, highlight some things, and then think to myself, 'If this goes into effect, big deal.
Professional groups have trouble closing ranks and speaking with one voice.
Safety specialists, occupational physicians and nurses, industrial hygienists, consultants and corporate managers each have their own agenda and turf concerns. Physicians and nurses are now in court arguing over OSHA's new respirator standard, for example. Requirements allow 'non-physicians' to conduct medical evaluations, pleasing the nurses and threatening the doctors. And in attempts to broaden their membership, ASSE is starting an industrial hygiene division while AIHA considers plans to provide safety management services to its members. Even if these groups did work closely, they lack true political ammunition-money.