OSHA Unveils Proposed Rule on Indoor Air

BY Jason Fry

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced a proposed rule March 25 that would regulate indoor air quality in the workplace across the country.

The proposed rule addresses any and all indoor air contaminants, but its most significant provision is that employer's must ban smoking in the workplace or restrict it to a specially designed lounge exhausted directly outside.

The new smoking rules, OSHA head Joseph A. Dear said, will apply to more than six million workplaces, while the more general indoor air provisions will affect more than 4.5 million non industrial workplaces.

As defined by OSHA, non industrial workplaces include offices educational facilities commercial establishments, healthcare facilities, and offices, cafeterias and break rooms located in manufacturing or production facilities.

Dear emphasized that he restrictions on smoking would affect All American workplaces, and American workplaces, and thus constitute a ban on smoking in bars and restaurants.

"As the rule is proposed, that is the effect, " Dear said. Employers must:

• Formulate and implement comprehensive plans to insure good air quality, and designate a person to be in charge of air quality.
• Maintain HVAC systems and monitor their performance.
• Take remedial actions to improve air quality as needed, including source control of contaminants and steps to prevent microbial contamination.
• Train HVAC and maintenance workers in methods of minimizing adverse indoor air quality effects. * Keep records of inspections maintenance, and remedial actions, and make such records available to employees and OSHA.
• Inform their employees of symptoms associated with building-related illness, and keep a log of employee indoor air complaints.

Every day in this country more than 20 million working men and women face unnecessary health threats because of poor indoor air quality and environmental tobacco smoke." Said Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich. "The proposed rule is designed to tackle those problems."

Dear said OSHA estimated the cost of complying with the proposal at 8.1 billion the first year and 6.6 billion per year after that. He said OSHA estimated in health savings and improved worker productivity to be more than 15 billion per year.

The proposed rule appeared in the Federal Register April 5. OSHA will now accept comments on the proposal for the next 90 days, and then hold public hearings.

Dear said he hoped a final proposal would be ready late this year or in early 1995. Once the rule is published in final form, employers would have a year to fully comply.

Violations, Dear said, would be a maximum fine of $70,000 for each willful violation and $7,000 for lesser violations

Editorial from Indoor Air Review, May 1994

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