OSHA has reached a settlement with the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD), Laborers (LIUNA) and Teamsters (IBT) to inspect U.S. construction sites for safety procedures to reduce worker exposure to hexavalent chromium from portland cement. Skin exposure to cement containing hex chrome can lead to a career-ending disease called allergic contact dermatitis.
Background:
A common building material found at construction sites is portland cement, which contains varying amounts of hexavalent chromium, or “hex chrome,” a known carcinogen and toxin hazardous to skin, eyes and lungs. But in 2006, when the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (
OSHA) issued exposure standards for hex chrome—which also is found in many other compounds, especially in the chemical industry—the agency did not include exposure to portland cement in the standard.
Thuesday, April 10, 2007,
BCTD announced that OSHA had reached a settlement with the BCTD, Laborers (LIUNA) and Teamsters (IBT) to inspect U.S. construction sites for safety procedures to reduce worker exposure to portland cement.
The three groups sued OSHA in April 2006 when it did not include exposure to portland cement in its hex chrome standard, even though the unions and BCTD submitted evidence and testified during the rule-making process about the dangerous health effects of hex chrome exposure when working with portland cement.
The New Agreement:The agreement requires OSHA compliance officers to ensure workers using portland cement follow regulations for safe working procedures. Compliance officers will evaluate whether proper washing facilities and supplies, personal protective equipment, access to material safety data sheets, adequate worker training and accurate injury and illness record keeping are in place.
Rather than requiring OSHA to amend the hex chrome standard, the settlement commits OSHA to enforce existing regulations that provide construction workers with the same sorts of protections they would have gained under the new standard. Says BCTD President Edward C. Sullivan:
Ultimately, the real winners are the workers because they will have the level of protection on the job that the regulations were meant to secure almost 40 years ago. All the standards in our settlement agreement that employers must meet have been on the books, so it’s nothing new for contractors. But OSHA now must see that employers comply with the regulations.
The European Way:Europe is going a different way. Insteed of inspecting the workers for proper handling of the dangerous material, legislation limits the tolerable amount of "hex chrome" in cement products. To comply with the rule, manufacturers often have to add reducing additives (e.g. ferrous sulfate)converting hex chrome to the save trivalent chromium species. However, such additives add to costs and limit the shelf-life of cement, since moisture and heat lead to degradtion of the additives.
Related information
OSHA: Safety and Health Topics: Hexavalent Chromium OSHA: Standards related to Hexavalent Chromium David Michaels, Celeste Monforton, Peter Lurie,
Selected science: an industry campaign to undermine an OSHA hexavalent chromium standard, Environ. Health, 5/5 (2006) doi:
10.1186/1476-069X-5-5 EVISA:
EU directive 2003/53/EC on chromium in cement MPA Cement: Chromium (VI) and cement eLCOSH, Cement Hazards and Controls: Health Risks and Precautions in Using Portland Cement 
Related Studies
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