[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 108 (Tuesday, August 4, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H7008-H7011]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  REQUIRING OSHA TO RECOGNIZE THAT ELECTRONIC FORMS AND PAPER COPIES 
            PROVIDE THE SAME LEVEL OF ACCESS TO INFORMATION

  Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the 
bill (H.R. 4037) to require the Occupational Safety and Health 
Administration to recognize that electronic forms of providing Material 
Safety Data Sheets provide the same level of access to information as 
paper copies and to improve the presentation of safety and emergency 
information on such Data Sheets, as amended.
  The Clerk read as follows:

                               H.R. 4037

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. ELECTRONIC ACCESS.

       In the administration and enforcement of the regulation on 
     Hazard Communication, published at 29 C.F.R. Sec. 1910.1200, 
     the Secretary shall provide that an employer complies with 
     the requirement of maintaining and making readily accessible 
     to employees material safety data sheets (MSDS) for each 
     hazardous chemical if such employer makes the MSDS available 
     through electronic access, so long as--

[[Page H7009]]

       (1) the electronic system for retrieving MSDS's is 
     reasonably and readily available to employees in their work 
     areas throughout their work shifts and to representatives of 
     the employees upon reasonable request;
       (2) the electronic system is capable of providing a paper 
     copy of a retrieved MSDS without unreasonable delay;
       (3) employees are adequately trained in the use of the 
     electronic system for retrieving MSDS's; and
       (4) the electronic system provides a means of retrieving 
     information contained in MSDS's in case of a temporary power 
     or equipment failure or other emergency.

     SEC. 2. DISPLAY OF SAFETY INFORMATION.

       (a) General Rule.--Under the regulation on Hazard 
     Communication, published at 29 C.F.R. Sec. 1910.1200, each 
     chemical manufacturer, importer, or distributor shall 
     prominently display worker safety information described in 
     subsection (b) by either--
       (1) attaching to the first page of each material safety 
     data sheet a container label (or facsimile thereof) which 
     includes, at a minimum, the information described in 
     subsection (b); or
       (2) attaching to the first page of each material safety 
     data sheet the information described in subsection (b).
       (b) Information.--The information required by subsection 
     (a) shall include--
       (1) the manufacturer's, importer's, or distributor's name, 
     address, and emergency telephone number (including the hours 
     of operation);
       (2) the identity of the chemical, using the trade name or 
     chemical name and potentially hazardous ingredients of the 
     chemical;
       (3) appropriate hazard warnings, with immediate hazards 
     listed first;
       (4) instructions for safe handling and precautionary 
     measures to avoid injury from hazards; and
       (5) first aid instructions in case of contact or exposure 
     which require immediate treatment before medical treatment is 
     available.
     Information required under paragraph (5) should be targeted 
     to the technical level of the audience and information 
     required by this subsection shall be presented with the least 
     technical language appropriate.
       (c) Effective Date.--The requirements of subsection (a) 
     shall apply to material safety data sheets for new or 
     reformulated chemicals beginning 18 months after the date of 
     the enactment of this Act and shall apply to all other 
     material safety data sheets beginning 36 months after such 
     date.

     SEC. 3. STUDY.

       Not later that 90 days after the date of the enactment of 
     this Act, the Secretary of Labor shall initiate a study that 
     assesses and measures the comprehensibility of hazard 
     warnings to industrial workers. Upon completion of the study, 
     the Secretary shall prepare a report and make it available to 
     chemical manufacturers and importers which prepare material 
     safety data sheets.

     SEC. 4. REPORT ON AGREEMENT.

       The Secretary of Labor shall report to the House Committee 
     on Education and the Workforce and the Senate Labor Committee 
     upon United States entry into any international agreement 
     regarding the format or contents of material safety data 
     sheets or labeling of hazardous chemicals with 
     recommendations for changes to the requirements of this Act.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from 
North Carolina (Mr. Ballenger) and the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. 
Roemer) each will control 20 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. 
Ballenger).
  Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  First let me acknowledge and commend the two sponsors of H.R. 4037, 
the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Granger) and the gentleman from Indiana 
(Mr. Roemer). I appreciate the work that both of them and their staffs 
have done in making this a bipartisan bill and in working with everyone 
involved so that we can bring this bill to the House floor today.
  OSHA's Hazard Communication Standard is one of OSHA's most important 
but also most troublesome regulations. A lot of complaints that we hear 
about, about the paperwork burden and the nit-picky paperwork 
violations from OSHA are because of the Hazard Communication Standard. 
The idea of the standard is a good one, to make sure that employers and 
employees know what chemicals they are working with and how to safely 
handle them. But the implementation of this standard has long been a 
source of complaint, and OSHA has not been exactly quick to fix the 
problems.
  H.R. 4037 addresses two of the problems that have been the source of 
these complaints for years. Under the Hazard Communication Standard, 
each chemical product must have a Material Safety Data Sheet, or better 
known as an MSDS that is written by the producer or importer of the 
chemical, and which must contain a variety of information about the 
chemical involved and the potential hazards it may present. Those 
Material Safety Data Sheets, or MSDS, are then forwarded down through 
the chain of commerce all the way to the retailer or user of the 
product. Each employer who uses or sells any products containing 
chemicals for which there have been any studies showing potential 
health or safety hazards must maintain these Material Safety Data 
Sheets in his or her workplace. OSHA estimates that there are over 
650,000 chemical products covered by the Hazard Communication Standard. 
Others have estimated that there are Material Safety Data Sheets in 
circulation for over a million different products. Your typical small 
business can easily have a couple of thousand of these MSDS Data Sheets 
on hand. And an MSDS Data Sheet can easily be 10 or more pages long. It 
is little wonder that failure to have all of the required MSDS Data 
Sheets on hand has been one of the most frequently cited of all OSHA's 
regulations.
  The first part of H.R. 4037 makes clear that an employer's obligation 
to have these Safety Data Sheets readily accessible may be met by 
electronic access to the MSDS Data Sheets.

                              {time}  1030

  The advantage of using the electronic system to access these sheets 
are overwhelming, particularly for small employers. For a couple of 
hundred dollars a year, a small businessman can subscribe to an 
electronic service that maintains all of the MSDS sheets through which 
he can instantly call up the desired information. Instead of going 
through piles of paper and filing cabinets and looseleaf folders, the 
employee can simply type in the name of the product and access the 
information.
  OSHA does not prohibit electronic systems from accessing material, 
the safety data sheets, but the regulation and OSHA's enforcement 
policy suggests that employers should maintain copies of MSDS sheets, 
whether or not they are also in the electronic system. As a result, 
many employers simply maintain paper copies, despite the fact that the 
electronic system would be more useful and effective.
  H.R. 4037 makes it clear that electronic access systems, whether 
maintained in-house or by third parties, are permitted, so long as four 
conditions are met: First, the electronic system is reasonably and 
readily available to employees and upon request to union 
representatives of the employees; second, the electronic system can 
produce paper copies of the MSDS, if requested, without unreasonable 
delay; third, employees are adequately trained in the use of the 
electronic system; and, fourth, the electronic system provides a means 
of retrieving information contained in the MSDS in case of temporary 
power or equipment failure. Thus, for example, an employer whose 
electronic system used as an Internet connection could receive 
information contained in the MSDS via telephone in the event of 
computer or power failure until the Internet connection is restored.
  A second complaint about the hazard communications standard has been 
the fact that the MSDS sheets are not easily used by most employees or 
employers, both because of the amount of information they include and 
because they are often written in technical language. Suppliers of 
these MSDS point out that the sheets are used for a variety of 
purposes, including emergency response personnel and health care 
providers, so more detailed and technical information in the Material 
Safety Data Sheet is important.
  H.R. 4037 attempts to strike a balance between these two concerns. It 
does not require change in either the format of the MSDS or in the type 
of information provided by this MSDS. Instead, it requires that summary 
emergency information with the information most useful to the employee 
be attached to the front of the MSDS. That information is the same as 
is often provided in the product label.
  So the bill provides that either the label or the text of the label 
should be attached to the front of the Material Safety Data Sheet. But 
the label or the text of the label must include certain basic 
information about chemicals, including emergency contacts.
  Finally, concerns were raised about the effect of H.R. 4037 on 
efforts under

[[Page H7010]]

way to reach an international agreement on a standardized form for 
presenting information on chemicals. Now, I appreciate that concern, 
and as we continue the move into the global marketplace, it makes sense 
to standardize as much as possible the presentation of hazard 
information.
  On the other hand, we do not know at this point when the 
international effort will conclude or what it might provide. So H.R. 
4037 requires that the Secretary of Labor, if an international 
agreement is reached, recommend to this committee and to the Senate 
Labor Committee any changes in the law necessary to make it consistent 
with international agreement.
  Mr. Speaker, H.R. 4037 is a simple but important step towards 
improving this OSHA regulation.
  Again I want to thank the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer) and the 
gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Granger) for their efforts to move this 
bill, and I urge my colleagues to support this bill.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. ROEMER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  (Mr. ROEMER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. ROEMER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of this 
common sense legislation. First of all, I, too, want to applaud the 
gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Ballenger) and the gentlewoman from 
Texas (Ms. Granger) for their work and their cooperation and their 
bipartisanship on this very common sense bill.
  The bottom line, Mr. Speaker, for me is we need to work in a 
bipartisan, common sense way to prevent the 6,000 people that are 
killed in the workplace every year and the 70,000 workers that are hurt 
in the workplace every year. There are things we can do, working across 
the aisle, Democrats and Republicans, to use common sense, and in this 
case technology, to prevent those deaths and those injuries.
  This bill, I think, goes a long way toward providing that common 
sense and that usage of technology by updating these MSDSs. We now can 
encourage our small businesses and big businesses to use the CD-ROMs. 
Instead of merely using what they have used over the decades and 
through years and years of paperwork, the Material Safety Data Sheets, 
that have all kinds of complexities and paperwork and sheets of data 
that are faxed from one employer to another and back and forth, and you 
cannot even read them once they are faxed back and forth, we want to 
bring OSHA into the new century and the next century and use the kind 
of technology, Internet services, fax-on-demand, electronic services, 
and, yes, CD-ROMs, to make sure we try to use technology to prevent the 
6,000 people that are killed every year and the 70,000 people that are 
injured in the workplace. So this uses technology, and it uses it in a 
very, very fair, common sense and efficient manner.
  Secondly, we want to use the common sense with that technology to 
prevent these injuries and deaths. Too often in these sheets of paper 
we do not use common sense and things read ``avoid ocular contact.'' 
Avoid ocular contact? Why can we not just say ``keep out of the eyes.'' 
That is the kind of common sense language that I think we all need to 
use, whether we are speaking on the House floor or whether we are 
trying to prevent injury and death in the workplace.
  So this bill goes a long way towards using that common sense, toward 
permitting the use of technology and the Internet and CD-ROMs, and 
toward working with a diverse group of people and interest groups in 
this town and throughout the country.
  We have worked with the AFL-CIO, we have worked with the Department 
of Labor, we have worked with the Chemical Manufacturers Association 
and the Small Business Coalition for MSDS reform led by the NFIB. All 
of these groups have worked with the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. 
Granger) and the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Ballenger) to put 
together this bipartisan legislation and try to move this country 
forward toward protecting our workers with technology and common sense.
  So I strongly applaud this bipartisan work, this good work product, 
this use of technology, this use of better English language to help our 
workers understand the dangers of the workplace.
  Finally, I want to conclude by saying, Mr. Speaker, that this is the 
third bill this year where we have passed incremental changes to OSHA 
that try to do things to ensure better morale, better productivity and 
a safer workplace.
  We passed H.R. 2877, which prohibited OSHA from setting quotas for 
citations and fines. We should not have quotas for citations and fines. 
This committee worked together to prohibit that practice.
  We passed 2864, which allows state OSHA agencies to consult with 
businesses to improve their safety programs. This kind of consultation 
and proactive way, rather than just doing penalties, will also improve 
the way OSHA tries to protect the workers with common sense and 
technology and proactive ways of working with our businesses, rather 
than just simply going in and fining them.

  In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I want to say I am very proud to have 
worked with the Republicans and Democrats to get this legislation up 
before the body today. I am very proud to have worked in a bipartisan 
way to pass two previous pieces of legislation that reflect the same 
kind of things in this bill, the common sense and the use of 
technology, and also very proud to do some things in this body that 
reach out to States like Indiana and North Carolina, that reach out to 
States like Texas and California and New York, to do what we all want 
to do, increase productivity, keep this economy rolling along, and, 
yes, protect the worker in the workplace. That is what this common 
sense legislation will achieve.
  I thank again the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Granger) and the 
gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Ballenger), to the staff on my side 
of the Committee on Education and the Workplace, and to my staff member 
Ryan Dvorak for his hard work.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, I yield three minutes to the gentlewoman 
from Texas (Ms. Granger).
  (Ms. GRANGER asked and was given permission to revise and extend her 
remarks.)
  Ms. GRANGER. Mr. Speaker, many times on many occasions we come to 
this floor in the hope of solving a crisis. Today we come in the hope 
of preventing one. H.R. 4037 is a simple bill with a simple premise, to 
protect the safety and security of America's workers.
  Let me give you an example of how this bill will make a difference in 
the lives of working people everywhere. Under current law, when a 
chemical is spilled in the workplace, the workers have to plow through 
a Material Safety Data Sheet to find instructions on how to clean up 
the spill and minimize danger. Unfortunately, these forms are, as the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer) said, generally written in legal 
terms, not common sense terms, that can straightforwardly protect the 
safety of our workers.
  Our bill ensures that at the beginning of each MSDS form there will 
be an emergency overview that lays out in layman's terms what needs to 
be done in the case of a chemical spill in the workplace.
  Moreover, our bill allows these important forms to be kept through an 
electronic communication systems, like a fax-on-demand system, Internet 
service or CD-ROM. These will make them more convenient, more 
accessible, and, the most important thing, they will make them more 
effective for our workers.
  I want to thank the gentleman from North Carolina (Chairman 
Ballenger) for his hard work on this issue and for his willingness to 
bring this bill to the floor. I would also like to thank the gentleman 
from Indiana (Mr. Roemer), who cosponsored this legislation with me, 
and, as the Congressman said, in particular, we would like to thank our 
staff, in my case Lisa Helfman who worked on my staff and Ryan Dvorak 
on the staff of the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer), for their hard 
work in bringing this forward.
  We often speak of issues in terms of right or left. This is an issue 
that is truly right versus wrong. It is right to give our workers the 
protections they need, since it is always the right time to do the 
right thing.

[[Page H7011]]

  I urge my colleagues to pass H.R. 4037 today.
  Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 4037 makes two simple but important 
changes to OSHA's regulation on Hazard Communication.
  First, H.R. 4037 clarifies the law with regard to the acceptable use 
of electronic systems for maintaining ``material safety data sheets,'' 
which employers are required to maintain and make available to 
employees by the Hazard Communication standard.
  To anyone who has looked at the amount of information required of the 
typical business by the Hazard Communication standard, it should be 
evident that an electronic system of keeping that information is 
preferable to a paper system. And yet OSHA continues to suggest a 
preference for paper copies of material safety data sheets by putting 
conditions on the use of electronic systems that it does not put on 
paper copies.
  By encouraging employers, especially small employers, to use 
electronic systems for maintaining material safety data sheets, H.R. 
4037 will make a real impact in reducing OSHA's paperwork burden on 
employers.
  Second, H.R. 4037 requires that summary and emergency information be 
attached to the front page of the material safety data sheet. This is 
to make the information more useful and useable for employers and 
employees.
  Mr Speaker, I want to commend the sponsors of H.R. 4037, 
Representative Granger and Representative Roemer, for their work on 
this bipartisan bill, as well as Subcommittee Chairman Ballenger. H.R. 
4037 will help make one Federal regulation a little more sensible and 
compliance a little easier. I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 4037.
  Mr. ROEMER. Mr. Speaker, today, the House of Representatives will 
pass H.R. 4037, a bill of which I am an original cosponsor. I would 
like to thank my colleagues, Representative Kay Granger and 
Representative Cass Ballenger, and all of the cosponsors, for their 
bipartisan efforts to help create and pass this common sense OSHA 
reform legislation.
  Under current law, every business in the country must maintain 
documentation about the chemicals they keep at a work site. These 
documents are called Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS's) and while 
originally intended to provide critical health and safety information 
about dangerous chemicals, they have become cumbersome technical 
documents that can be up to twenty pages long, and are the causes of 
frequent paperwork violation citations.
  H.R. 4037 has three main points. First, it would allow businesses the 
choice to access the information contained on an MSDS through 
electronic communications services, like a fax-on-demand system, 
internet service, or a CD-ROM. This type of service eliminates an 
enormous amount of regulatory paperwork, while actually increasing 
access to the information. Current MSDS service companies can provide 
instantaneous access to critical chemical information, expert technical 
advice, and coordination with emergency responders. The current paper 
system can do none of those.
  Second, H.R. 4037 would require all MSDS to have an emergency 
overview at the beginning of the document that lists emergency 
contacts, hazard warnings, and first aid information. This emergency 
overview would allow both employers and employees to have immediate 
access to the most critical information on an MSDS. Currently, this 
information can be buried near the end of the document, behind pages of 
confusing technical information.
  Finally, the bill instructs the Occupational Safety and Health 
Administration (OSHA) to conduct a study on the technical level of 
language used to write MSDS's. Presently, some documents still say 
things like: ``Avoid ocular contact,'' instead of: ``Keep out of 
eyes.'' OSHA would make the results of their study available to MSDS 
writers to provide guidance and improve their quality.
  To achieve this bipartisan piece of legislation, we have worked in 
good faith with every interested party to address the concerns of the 
AFL-CIO, the Chemical Manufacturers Association, the Department of 
Labor, and the small business Coalition for Material Safety Data Sheet 
Reform. Again, I thank my colleagues for their cooperation and hard 
work on H.R. 4037. I look forward to working with the Senate to ensure 
its eventual enactment into law.
  Mr. ROEMER. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I 
yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Dickey). The question is on the motion 
offered by the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Ballenger) that the 
House suspend the rules and pass the bill, H.R. 4037, as amended.
  The question was taken; and (two-thirds having voted in favor 
thereof) the rules were suspended and the bill, as amended, was passed.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

                          ____________________