NU Online News Service, Nov. 19, 3:00 p.m.EST

Since the 1970 enactment of the Occupational Safety and HealthAct (OSHA), workplace injuries are sharply down, but complianceremains spotty and easily-preventable deaths continue, according toa Workers Compensation Research Institute report.

The report, written by Michael Silverstein, M.D., assistantdirector for Industrial Safety and Health in the Washington StateDepartment of Labor and Industries, is part of a compilation of 13workers' comp reports, titled, "Workers' Compensation: Where Have We Come From? Where Are WeGoing?"

He stated in his report that since passage of the OSHA, the rateof overall workplace injuries and illnesses has declined from 11per 100 full-time equivalent workers in 1972 to just over 4 per 100workers in 2006, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics(BLS).

Mr. Silverstein, however, still questions OSHA's effectivenessand said the BLS survey methodology significantly undercountsworkplace injuries and illnesses.

He noted that American workers continue to be killed by hazardsfor which inexpensive protective measures have been available andwell recognized "for hundreds and in some cases thousands ofyears."

As an example, he said, every week one or more workers arekilled in trench cave-ins. The three principle methods forpreventing these cave-ins, he said are sloping, shoring andshielding, methods that are ignored, even though required by OSHArules for almost 40 years.

Mr. Silverstein also said that evidence shows most workplacesare not fully compliant with OSHA standards. About 65 percent ofOSHA inspections, he said, result in at least one violation beingcited.

Since compliance with OSHA is built on an honor system, and thegap between OSHA's resources and responsibilities is "enormous,"Mr. Silverstein said that "few workplaces being inspected, and whenthey are, more than half reveal violations."

Additionally, the process for regulating exposure to chemicalhazards is "hopelessly inadequate," he said. While several attemptshave been made to regulate chemicals in groups, these have failedto overcome legal, administrative and political barriers, hesaid.

With more than 70,000 chemicals in commercial use, OSHA hasadopted comprehensive rules to protect workers from exposure toonly 33 of these chemicals in nearly 40 years. Mr. Silverstein saidin the past eight years, OSHA has acted on only one new chemicalhazard, hexavalent chromium, and that rule was issued in responseto a court order.

Furthermore, Mr. Silverstein said workplace risks andprotections are spread unevenly and unfairly among workers. Henoted that temporary, leased and contingent workers–a highpercentage of which are immigrants–see substantially higher ratesof workers' comp claims than permanent workers in the sameindustries.

Fatal work injuries among foreign-born Hispanic workers havenearly tripled in less than 15 years, he said. While this is inpart because the numbers of immigrant workers has increased, Mr.Silverstein said it is also because they are concentrated indangerous jobs.

Mr. Silverstein recommended a three-part strategy combiningadministrative improvements requiring only a "measure of politicalwill."

Recommendations include:

o Taking full advantage of existing authority.

o Fine-tuning the OSHA act.

o Building a new paradigm, redesigning OSHA's relationshipbetween government, employers and employees.

One way to do this, he said, would be to replace the currenthonor system with a system of accountability and leverage.

"We can and must do better, but we won't succeed by simplyworking harder or more energetically," he concluded. "We also needmore creative and systematic changes that revitalize the way OSHAworks."

The report can be purchased by contacting WCRI.

Story corrected to show WCRI as Workers CompensationResearch Institute, not Workers Compensation ResearchIndustry.