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Portland Cement Excluded From New OSHA Standard
 In a victory for affordable housing and against unnecessary government regulation, the final Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standard on hexavalent chromium published in the Feb. 28 Federal Register excludes exposure to Portland cement in construction and other industries. Portland cement is a basic ingredient in concrete and mortar.
For more than a year, NAHB members and staff have met with OSHA officials, urging them to exclude Portland cement from any rulemaking because the agency’s own data showed that possible airborne exposure to the chemical in construction activities involving wet cement — such as mixing mortar, brick laying, footer cement pouring and cement finishing — was minimal.
Research has shown that it is the alkalinity and abrasiveness of wet cement, and not hexavalent chromium, that can cause dermatoses when it comes in contact with the skin, and NAHB representatives pointed out that this was already covered by OSHA regulations requiring personal protective equipment in handling the material.
OSHA was directed by the U.S. Court of Appeals to develop a rule on hexavalent chromium as the result of a lawsuit by the Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, which had been pushing for a new standard on the chemical for a decade.
In public testimony on the proposed rule on Feb. 9, 2005, NAHB also pointed out that including Portland Cement would add to the already formidable regulatory burden on the housing industry imposed by OSHA and others.
“Let me be clear that home builders not only acknowledge a legal and moral obligation to provide their employees with a safe workplace, they share the concerns of OSHA for ensuring the health and safety of all men and women employed in the residential construction industry,” said George Middleton, NAHB’s senior manager of labor safety and health. “NAHB is not an opponent of safety standards and regulations, as long as these safety regulations are technologically attainable, practical, feasible, cost-effective and have a substantial impact on improving worker safety.”
Middleton added that OSHA’s rules for construction, running to hundreds of pages, can be overwhelming to small construction firms and impose significant costs that are passed on to the home buyer.
At its fall meeting in Columbus, Ohio in 2004, the NAHB Board of Directors approved a resolution urging OSHA to exclude Portland cement from the hexavalent chromium rule.
In a discussion of its final standard, OSHA explained that it had “proposed to exclude exposures to Portland cement in the construction industry because of data indicating that airborne exposures to Cr(VI) in construction activities involving Portland cement were very low and posed little lung cancer risk. Risks from dermal exposure could be addressed through existing OSHA standards.”
The exclusion of Portland cement was expanded in the final rule to general industry and shipyards as well, where airborne exposure to the chemical is comparable to exposures in construction.
For more information, e-mail Rob Matuga at NAHB, or call him at 800-368-5242 x8507.
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