Burgess Owens: “I wish to express grave concern over a clause in this bill that would seriously erode worker protections against…”

“I wish to express grave concern over a clause in this bill that would seriously erode worker protections against tuberculosis, TB, and bioterrorism. This provision prohibits the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA, from fully enforcing its respirator standard for workers at risk of exposure to TB and other deadly infections. At a time when the Bush administration is invoking daily, color-coded terrorist alerts, it makes absolutely no sense to weaken the only standard we have to protect health care workers against air-borne pathogens or air-borne 'weapons of mass destruction.' By prohibiting OSHA from enforcing the annual fit test for workers' respirators or masks, that is exactly what is possible. According to Dr. Margaret Hamburg, Vice President for Biological Programs at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, biological agents that might be used as biological weapons include small pox, pneumonic plague, and drug-resistant TB. To undercut the only protection that front-line health care workers would have to such agents--namely, their respirators--is absolutely unconscionable.”