Preventing
Death on the Job
By
Phil Mattera, Dirt
Diggers Digest
This
was a severe blow to a company that prides itself on having a “world-class”
safety system and which thinks so highly of its skills in this area that
it provides safety consulting services to
other companies.
DuPont expressed disappointment at OSHA’s
actions.
These
statements flew in the face of safety
problems at DuPont that extended back at least to the 1920s,
when numerous workers were poisoned, some fatally, in connection with the
production of tetraethyl lead for gasoline.
During
the early 1970s, evidence began to emerge of high levels of bladder cancer
among DuPont production workers, especially at the Chambers Works in New
Jersey. Since at least the 1930s there had been evidence linking
beta-nephthylamine (BNA), a chemical used in dye bases, to cancer. Yet the
company went on producing BNA at Chambers until 1955, and after it was dropped
DuPont went on making benzidine, another carcinogen, for ten more years.
In
the years since Shapiro’s book, the safety problems have continued. In 1987 a
New Jersey Superior Court jury found that DuPont officials and company doctors
deliberately concealed medical records that showed six veteran maintenance
workers had asbestos-related diseases linked to their jobs.
Also in 1987,
the company agreed to pay fines totaling $11,100 as part of a settlement of
OSHA charges relating to record-keeping at plants in Dallas and Niagara Falls,
New York.
In
1995 oil company Conoco, then owned by DuPont, agreed to pay $1.6 million to
settle OSHA charges related to an explosion and fire the year before that
killed a worker at a refinery in Louisiana.
In
1999 OSHA announced that DuPont would pay $70,000
to settle charges that it failed to record more than 100 injury and illness
cases at its plant in Seaford, Delaware.
In
2010 OSHA criticized DuPont for exposing employees
to hazardous chemicals at its plant in Belle, West Virginia, where a worker had
died after a ruptured hose released a large quantity of phosgene gas.
The
following year, OSHA cited DuPont for dangerous conditions
after a contract welder was killed when sparks set off an explosion in a slurry
tank at a plant in Buffalo, New York. In 2012 the U.S. Chemical Safety and
Hazard Investigation Board added its criticism of the company in connection
with the Buffalo accident.
In
short, the accident at La Porte, which had a history of previous violations, is
far from an anomaly for DuPont. The only surprising aspect of the story is why
OSHA did not come down on the company much harder.
Rena
Steinzor, a University of Maryland law professor and author of the book Why
Not Jail?, has posted an article criticizing OSHA for
not seeking criminal charges against DuPont.
The Corporate Crime Reporter notes that
OSHA chief David Michaels, asked about Steinzor’s critique at a recent press
conference, dismissed her piece but did not explain why the DuPont case did not
merit a criminal referral to the Justice Department.
OSHA
has long been reluctant to go the criminal route, relying instead on civil
proceedings and ridiculously low financial penalties. In its latest Death
on the Job report, the AFL-CIO notes that since the
agency was created fewer than 100 criminal enforcement cases have been pursued.
During this same period there have been more than 390,000 workplace fatalities.
The
agency’s willingness to put a large company like DuPont on the severe violators
list, which is dominated by smaller firms, especially in the construction
industry, is a step forward. But OSHA will need to do a lot more to address the
ongoing tragedy of workplace fatalities and disease.