Federal Inspections Research Articles

Пути совершенствования системы контроля за безопасностью труда и оборудования на современном этапе развития экономики

The article examines the state of the organization of state control at the present stage of economic development in the field of ensuring labor and equipment safety. An analysis of inspections in this area showed a decrease in their number by federal inspections in order to reduce the burden on business. When studying the regulatory framework of the Russian Federation on labor and equipment safety, as well as examining statistical data regarding the state of labor protection and equipment safety in the Russian Federation, a conclusion was made about the lack of control in this area. In this regard, the organizational development of public control is proposed.

Preventing construction deaths: The role of public policies

AbstractAre stronger direct financial incentives or regulatory enforcement effective in reducing fatalities in the construction industry? We examine two important policies—state workers' compensation (WC) programs and federal and state Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) activities—which embody those strategies. We examine their impact by looking at state‐level fatality rates in the construction industry from 1992 to 2016. Setting aside highway crashes and violence, the majority of employee deaths occur in construction. We find that states which exempt small firms from the requirement to buy WC insurance have higher fatality rates. When eligibility for compensation is restricted by longer waiting periods, fatality rates are substantially higher. More frequent federal or state OSHA inspections and, especially, consultation visits are associated with lower fatality rates, but higher average penalties are not. Limited variation in these policies over our sample period, especially for WC, makes these results suggestive rather than definitively causal.

Enforcement Federalism: Comparing the Effectiveness of Federal Punishment versus State Punishment

Responsibility for enforcing environmental protection laws often falls on both federal and state agencies. We investigate whether enforcement and monitoring taken by the federal agency—the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)—and enforcement and monitoring actions taken by U.S. state environmental agencies differentially affect the compliance behavior of pollution point sources regulated under the U.S. Clean Water Act. Our results demonstrate that federal inspections are more effective than state inspections, yet state fines are more effective than federal fines, at inducing compliance with Clean Water Act-imposed discharge limits.

The Effects of Enforcement on Corporate Environmental Performance: The Role of Perceived Fairness

Abstract Several empirical studies explore the effects of regulatory enforcement on environmental behavior and performance. Within this literature, extremely little empirical research examines the role of fairness, which we interpret broadly to include multiple dimensions, e. g. similar treatment of similarly situated regulated entities. Our study empirically examines the effect of perceived enforcement fairness on the extent of compliance with wastewater limits imposed on chemical manufacturing facilities regulated under the Clean Water Act. Our study also explores the influence of perceived fairness on the effectiveness of enforcement efforts – government inspections and enforcement actions – at inducing better compliance. For our analysis, we use a subjective measure of the degree of “fair treatment” of regulated facilities by environmental regulators, as perceived by facilities and reported as survey responses. Results reveal that a more (perceived) fair enforcement approach raises compliance, but only under limited enforcement conditions; in most instances, perceived more fair enforcement lowers compliance. As important, results show that greater perceived fairness improves the effectiveness of federal inspections and informal enforcement, but undermines the effectiveness of state inspections and formal non-penalty enforcement.

Assurances of Voluntary Compliance: A Regulatory Mechanism to Reduce Youth Access to E-Cigarettes and Limit Retail Tobacco Marketing.

Objectives. To evaluate assurances of voluntary compliance (AVCs) between state attorneys general and retail chains by assessing e-cigarette sales to underage decoys and tobacco marketing violations in corporate-owned stores (that sign AVCs) and franchise stores (that do not sign AVCs).Methods. Decoys 18 to 19 years of age attempted to purchase e-cigarettes without presenting ID in California convenience stores (n = 540). Auditors characterized the presence and content of age-of-sale signage and advertising for tobacco products. Data were collected and analyzed in 2018.Results. Corporate-owned stores were less likely than were franchise stores to violate ID requests (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] = 0.29; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.12, 0.71) and to sell e-cigarettes illegally (AOR = 0.37; 95% CI = 0.15, 0.88). Regardless of AVC category, advertising violations were common in stores (vaping products, 26.3%; other tobacco products, 74.3%).Conclusions. The differences in violation rates found in corporate and franchise stores imply that AVCs could reduce youth access to e-cigarettes. However, merchant education and routine enforcement are needed to better leverage restrictions on retail tobacco marketing in AVCs.Public Health Implications. Strengthening compliance with existing AVCs and establishing new agreements with retailers shown to be in violation through federal or state inspections could reduce youth access to e-cigarettes and exposure to tobacco marketing.

Seattle lawmakers approve plan to fix mental health system

Washington legislators took substantial steps to reshape the mental health system, including funding for new facilities, legislation to increase the number of qualified workers and the creation of new types of treatment centers, The Seattle Times reported. Lawmakers approved the plan — which sprawls across two different state budgets, as well as several other bills — in the legislative session that ended April 28. The work comes after years of court orders and federal inspections that meticulously documented the poor treatment of psychiatric patients in the state's care, as well as a steep shortage of treatment beds and staffers to operate them. “The 2019–21 capital‐construction budget spends roughly $33 million for predesign and design of a new behavioral health teaching hospital at the University of Washington. The facility would train mental health professionals while also providing as many as 150 treatment beds.

The effects of Clean Water Act enforcement on environmental employment

This study explores the effects of environmental enforcement on the amount of environmental labor employed by facilities regulated under the U.S. Clean Water Act. The study uses panel data from a unique survey of chemical manufacturing facilities operating between 1999 and 2001. Specifically, the analysis examines the influence of monitoring inspections and enforcement actions, e.g., fines, on the number of employees allocated to environmental management. Empirical results show that environmental enforcement negatively affects the amount of environmental labor allocated by the sampled facilities. Specifically, increases in federal inspections, informal enforcement actions, and monetary fines each lower environmental employment. Extended model results provide evidence that these negative effects stem from the crowding out of facility managers’ intrinsic motivations.

EFFECT OF COOPERATIVE ENFORCEMENT STRATEGIES ON WASTEWATER MANAGEMENT

This paper examines the influence of the environmental enforcement approach on the effects of government interventions on corporate environmental management. The paper contrasts a potentially innovative cooperative approach with the standard coercive approach. Empirical results show that the effectiveness of enforcement at inducing better environmental management depends on the overall regulatory enforcement approach. For example, greater cooperation undermines the effectiveness of more severe enforcement forms. Specifically, as the environmental enforcement approach becomes more cooperative, the effectiveness of federal inspections and monetary penalties decreases. These results generally demonstrate that a cooperative enforcement approach proves less effective than a coercive approach. (JEL D22, K32, Q52, Q58)

Classificação e tipificação de carcaças bovinas na região oeste da Bahia em duas épocas do ano

O resultado final de sistemas de produção de gado de corte é verificado nas carcaças. No Brasil, entretanto, é raro o frigorífico que separa os produtos conforme a qualidade, principalmente na região Nordeste. Objetivou-se com este trabalho avaliar as carcaças bovinas na região oeste da Bahia em duas épocas distintas do ano (chuvosa e seca) de acordo com o Sistema Nacional de Tipificação de Carcaças Bovinas (SNTCB). As avaliações foram realizadas em frigorífico sob Serviço de Inspeção Federal (SIF), em Barreiras, Bahia. Foram amostradas 1.000 carcaças, metade no período seco (agosto) e o restante no período chuvoso (dezembro). Os dados foram submetidos à análise estatística descritiva, obtendo-se média e erro padrão de cada variável-resposta. A época do ano não influenciou o abate em relação ao gênero dos animais, havendo equilíbrio entre machos inteiros (44%) e fêmeas (42%), com pouca participação de machos castrados (14%). O grau de maturidade dos animais abatidos foi elevado, sendo que cerca de 70% possuía acima de quatro dentes incisivos permanentes. As carcaças variaram quanto ao acabamento entre escores 2 e 4, sendo que 32% apresentaram cobertura de gordura escassa (escore ‰¤ 2) na época seca e 52% na época chuvosa. A estiagem prolongada afetou os resultados. Os dados de conformação indicaram mais de 90% das carcaças analisadas como retilíneas, sub-convexas e convexas, sendo que a maior parte delas pesou menos de 16@, peso mínimo recomendado pelo frigorífico. Foram tipificadas pela letra €œI€ 64% das carcaças analisadas, penúltima escala qualitativa no sistema oficial (B-R-A-S-I-L). Independente da época do ano, os bovinos abatidos na região oeste da Bahia resultaram em carcaças com reduzido padrão de qualidade em virtude do elevado grau de maturidade, conformação e acabamento inadequados e baixo peso. Melhoramento genético e manejo apropriado são necessários para a produção de carcaças de mais alto padrão de qualidade.

Randomized Safety Inspections and Risk Exposure on the Job: Quasi-Experimental Estimates of the Value of a Statistical Life

Compensating wages for workplace fatality and accident risks are used to infer the value of a statistical life (VSL), which in turn is used to assess the benefits of human health and safety regulations. The estimation of these wage differentials, however, has been plagued by measurement error and omitted variables. This paper employs the first quasi-experimental design within a labor market setting to overcome such limitations in the extant literature. Specifically, randomly assigned, exogenous federal safety inspections are used to instrument for plant-level risks and combined with confidential U.S. Census data on manufacturing employment to estimate the VSL using a difference-in-differences framework. The VSL is estimated to be between $2 and $4 million ($2011), suggesting prior studies may substantially overstate the value workers place on safety, and therefore, the benefits of health and safety regulations.

Will additional federal enforcement improve the performance of pipelines in the U.S.?

This paper provides the first empirical analysis of the effectiveness of regulatory enforcement in increasing the environmental and safety performance of U.S. natural gas and hazardous liquid pipeline operators. The analysis combines data on federal regulatory inspections, enforcement actions, and penalties with data on injuries, fatalities, property damage, and barrels of product lost through pipeline “incidents” for 2006–2011 for the 344 largest pipeline operators in the U.S. The results of the analysis do not provide compelling evidence that either federal inspections or civil penalties are particularly effective in increasing performance; however, the number of federal cases initiated against an operator does have a significant effect on many forms of performance, although not for incidents in general. The results also suggest that some targeting of federal enforcement resources is based on past performance, but there may be room for even more effective targeting. Finally, the analysis reveals interesting patterns between state and federal enforcement efforts.

OSHA does not kill jobs; It helps prevent jobs from killing workers

I have been promoting the message in the title of this article since I became head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in 2009. Although workplace injury and fatality rates have decreased dramatically since OSHA was created, there remain voices doubting the effectiveness of OSHA’s inspections. Now, there is a substantial body of empirical evidence showing that enforcement has a strong, positive impact for both workers and employers. Two studies published in this issue of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine and a paper published recently in the journal Science have convincingly demonstrated that OSHA inspections result in reduced injury risk. Moreover, employers who are inspected by OSHA generally see cost savings exceeding any penalties levied by inspectors. The result is that all the parties involved benefit from OSHA inspections: workers are less likely to be injured and employers’ workers’ compensation and other indirect costs are reduced. Examining the impact of federal OSHA inspections on workers’ compensation claims among employees of Pennsylvania manufacturing firms, Haviland et al. [2012] report that where OSHA levies a penalty, injury claims fall by 19–24 percent per year during the next two years. Inspections without penalties showed little effect. This paper, ‘‘A new estimate of the impact of OSHA inspections on manufacturing injury rates, 1998–2005’’ continues a series of important studies on OSHA effectiveness by John Mendeloff, Wayne Gray and other researchers with the Rand Corporation and the University of Pittsburgh. Similar results were found by Foley et al. [2012] analyzing the impact of OSHA activities on workers’ compensation injury claims in Washington State. These researchers, affiliated with the Safety and Health Assessment and Research for Prevention (SHARP) Program of the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries, examined the effectiveness of inspections and free consultations among fixed site and non-fixed site (often construction) employers. In this study, the effect of enforcement was seen primarily in the prevention of injuries other than musculo-skeletal disorders (MSDs). For those inspections resulting in a citation by Washington State OSHA, lost workday non-MSD claims fell 22 percent during the following year; if an employer had an inspection but no citation, the claims fell about 7 percent, compared with the baseline (no OSHA inspection) of 2 percent. Both studies are strikingly consistent with the findings of researchers at the Business Schools of the University of California Berkeley and Harvard University, who examined workers’ compensation claims following California OSHA enforcement visits. Their findings are well summarized by the paper’s title: ‘‘Randomized government safety inspections reduce worker injuries with no detectable job loss.’’ They found that workplace injury claims dropped 9.4 percent at businesses randomly chosen by researchers in the four years following an inspection by the California OSHA program, compared with employers not inspected. Furthermore, those same employers saved an average of 26 percent on workers’ compensation costs. The positive effects of random inspections were seen among both small and large employers [Levine et al., 2012]. When OSHA compliance officers identify serious hazards, the agency assesses penalties. These penalties are generally not large, averaging a few thousand dollars except in unusual circumstances. It is my experience that Occupational Safety and Health Administration, United States Department of Labor, Washington,District of Columbia The author reports no conflicts of interests. *Correspondence to: Dr. David Michaels, PhD, MPH, Assistant Secretary, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, United States Department of Labor, 200 Constitution Avenue,NW,RoomS2315,Washington,DC 20210.E-mail:PublicMichaels.David@dol.gov

New Lights in the Valley: The Emergence of UAB (review)

J U L Y 2 0 0 8 233 of archaeological research. The Moundville book represents a milestone in Moundville and Mississippian archaeology; the Lower Creek book represents a first step toward building a true synthesis and model of Creek and Historic Period southeastern archaeology. ROBBIE ETHRIDGE University of Mississippi New Lights in the Valley: The Emergence of UAB. By Tennant S. McWilliams. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2007. xix, 546 pp. $39.95. ISBN 978-0-9173-1546-7. The history of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) demonstrates the dual nature of American institutions of higher education—distinctive in adaptation to local circumstances and yet typical in determination to move toward larger possibilities. At UAB, these two characteristics encouraged development that relied on the forces of circumstance, personality, and timing that are chronicled in McWilliams’s work. Founded as a site for evening courses to extend the reach of the Tuscaloosa home campus, and expanded as a major medical center and then a multi-purpose university, UAB provides an example of contemporary institution-building and the inevitable political and academic skirmishes along the way. Few histories of American institutions of higher education focus on such relatively young institutions and McWilliams has taken advantage of this rare opportunity to enliven the volume with ample interviews that add multiple case studies to his historical research. The context for the UAB history is the city of Birmingham itself, a town that well into the twentieth century “remained paralyzed by persisting forces of the immediate post-Reconstruction era” (p. 23). One of the earliest signs of coming change for Birmingham was the University of Alabama Extension Center, an effort launched with Works Progress Administration funds in 1936, housed in a converted downtown home with a library of fifty books and evening classes for 139 students. Ten years later, the student body at the center had T H E A L A B A M A R E V I E W 234 grown to eight hundred, and the University of Alabama medical education programs had moved from Tuscaloosa to Birmingham. Reaching back to the 1859 chartering of the Medical College of Alabama at Mobile, the author weaves a rich historical tapestry of medical education in the state—including faltering efforts at Southern University in Greensboro and Montezuma University near Bessemer, as well as Birmingham Medical College. A professor of history , as well as dean of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at UAB, McWilliams provides extensive historical context for every significant debate and decision that contributed to the establishment of the Medical College of Alabama as a school of medicine at UAB. For example, the discussion of Roy R. Kracke’s agreement to become the first dean of the college takes readers back to Kracke’s World War I service as a Navy medic. President Joseph Volker’s move in 1969 to the elegant Woodward House offers of a glimpse of the “historic universals of culture and learning” of the 1920s (p. 207), the era in which it was constructed. Typical of many institutional histories, New Lights in the Valley seeks to provide both specific details and the interest of a good story. In his effort to include details, the author sometimes resorts to dry narratives about who was hired, when, and how. But when controversy and struggle is in the air, McWilliams’s skill as a story-teller is apparent. For example, the discussion of desegregating the medical programs, especially difficult in the instance of integrating the hospital itself, is an intriguing tale of the machinations of Joseph Volker, then University of Alabama vice president for health affairs. A liberal thinker and civil rights advocate at heart, Volker strategically delayed and sidestepped through the early 1960s in order to move at a pace acceptable to more racist elements in the community at large. McWilliams ably chronicles these and other events in the context of larger issues and events, such as NAACP activities, federal compliance inspections, and steps taken by other Alabama colleges and universities. Although medical education, with its predictable dramas concerning people and finances, surfaces as the most prevalent theme, the book does not ignore...

Lapses in Biosafety Spark Concern

An apparent breakdown in biosafety at Texas A&M University is prompting scrutiny of the expansive U.S. biodefense research program and the assurance that federal inspections keep researchers following the rules.

An examination of process and outcome differences in health and safety inspections conducted by state and federal agencies

The occupational Safety and Health Act provides for state jurisdiction over occupational safety and health issues. Observers have suggested that state programs have different, and in many instances, more lenient enforcement standards than the federal program. In this study we compared 4,755 state inspections with 4,590 randomly generated federal inspections. Significant differences were found in both process and outcome variables between the two inspection types. We discuss the merits of state program enforcement compared to the federal program based on these results.

An examination of process and outcome differences in health and safety inspections conducted by state and federal agencies

The Occupational Safety and Health Act provides for state jurisdiction over occupational safety and health issues. Observers have suggested that state programs have different, and in many instances, more lenient enforcement standards than the federal program. In this study we compared 4,755 state inspections with 4,590 randomly generated federal inspections. Significant differences were found in both process and outcome variables between the two inspection types. We discuss the merits of state program enforcement compared to the federal program based on these results.

Occupational health surveillance: a means to identify work-related risks.

The lack of successful disease surveillance methods has resulted in few reliable estimates of workplace-related disease. Hazard surveillance--the ongoing assessment of chemical use and worker exposure to the chemicals--is presented as a way to supplement occupational disease surveillance. Existing OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) and NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Health) data systems are adapted to this function to characterize the distribution and type of hazardous industry in Los Angeles County. A new method is developed for ranking potentially hazardous industries in the county using actual exposure measurements from federal OSHA compliance inspections. The strengths of the different systems are presented along with considerations of industrial employment and types of specific chemical exposures. Applications for information from hazard surveillance are discussed in terms of intervention, monitoring exposure control, planning, research, and as a complement to disease surveillance.

Government regulation of occupational safety: underground coal mine accidents 1973-75.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the influence of federal mine safety inspections on underground coal mine accidents. An economic incentives model is developed to relate federal enforcement activities to accident rates. The determinants of accident rates are analyzed for 535 coal mines during the period 1973-75. Estimates based on these data when applied to the model indicate that increasing inspections by 25 per cent would have produced a 13 per cent decline in fatal accidents and an 18 per cent decline in disabling accidents.

Regulatory agency budgets up in fiscal 1981

The Administration's fiscal 1981 budget proposal contains mixed results for the federal regulatory agencies that affect the chemical community. Budgets for most of the agencies would be up, but the inflation rate in fiscal 1981 will pretty much determine whether the agencies gain ground, hold their own, or lose in fiscal 1981. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission by anyone's standards would be the biggest winner in the budget proposal. In the wake of the Three Mile Island accident, the agency is slated for a budget increase of 25%, or $94 million, to $468.5 million. It also would get 356 new people. The Occupational Safety & Health Administration would get a hefty increase. It is slated for a budget increase of 13% to $211.8 million. OSHA's enforcement budget of $128.5 million, up 6% is expected to provide for 65,000 federal inspections in fiscal 1981, 3000 more than in 1980. Resources for OSHA's safety and health standards development ...