Adam M. Finkel, ScD, CIH, UMDNJ School of Public Health AND Princeton University, 14 Journey's End Lane, Princeton, NJ 08540, 609-258-4828, afinkel@princeton.edu

OSHA has statutory responsibility to help employers protect over 100 million of their workers in the U.S., but it also acts as an employer, with a workforce of some 2,000 inspectors and other staff. Political dynamics sometimes make it impractical for OSHA to propose through rulemaking that private employers must protect their workers to standards higher than OSHA is willing to meet vis-à-vis its own employees. Conversely, OSHA’s acting to improve or expand its internal safety and health program can raise expectations (or raise concerns) that it intends to propose similar requirements for the rest of the nation. It is possible that this interplay serves to retard common-sense advances in the detection and prevention of occupational disease in both arenas. I will explore several cases where OSHA has faced contemporaneous decisions about its internal safety and health program and about the requirements that other employers might face, to test this hypothesis. I will also discuss the complicated issues surrounding predictive genetic information in the context of medical surveillance, and review OSHA’s role in drafting an Executive Order on this topic during the previous presidential administration.

Learning Objectives: At the end of this presentation, attendees will be able to

• Understand the features of OSHA's internal employee safety and health program; and
• Describe similarities and differences between private-sector regulatory requirements promulgated for medical surveillance and features of OSHA's internal program, and evaluate reasons for them.

Keywords: Occupational Surveillance, Occupational Exposure

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.