Oh, My Aching Back: The Feds Sock it to Us Again

"Ergonomics" sounds like one of those made-up words that bureaucrats love. Newer dictionaries define it as an applied science concerned with designing equipment and other "things" with the end-user of those things in mind.

At first blush, that just sounds like applied common sense. However, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has entered the fray and proposes to make a very big deal of the subject. OSHA is moving ahead with a very ambitious Ergonomics Program Standard that is supposed to be a panacea for all "muscular-skeletal disorders," or MSDs.

According to a new study by Richard J. Mahoney and Milka S. Kirova published by the Center for the Study of American Business, the proposed standard could become the new millennium's first major regulatory confrontation between government and business. OSHA estimates the cost to exceed $4 billion a year, far beyond the economic burden of any prior OSHA directive. Of course, the federal agency says the annual benefits will be even greater (about $9 billion).

Swollen Numbers

Almost nobody agrees with OSHA's numbers. The breadth of the ergonomics standard's coverage would be awesome, and its costs equally impressive. It took OSHA 50 pages to cite the rules, 250 pages to explain the rules, and more than 1,000 pages to enumerate the 100 or more injury categories that OSHA describes.

Moreover, the standard's intricate requirements would be triggered by a single impairment of one employee at a factory or other facility--and the "impairment" may have only a minimal connection to the person's job functions.

Thus, it is not surprising that the Small Business Administration, although like OSHA a part of the executive branch of the federal government, estimated the cost of the ergonomics standard at between $11 billion and $63 billion. Private estimates are higher still.

The development of the ergonomics standard is a fascinating case study of how regulators expand their role. Initially, the standard was supposed to address the problem of repetitive motion disorders--maladies such as carpal tunnel syndrome and chronic tendinitis that sometimes result from prolonged physical activities causing repeated trauma to muscles, nerves, connective tissue, or joints.

Unfortunately for OSHA's expansive regulatory plans, the number of repeated trauma cases peaked at less than 350,000 in 1994 and fell to about 250,000 in 1998 (less than 5 percent of the occupational injuries and illnesses reported for the year).

But it would be naïve to think OSHA would drop the matter just because the problem was being solved without the agency's intervention.

Instead, OSHA broadened the scope of the ergonomics standard to include "overexertion" activities such as sprains, strains, tears, backaches, hernias, and fatigue--and also "bodily reaction" injuries that result from bending, climbing, crawling, reaching, and twisting. However, as noted by Ron Bird of the Employment Policy Foundation, the causes of "bodily reaction" injuries have few clear links to ergonomic hazards.

Improvements Already Underway

Regulators have a natural tendency to underestimate the costs they impose on the rest of us. They also tend to overestimate the benefits of the burdensome rules they impose. OSHA claims its ergonomics program rules will cut the incidence of MSDs in half over ten years. However, the overall incidence of MSDs is already declining at a more rapid rate than that--without OSHA's interference. In a recent five-year period, the overall incidence of MSDs declined by 31 percent, falling from 110.6 cases per 10,000 in 1992 to 76.6 cases in 1997.

OSHA's proposed ergonomics standard, despite the likelihood that it will do very little good in terms of accelerating the trend of improvements that are well underway, would impose expensive requirements: assessing job hazards, training workers, providing medical surveillance of affected workers, furnishing paid leave for ergonomic rest cures, and implementing costly engineering, work practice, and equipment changes.

Instead of the one-size-fits-all approach that OSHA is taking on the proposed new ergonomics standard, Mahoney and Kirova say the agency should collaborate with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health on serious studies into the real causes of MSDs. In addition, they recommend, OSHA should act as a clearinghouse for collection and dissemination of what works in this vague and broad area.

Unfortunately, the sensible notion of study first and regulate later would be considered an unacceptable restraint on their occupations by activists and federal regulators.

Murray Weidenbaum is chairman of the Center for the Study of American Business.

For more information ...

Ergonomics by OSHA . . . Ergo, Outgo by Business. Read the report by Mahoney and Kirova for more details. (Center for the Study of American Business, March 2000, 14pp.)

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