OSHA Emergency Standard for Exposure to Asbestos Dust (1971)

Two pages of the Federal Register of December 7, 1971, with the Labor Department's emergency standard for asbestos dust, signed December 2 by Assistant Secretary of Labor G. C. Guenther and effective on publication. Citing studies by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists, it found that exposure under the existing standard of 12 fibers per milliliter "constitutes a grave danger to employees." The new rule limited the 8-hour average to 5 fibers longer than 5 microns per milliliter, allowing up to 10 fibers for 15 minutes an hour for up to 5 hours a day, and required engineering controls, respirators where these fell short, and closed bags for asbestos waste.

What it shows

The standard also extended the same limit to construction work, and required dust collectors on power tools, respirators for spraying asbestos and tearing out asbestos insulation, mixing in closed bags, and cleanup by vacuum rather than dry sweeping. It was the start of the federal asbestos standard, and J-M's plants worked to it from this point (Fenner's memo on plant sampling, Swallow's memo on stations at the limit).

In Johns-Manville's chronology

Johns-Manville's own chronology of what the company knew describes this document as follows:

OSHA proposed Emergency Standard 5 f/cc.

Editor's note: J-M's description calls this a proposed standard. The Federal Register notice is an emergency standard that took effect on publication on December 7, 1971.