Under the federal government's Chemical Hazard Communication Standard and other federal laws, workers have been given wide access to corporate health and safety records, including the identification of chemicals, the hazards they pose, an employee's personal medical history and the safety record of work sites.
One of standard's more obvious provisions will be the proliferation of Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDs), which must accompany each chemical coming into the work place.
The MSD is full of health and safety information, most of which had been withheld by many companies in the past. The safety sheet details where the chemical was manufactured and by which company. It also summarizes the hazards associated with each substance.
The MSD is broken into 11 categories, including fire and explosion, health hazards, protective equipment and occupational exposure limits. Those categories explain the effects of exposure, how long a worker may be exposed to a hazardous substance and how much ventilation companies should provide when certain chemicals are in use.
According to the new standard, companies are required to keep an MSD for each hazardous substance used at the work site and must keep them accessible to all workers.
Under a related law - The Records Access Rule - workers are given additional rights to obtain records that provide the track record of dangerous substances used on site and information concerning employee exposure to toxic sub- stances. The access rule is sponsored by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
The rule, which withstood a battery of legal challenges from industry, does not require employers to keep any additional records. But it does demand that if records are being kept, they be maintained and preserved. The rule also provides workers with broad access rights to those records.
Two records frequently kept by employers are for "employee exposure" and an employee's medical history. The exposure records include the results of any monitoring of the work place andany biological tests that may have been performed on employees. The medical records include every test and the results of all checkups made by company physicians or nurses and other health-care personnel employed by the company.
OSHA, the state Department of Environmental Resources and the state Department of Labor and Industry conduct health and safety inspections of work places, and those records, in many cases, are public information. They can tell an employee whether the company was cited for any violations, the severity of those violations; whether there were any repeat violations and most importantly, what health and safety risks the employee faces in the work place.
To obtain these records, a request under the Freedom of Information Act is usually required. Requests should be addressed to the freedom of information officer at either DER, the state Department of Labor and Industry or OSHA.