The Human Cost Of Trump's Rollback On Regulations | HuffPost Latest News

WASHINGTON If Tom Ward had to die from his work, hed rather fall off a scaffold than endure the slow death his father did from the debilitating lung disease silicosis .

I would choose to go much quicker, he said, rather than to have my family watch me suffer.

Ward fears that other workers will face the same suffocating illness as his father, thanks to the regulatory rollback underway by the Trump administration.

Wards father spent several years working as a sandblaster in Michigan. It was most likely on that job that he breathed a lethal amount of crystalline silica, a carcinogenic dust that comes from sand and granite. Excessive silica has been ruining workers lungs for as long as rock and concrete have been cut. Frances Perkins, U.S. labor secretary under Franklin D. Roosevelt, spoke publicly of the dangers of silica back in the late 1930s.

After numerous efforts under other presidents failed, the Obama administration finally tightened the regulations covering silica last year, further restricting the amount of dust that employers can legally expose workers to. The tougher standards were 45 years in the making , the subject of in-depth scientific research and intense lobbying by business groups and safety experts. When the rules were finalized in March 2016, occupational health experts hailed them as a life-saving milestone.

But now the enforcement of the rules has been delayed and the rules themselves could be in jeopardy.

Last week, the Trump administration announced that it was pushing back the implementation of the new silica regulations. For now, the delay is just three months from late June to late September, since additional guidance is necessary due to the unique nature of the requirements, as the Labor Department put it. A spokeswoman said the agency wouldnt comment beyond that.

But to occupational health experts whove waited years for the tighter rules, the new delay casts a cloud of uncertainty over their future. The leading home-building trade group and other business lobbying groups have sued to halt the regulations, saying they are too costly for employers. Defending the silica rule would now be the responsibility of the Trump administration, which has eagerly dismantled one Obama-era regulation after another at the urging of corporations. (The rule could also be subject to an appropriations rider by the GOP-controlled Congress.)

While the administration has not signaled that it intends to reverse the silica rule, it has issued an executive order directing all agencies to review the regulations currently on their books, presumably for potential watering down or scrapping. Trumps own labor nominee, Alexander Acosta, cited that order during his confirmation hearing as one reason he would not yet commit to enforcing the silica rule if he becomes labor secretary.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) noted the huge public health implications at stake. You cant tell me whether or not, high on your list of priorities, would be to protect a rule that keeps people from being poisoned, she told Acosta.

I never dreamed I would have to spend my retirement years in this debilitating manner.
- Leonard Serafin, silicosis victim

The delay of the new silica regulations was not a surprise to Ward, given the Trump administrations promises to deregulate businesses in order to boost hiring. But it was nevertheless painful to see. Ward now leads training at the Michigan Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers Union, a personal mission given that his father died at age 39 after an awful few years of suffering from silicosis.

Knowing it was 100 percent preventable is the part that really hurts, he said.

Silica has been called the silent killer. Its not visible to the naked eye particles can be one hundred times smaller than a grain of sand and the effects on the lungs are cumulative. But there are clear ways to curb exposure to silica, like wetting down rock thats being cut, installing ventilation or dust-collecting equipment on the worksite, and wearing respiratory equipment designed to filter out the dust.

When the proper precautions arent taken, the results can be debilitating. Railroad worker Leonard Serafin shared the story of his own battle with silicosis in a letter his family provided to The Huffington Post in 2012.

At the time, the Obama White House was sitting on the silica rule, and advocates worried that the reforms might not be finished before Obama left office. Serafin had worked as a trackman on a railroad for 32 years, laying out the crushed rock and gravel in which the tracks were laid. He said the work led to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and a litany of other lung maladies.

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