Main Content
Chapter 2: What does "safe" mean? Standard setting by OSHA
In this chapter, we will first discuss questions of risk and safety. We will look at three cases: the benzene case, and then two other cases involving health standards in which the courts reviewed OSHA’s standard-setting authority: the cotton dust case, and the air contaminants case. These are long and difficult cases to read – make sure you allocate sufficient time to give the opinions some thought.
If you have time, watch the film Norma Rae. It will give you an admittedly fictional feel for the problems for workers in the textile mills when organizing was on-going to combat “brown lung,” the respiratory disease of mill workers.
This book, and all H2O books, are Creative Commons licensed for sharing and re-use with the exception of certain excerpts. Any excerpts from the Restatements of the Law, Principles of the Law, and the Model Penal Code are copyright by The American Law Institute. Excerpts are reproduced with permission, not as part of a Creative Commons license.