Compliance Officer

This knowledge is also important in order to determine if air tests conducted by OSHA compliance officers are valid. For example, if threshold limit value in the health standard is an 8-hour time-weighted average, the air sample should be obtained by sampling over the entire shift in the employee s breathing zone. It cannot be measured by a few short term samples, even if spaced over the full shift unless the worker is in a relatively fixed location with no variation in his work procedure or in the process. Such an event is generally the exception rather than the rule. 

Unless established monitoring practices are conducted by plant personnel or the OSHA compliance officer, the results are of limited value in determining compliance with a standard, and what is more important, protecting the worker s health. The conduct of air monitoring by untrained, or poorly trained, persons relegates the program to a "numbers game" which serves no useful purpose. 

Employers must admit OSHA compliance officers into their plant sites for safety inspections with no advance notice. A search warrant may be required to show probable cause. 

These questions stress the point we emphasize here. Again, OSHA is not normally concerned about the environment, unless contamination of the environment (at the work site) might adversely impact the workers safety and health. The neighbors Again, OSHA s focus is the workers. One OSHA compliance officer explained to us that if the employer takes every necessary step to protect the employees from harm involving the use or production of hazardous materials, then the surrounding community should have little to fear. 

This statement is puzzling to us. We asked the same OSHA compliance officer about those incidents beyond the control of the employer—about accidents that could not only put employees in harm s way, but also endanger the surrounding community. The answer Well, that s the EPA s bag—we only worry about the work site and the worker. ... 

The comparison is conducted by identifying those occupational environments which will pass or fail each set of decision criteria. This paper deals only with occupational stresses which pose a chronic health hazard acute health hazards require different treatment. The most surprising conclusion is that there are some commonly encountered work environments which are very likely to pass the NIOSH Action Level Test even though there is better than a 50% chance that an OSHA compliance officer collecting six samples during one visit would be able to identify a citable violation of an 8-hour PEL. 

Decisions Made with the OSHA Compliance Criteria. The problem of the OSHA compliance officer is significantly different than the problem addressed by the NI0SH Action Level. The compliance officer is not nearly so interested in how many exposures exceed the standard as in whether it can be shown with 95% confidence that the standard was exceeded on the basis of the sample which was collected. Thus, the OSHA Compliance Criteria is not a function of workplace variability, GSD, but only of the random sampling and analytical errors, CV (5). As explained earlier, CV = 0.1 for all illustrations in this paper. In this case, the OSHA Decision Criteria is characterized by AL = 0.8355 and UAL =... 

Shifting the AL reduces P( ) while increasing P(0K). Since the AL is shifted proportionately further than the UAL, the net result is that the compliance officer has a higher P(0K) and a lower P(N0T OK) than does an employer who makes his decisions using the Legal Action Level Criteria. In addition, for most workplaces the compliance officer has a much lower P( ) than does the employer. These comments can be reinforced by careful comparison of Figures 4 and 5 with the aid of Tables II and III. 

It is informative to compare the decision regions of the OSHA Compliance Criteria as shown in Figure 5, with the Average Exposure Limit Concept of Figure 2. Five of the six workplaces identified as OK in Figure 2 are likely to be declared OK by an OSHA compliance officer. However, only one of the three unacceptable workplaces of Figure 2 is likely to be declared NOT OK by the criteria of Figure 5. 

Perhaps the most surprising feature of Figure 5 is the fact that only those workplaces where more than half of the daily exposures exceed the PEL give the compliance officer better than a 50-50 chance of collecting a sample which will support a citation ... 

How, Then, Does OSHA Issue So Many Citations To support a citation, a compliance officer must demonstrate with a high degree of confidence that at least one employee was exposed above the standard on the day of the inspection. Assuming that day-to-day variability in exposures is approximately equal to the worker-to-worker variability on the day of the inspection, then 1t would be possible, in principle, for a compliance officer to collect n statistically independent samples. Under these conditions, the probability that the workplace will be found in compliance is equal to the probability that all n samples are less than the AL. Let Pn(OK) represent the probability of compliance after n samples are collected and P(0K) represent the probability that a single sample is less than AL. Then one has ... 

Figure 6 shows the decision contours for a compliance officer who takes six statistically independent samples during an inspection. Table IV lists the decision probabilities for each of our nine sample workplaces. Clearly, collecting more samples increases the probability of demonstrating noncompliance and decreases the probability of demonstrating compliance. 

By comparing Figure 6 with Figure 2, it is clear that by taking as few as six samples, a compliance officer can increase to better than 50-50 the odds of finding evidence to support a citation, even for some workplaces which lie Inside the presumably acceptable region bounded by the AEL = 0.95 contour. 

The principle is very easily generalized. By collecting enough samples, a compliance officer can move the single decision contour for a citation as far to the left as he chooses. Given enough samples, every workplace could be subjected to a citation For example, by collecting 14 samples, a compliance officer moves... 

The most telling comparison is that between Figures 4 and 6, There are many workplaces with GSD > 1.5 which are likely to be declared OK by the Legal Action Level Criteria but which could be cited by a conscientious compliance officer who collects more than five or six samples ... 

In addition, a compliance officer should not expect to be able to sustain a citation based solely on evidence that on the day of his visit one sample exceeded the upper action level defined in the 0SHA Industrial Hygiene Field Operations Manual. 

William J. Brennan, Chief Acct. Compliance Officer Roger E. Bushue, VP-Bus. Resources John R. Gray, VP-Global Supply Dist. 

David M. Sherbin, General Counsel/VP/Chief Compliance Officer Karen L. Healy, VP-Corp. Affairs Oper. Support Group Thomas S. Timko, Chief Acct. Officer/Controller Mark R. Weber, Exec. VP-Global Bus. Svcs. 

Thomas A. Henzler, Corp. Compliance Officer Bruce W. Wilkinson, Chmn. 

Jay Dudley, General Counsel/VP/Corp. Compliance Officer James Lobdell, VP-Power Oper. Resource Planning Pamela Lesh, VP-Strategic Planning Regulatory Affairs Carol Dillin, VP-Public Policy Bill Valach, Dir.-lnvestor Rel. 

Karen G. Kissinger, Controller/VP/Chief Compliance Officer Philip J. Dion III, VP-Legal Environmental Svcs. 

Rick L. Wittenbraker, General Counsel/Chief Compliance Officer/Sr. VP Barry H. Caldwell, Sr. VP-Gov t Affairs Corp. Comm. 

While the teams are made up of both field and CBER members, the core team is clearly under the control of the field staff. The leader of the inspection is almost always from the field. The field leader chooses the team members. Compliance issues are under the control of the ORA compliance officer, and conflicts over potential health hazards due to the deficiencies are not resolved by the center, but by the associate commissioner for operations. 

E) The written decisions of the reviewing division shall be binding upon, and may not directly or indirectly be changed by, the field or compliance office personnel unless such field or compliance office personnel demonstrate to the reviewing division why such decision should be modified. 

Nicholas J. DeRoma, Chief Legal Compliance Officer/Exec. VP Klaus Kleinfeld, Chmn. 

Mahabir Prasad Gupta, Compliance Officer Sat Narain Gupta, Chmn. 

David M. Sherbin, Chief Compliance Officer Jeffrey J. Owens, Pres., Delphi Electronics Safety Robert S. Miller, Chmn. 

Wolfgang Beynio, Sr. VP-Finance Thomas Geitner, Exec. VP-Adhesives Technologies Hans Van Bylen, Exec. VP-Cosmetics Toiletries Friedrich Stara, Exec. VP-Laundry Home Care Norbert Koll, Sr. VP/Chief Compliance Officer Kasper Rorsted, Chmn. 

David Williams, General Counsel/VP/Chief Compliance Officer Phil Boon, Exec. VP-Bus. Oper. 

Yoshio Akamatsu, Gen. Mgr.-Legal/Chief Compliance Officer Koji Takayanagi, Chief Corp. Planning Officer Tadayuki Seki, Gen. Mgr.-Finance/Chief Acct. Officer Hiroo Inoue, Pres., ICT, Aerospace Electronics Co. 

Noboru Tsuda, Chief Compliance Officer Kenichi Uno, Gen. Mgr.-Tech. Prod. Center Ryuichi Tomizawa, Chmn. 

Vinod M. Ambani, Sec./Compliance Officer Hital R. Meswani, Exec. Dir.-Petroleum Div. 

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