Journal of Occupational Accidents, 3 (1980) 67-68 Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Amsterdam - Printed in Belgium

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Book Review

Regulating Safety: An Economic and Political Analysis of Occupation Safety and Health Policy by John Mendeloff, MIT Press, Cambridge (Massachusetts), and London (England), 1979, 219 pages, $9.75, ISBN O-262-13148-X.

Mr Mendeloff has written a valuable analysis of economic and politica- as- pects of health and safety at work. He provides a comprehensive review of the controversies preceding the enactment of the Occupational Safety and Health Act in the United States, and the subsequent debates concerning its character, implementation and enforcement. Mendeloff’s analysis includes the rationale for legislation, safety versus health in enforcement, engineering controls versus personal protection; cost-benefit analysis, and the feasibility of complying with OSHA standards; the effect of OSHA on accident experience; and proposals for improving enforcement.

The author’s point of departure is that government regulation of safety and health at work is essential because Mendeloff’s stated alternative, plant decision making based on cost-benefit analyses, is unlikely to lead to the right answers. Accurate workplace decisions rely on two assumptions, both of which Men- deloff suggest are false:

‘... first, that firms know enough about safety technologies to choose the most cost-effective methods of prevention; second, that the firm bears all the cost of the injuries and the illnesses arising from its production.’

But the author is critical of the confusion created by the OSHA as a result of the failure of the legislations and OSHA administrators to tackle squarely the issue of the costs and benefits of implementing safety standards promulgated by OSHA.

‘the fundamental point is that OSHA has used lengthy abatement periods as a means to avoid dealing with the complexities of determining . ..economic feasibility. Initially OSHA placed the burden of proving infeasibility on the employers but without explaining to them what criteria it would use in judging their arguments. . . . However, although they (OSHA) have been totally successful in avoiding the controversial weighing of costs and benefits when it comes to enforcing standards, OSHA’s administrators have not been able to avoid the scales when it comes to setting new standards. That they nevertheless have often claimed not to be using scales presents a paradox that is worth exploring.’

Mendeloff’s pursuit of OSHA’s administrators in this regard takes up a sub- stantial part of the book. The administrators do not emerge with credit.

Another major tropic is an assessment of whether OSHA has actually re- duced accidents. Mendeloff is able to show that certain categories of accident,

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for example machinery accidents, have been reduced significantly - at least in California. He suggest that OSHA has been far more successfull than might have been expected in view of the negligible average fines for violation (about $25).

For the British reader the main shortcoming of the book is that Mr Men- deloff has confined his research and his horizons to U.S. experience. Thus no ac- knowledgement is made of the wealth of information provided by the Robens Comittee’s Report in 1972. Moreover the philosophical differences between the OSH Act and the U.K. Health and Safety at Work... Act 1974 are not con- sidered. The consequence of the omissions is that Mendeloff’s proposals for advances in safety and health policy and enforcement are limited to the type of actions adopted in the early 1970’s in the U.K. to improve enforcement of the Factories Act 1961. He places, for instance, a major emphasis on in- specting larger companies with high injury rates.

He does not consider the benefits which might accrue from more radical changes in inspection policy, involving perhaps, ‘monitored self-regulation’, and the importance of health and safety policy statements by companies, and their implementation. Another weakness of the book is that Mendeloff’s con- ception of ‘safety’ is rather narrow, emphasising what might be called ‘tradi- tional accident prevention’.

‘... the key distinction is not that workers know more about safety than they do about health risks; it is rather that experts know a great deal more about health than workers do but not much more about safety.’

This narrow interpretation of safety and the conclusion he draws from it fail to encompass a wide range of technologically complex risks to safety. The author also fails to question OSHA’s policy of treating ‘health’ and ‘safety’ as separate issues, although he comments on the problems of inspection and enforcement associated with this division.

In conclusion Mr Mendeloff has made a serious and strenuous effort to debate the central issues of health and safety policy. Although some of the author’s arguments and conclusions are open to question, the crucial fact is that Mendeloff provides a coherent framework within which the issues can be judged. The book is fairly heavy reading; not suprising in view of its ancestry - it is based on the author’s Ph D thesis. But it is bound to stimulate the reader to analyse health and safety policy issues with the necessary degree of depth and rigour. I hope that the book is read widely - above all by the se- nior administrators of OSHA.

RICHARD BOOTH