WWW.Safety-Engineer.COM

904 721-2795

July 28, 2003

Re: Comment S-029: Establishing a numerical slipmeter result as the basis for determining the safety of walking surfaces in the workplace under 1910.22.

Dear Mr. Smith,

We are asked to comment on the OSHA proposal to adopt slipmeter coefficient of friction readings as evidence under the walking and working surfaces standard. Earlier policy decisions show that you announced your decision prior to the revision of ANSI 1264.2. That fact, along with closing comments a month early, makes your comment solicitation disingenuous. Carefully executed, a slip resistance standard is to be applauded. However, I would like to point out that research done by OSHA until now has been tainted by the self interests of advocates for a single product. When you should have been promoting the use of safe shoes, you were financing the promotion of a single proprietary slip meter. Even though OSHA acknowledges both the limitation and deficiency of previous work and points to misbehavior of advocates, you will continue to credit the self-serving efforts by some to impose their products and profits on the American people.

ANSI 1264.2

Paradoxically a flawed study was used to sell the Englisxl slip meter to an ANSI committee. Now, the ANSI standard will be your excuse to adopt the Englishxl slipmeter back into OSHA practice. Your efforts have already produced produce tens of millions of dollars in profits for some lawyers and legal consultants. One expert advertises that he has already been retained in more than eight thousand slip and fall law suits charging a minimum of two thousand dollars for each effort. Walmart alone reports that at any one time they have 9,000 slip and fall law suits. If you choose to enforce numerical slip resistance definitions in your proposed revisions, credibility lost by your tainted OSHA study will produce a vague standard begging for legal challenge.

Does your effort assert a preferred method for testing frictional coefficients? I think it does. Careful wording of your standard will assure you get what you want. The reader should note that recommendations on measurement of slip resistance found in ANSI 1264.2, represent a practice that has never been voluntarily established by any industry in the United States. As of today, no American industry has accepted the definitions or products found in ANSI 1264.2 as a voluntary practice. This may become the most self serving stunt since Walter Bowes helped himself to a post office monopoly in 1917.

I am a frequently published author on this subject: my work appears in four languages. As one who is involved in consensus standards development in both the United States and Europe, I would like to provide these words of caution. Historically, self-serving efforts within consensus standards organizations have been the subject of criminal investigation and prosecution. On this subject, persons claiming to represent ASTM opinions, speak only for themselves. I am a member of the subject ASTM committee and I too speak for myself. Consensus standard committees stacked with special interests don= t work.

The effort to use a slip meter as a radar gun without a knowledge of why people fall, is common, and asinine. Your efforts have made it clear that you are interested in slip meters instead of fall conditions. Few if any product advocates bother evaluating the failure of a surface or provide legitimate expert advice on fall conditions. These people are slip meter salesmen. If approved without an extensive outreach effort, your proposal would require employers to have experience and judgment your A experts@ do not have. Consider this simply truth. Falls are not caused by the failure to choose the right slip meter or by the absence of a slipmeter. Falls are caused by real life conditions which you have not studied. You can regulate conditions with the approval of everyone. Begin by telling employers what is expected and how to meet responsible standards. This educational effort will take time.

Precision and Bias

OSHA has not sufficiently defined basic physical values to be adopted in this protocol. The formal statement of Precision and Bias stated within an appropriate ASTM standard has been established by OSHA as the single characteristic mandatory for approval of a test method. I use the term= s test method with care. OSHA is not supposed to incorporate brands of anything but you have done so. You will find that brand names are used in your literature as though the device and the test method are the same thing. As hard as it is to believe, both favored test devices found in ANSI 1264.2 have been around for more than twenty five years, and neither has been accepted as a completed standard under ASTM nor in public practice. Other devices never considered by OSHA do have P&B recognition. In the absence of this recognition of test precision, jargon replaces thought and we are left with a vague enforcement methodology which will not stand intelligent examination in the courts.

The substitution of the word slip resistance for the terms a static or dynamic coefficient of friction is an example of the subterfuge that dominates this field. Slip resistance is a useful term, but at best it conveys no more than an objective conclusion based upon unstated personal criteria. Terms like slip index are also deceptive since they encourage the false belief that readings are indexed to some absolute value or at least to some other test method. That was true twenty years ago when devices were indexed to the Instron system, but neither of the devices in the subject ANSI standard has ever been calibrated with the values of that machine, nor with any standardized test surface at all. If you choose to enforce a slip and fall standard, test methods must be stated in traditional evidentiary ways and devices calibrated according to acceptable procedure. Without these correct measures, the use of this device will violate defendants= due process rights.

Slipmeters as Evidence

The history of the courts= shows that in the short run, the judiciary can be fooled. Current writing about slip resistance is full of jargon. Studies are accepted without verifiable data. The effort is to define a law in terms of a proprietary product. In spite of millions of words of A Technobabble@ , not one slip meter will meet the 95^th percentile test for evidence under the Federal Daubert rule. No slipmeter replicates the dynamics of the human gait in a way that validates its use. The results of slip meters is valid evidence, but evidence which must not be accepted per se. Saying ASTM and ANSI has become a Mantra, but one million chants will not change the limitations of all modern test methods. At this point, ASTM 1264.2 and the research that supports it and OSHA efforts, must be considered a Trojan Horse.

A dissonance sits at the very center of any effort to regulate slip resistant conditions. In the S-029 proposal, you ask for measurement of static coefficient of friction. The steel erection standard lists the Englishxl which measures an unusual and ill-defined quantity as a justification for its existence. Then you allow other devices that A measures like@ the Englisxl. The Englishxl measures transitional kinetic coefficients as its unit of measure. This is appropriate if this is what you want to do. However, if you establish an obligation and concentrate solely on "precision and bias" you leave a great problem. The measurement of dynamic COF is velocity dependent and has not been quantified within either of the ANSI proposed methods. In order to standardize articulated machines you must quantify sensor velocity at the instant the test surface strikes the floor. The only other solution is for you to codify two brands relying solely on questionable studies by financially interested parties. This is ultimately a due process issue. If you do this, your standard will flounder in litigation forever.

Start with the Shoes

The intelligent enforcement of standards which will promote pedestrian safety is welcome and has several parts.

Of these topics, the only one that lends itself to current regulation is the use and selection of shoes in the workplace as part of the Personal Protection Equipment standard.

Direction of Change

Setting a minimum static coefficient (SCOF) reading of .5 seems high. Most countries use a .40 where able bodied persons are intended to work. This allows an acceptable margin of error since everyone recognizes the threshold at a slip threshold is .32. Your suggested approach found in maritime standards is acceptable. The use of safety shoes where the employer cannot change the surface, seems appropriate. We have already pointed out that one of the devices mentioned in ANSI 12.6 measures a transitional kinetic, not static coefficient of friction. The OSHA expert claims that a static coefficient of friction does not even exist or at the very least is not what is measured by his device. It would be unfortunate if you came back and changed this definition later since it would require tens of millions of dollars to respond.

I recently saw one of OSHA= s A experts@ measure the surface on a yacht by propping his gadget on the side of the vessel with a hose clamp and yard stick. Every time the test was run, the gadget threw itself off of the vessel and toward the Atlantic Ocean. If successful, the A OSHA Expert@ would have testified to the perfection of his method in Federal Court. He may still do so, or he will find any number of advocates ready to speak up. I urge OSHA to view field research on this subject with a cynical eye.

Restatement

OSHA is considering making the voluntary, slippery surface provisions found in ANSI 1264.2 law. ANSI 1264.2 recommends the adoption of the Englishxl slip meter and the Brungraber II slipmeter as a standard for the measurement of coefficient of friction on wet surfaces. As of today, neither device has been accepted as a completed ASTM standard and neither has acceptance of their presentation of Precision and Bias for their device. OSHA research shows that on wet surfaces, there is a 400 percent difference between the readings of each to the other. This is far greater than the difference between either product and other products on the market. You have not adequately limited or defined the unit of measurement you propose.

A group of ten men with a financial interest in the outcome, are attempting to write public law for their financial interest. How can anyone consider any of this evidence? It is irrefutable, an ANSI committee considered only flawed OSHA research and other work done by committed users of only one device. Not one of the many studies presenting alternative research was considered, or allowed. Your early work misused ASTM and defined a proposed standard in terms of a product you planned to adopt. A definition of method should define qualities of a known method with common characteristics and those characteristics should be defined. In locking legal specifications to ASTM standards instead of scientific principals, you lock federal practice to the political interest of a single group during a single time. This insults national policy. It is simply impossible for OSHA to wade through the mass of conflicting information by using individuals that have a financial interest in the research.

Neither ASTM, ASSE, ANSI, or particularly the American Society of Safety Engineers is responsible for the development of standards in the United States. Congress assigned that responsibility to the National Institute of Standards and Technology as you know. Their recommendations are already in your investigative files. Simply stated, the development of new standards is to be encouraged. NIST has fallen somewhat short of its charge in this regard. The standards process can take years and newer, better, technologies may be thwarted by incorporating published standards based upon private interests. As of now, the manufacture and calibration of only one slipmeter is available through an NIST-CERTIFIED LABORATORY. That single device is not included in ANSI 1264.2.

For almost a decade, the makers of one brand of slip meter have publicly promoted their product by advertising a special connection and recognition with OSHA. We always hoped that this influence was erroneous. The effort has been responsible for some tremendous profits from civil litigation. If you formally adopt the .50 COF definition as a legal obligation before you standardize the material quantities that define the test phenomena, things will become chaotic. For now, we hope you will remove the brand recognition from 1926.754(3). If you choose to adopt any devices at all, you should list test standard characteristics.

As a college student, I worked in the booking room of a county jail for a short period. We administered the first breathalyser tests which were primitive by modern standards. The manufacturer, who you would recognize, provided elaborate scientific evidence to the accuracy and reliability of their method. Dedicated officers, would testify to results and many offenders went to jail. Tests were ruled scientific by the courts. Only years later did we discover that supervisors calibrating the device would make it read appropriately by bending the activating sensor with their thumb. It would be nice if you could prevent the creation of a modern equivalent.

Nothing I say here is likely to change the direction of a runaway freight train with a mind of its own. OSHA is not presently capable of enforcing slip and fall standards. Too much time has been spent generating opinion that supports predetermined choice while so-called professional organizations suppress legitimate contradictory evidence. Only when OSHA has committed to this silliness, will it become cost effective for others to develop independent research. That is too bad. Neither recommended test device has gained the confidence of American industry after twenty-five years of marketing. OSHA! The international scientific community is crying.

Exhibits