Document rpYMLea4pgDba34rkYwr4OYbG

-LE^oefle INI P|PFOftMANCE<< eocom CORPORATION "NO EASY DECISIONS" by Dave Clark Reprinted from "Job Safety and Health" Volume 3, no. 5, May 1975 Daniel Boyd, head of OSHA standards development, discusses his office's efforts to put out better standards sooner. Q. What do you mean by changing over to "Performance" language? A. The national consensus standards we promulgated were a mix of everything from performance standards to complete design standards... The problem with specific standards is that they might stifle innovative activity...The oldtime industrial hygienist would hang a charcoal tube in a guy's lapel and have him wear it-around for eight hours to monitor his exposure. If our standard had spelled that out, we would have limited the growth of monitoring technology. Two months after that standard hit the street, niy staff and I saw a demonstration of a very sophisticated monitoring system that uses a digital mini-com puter to correlate employee exposure to area monitoring data. We wouldn't have stimulated that kind of innovation without performance language. OCC 0074 eocom corporation / isyaa jamboree blvd., irvins. California sse a/telephone 171AJ 033-2701 /telex ss-sesa