In one of his last acts as OSHA Administrator, Charles Jeffress, signed an agreement Friday with Mark Hurwitz, president of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) to join their efforts to improve international safety and health standards.
"OSHA welcomes the opportunity to work together with ANSI to strengthen the standards that workers worldwide depend upon for protection of their health and well being," said Jeffress.
ANSI promotes the use of U.S. standards internationally, advocates U.S. policy and technical positions in international and regional standards organizations, and encourages the adoption of international standards as national standards.
Under the agreement, ANSI will provide OSHA with proposed draft international safety and health standards from these organizations and OSHA will provide ANSI with comments on the proposed international standards.
ANSI will then provide these comments to the Technical Advisory Group developing the U.S. position on these standards.
OSHA and ANSI have worked together under mutual agreement since 1976.
by Virginia Sutcliffe
