Trade News Release
January 19, 2001
Contact: Lydia Kleiner
PHONE: (202) 693-1999

OSHA AND AMERICAN NATIONAL STANDARDS INSTITUTE AGREE TO EXPAND INTERNATIONAL ROLES

In an agreement signed today, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) pledged to continue their joint efforts to improve safety and health standards for workers around the world.

"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 OSHA Administrator Charles N. Jeffress.

The agreement was signed today by Jeffress and Mark Hurwitz, president and CEO, American National Standards Institute. 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 where these meet the needs of the user community. OSHA and ANSI have worked together under mutual agreements since 1976.

This cooperative agreement brings the technical resources and support of the two organizations together to promote safety and health standards based on openness, balanced interests, due process and consensus. It focuses on coordinating voluntary national consensus standards in the U.S. as well as supporting ANSI in its role in the international arena. 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.

ANSI and OSHA agree to work with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) under the National Technology Transfer and Advancement Act of 1996 and with the Secretary of Commerce under the Trade Agreements Act of 1979 to coordinate Federal activities in voluntary standards and to ensure adequate representation of U.S. interests in all relevant international standards organizations.

The MOU signed today will be available on OSHA's website www.osha.gov under "What's New" or through the subject index under Memorandums of Understanding.