New California Blood Law Requires Cal/OSHA Notice

Under a new law, the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) must notify the state's division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) when a worker's blood lead level tests at or above 20 micrograms per deciliter (µg/dL), Safety.BLR reports.

CDPH now has the authority it lacked to make a referral to Cal/OSHA. Cal/OSHA must treat the referral as an official complaint involving a potentially serious health and safety violation under the new statute. Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 35 into law.

“Investigations have shown that some businesses have been exposing workers to dangerous levels of lead year after year,” Environmental Working Group’s California director of government affairs Bill Allayaud said in a statement from the group.

“But the new law requires that state agencies take immediate action and no longer sweep the lead issue under the rug.”

More than 500 cases of occupational lead exposure in the last decade could have been investigated by Cal/OSHA but were not, according to findings published by the Center for Health Journalism at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.