International Safety Equipment Association Responds to Respirator Bill Editorial

[Editor's Note: The following was submitted in response to a commentary that appeared in the June 2005 issue of COLUMNS-Silica.]

Author Dan Shipp is President of the International Safety Equipment Association.

In 'A Bailout for the Respirator Industry: House Bill 2357' (June 2005 issue of HarrisMartin's COLUMNS-Silica), the authors Rodney Vincent and Lee Plotkin resort to numerous misleading statements and inaccuracies in their description of the bill and the history of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)'s testing process.

HR 2357 and its Senate companion bill, S1406, are reasonable, narrow, and completely justified approaches to ensuring the …