## Facts

- The Secretary of Labor issued an OSHA health standard regulating workplace exposure to airborne asbestos dust, including exposure limits, compliance deadlines, and record-retention requirements.
- Labor organizations and allied unions petitioned for review, arguing the standard was improperly structured and insufficiently supported, and challenged particular provisions such as a uniform compliance date and recordkeeping rules.
- Environmental Defense Fund intervened, urging more stringent protections.
- The governing statute authorized standards through informal rulemaking but provided for judicial review in the courts of appeals under a “substantial evidence” standard.

## Issues

1. Whether OSHA standards promulgated through informal rulemaking are reviewed under the statutory “substantial evidence” standard, and how that standard operates in this context.
2. How much discretion the Secretary has to make policy judgments when scientific and technical evidence is uncertain and the statute sets broad health-protective objectives bounded by feasibility.
3. Whether specific provisions of the asbestos standard (including a single compliance date across industries and differentiated record-retention periods) were reasonable, adequately explained, and supported by the administrative record.

## Decision

- The D.C. Circuit applied substantial-evidence review to the challenged OSHA standard while recognizing the mismatch between informal procedures and an evidentiary review standard associated with formal proceedings.
- The court upheld the standard in most respects and denied the petition in substantial part.
- The court sustained the Secretary’s policy choices, including the use of a uniform compliance target date and the structure of recordkeeping requirements, where the agency explained its reasoning and anchored it in the record.
- The standard remained in force subject to limited adjustments and interpretive clarifications on particular sub-issues.

## Legal Principles

- When Congress requires “substantial evidence” review for informally promulgated OSHA standards, courts apply the standard in a manner consistent with the legislative and predictive character of health-and-safety rulemaking.
- Substantial evidence requires enough relevant evidence that a reasonable decisionmaker could accept as adequate, but it does not demand trial-type factfinding or permit the court to substitute its policy preferences for the agency’s.
- OSHA health standards may rest on policy judgments so long as the agency articulates a rational connection between the record and the regulatory choices and acts within statutory bounds.
- In setting health standards, the Secretary may rely on the best available evidence and may consider technological and economic feasibility in selecting implementation mechanisms.
- Judicial review should police reasoned decisionmaking and statutory limits, not re-do the agency’s technical and policy determinations.

## Conclusion

The court largely sustained OSHA’s asbestos standard, holding that although the statute mandates substantial-evidence review, that review must account for the informal, policy-heavy nature of occupational health rulemaking and must uphold reasoned agency choices supported by the record and bounded by feasibility.


Indus. Union Dep’t, AFL-CIO v. Hodgson, 499 F.2d 467 (D.C. Cir. 1974)