Every time I see coal mining in the media I see the miners not wearing any kind of respirator or other breathing protection device. Now, wether it's because those who are recording the video wants to see full faces and not faces covered by masks is possible as well as other reasons not related to safety, the fact is it's such a simple thing to wear some kind of device to protect one's lungs from damage. What's even more pathetic is I occasionally see guys wearing respirators while painting/grinding/welding/machining, but they have full beards under the respirators rendering them useless. I also get from them the attitude that because they've been doing what they do for so long that nobaody can tell them how to do their job, including safety related issues, all the while they're coughing and hacking and blinking tears out their irritated eyes. They never heard of or care to hear of accumulative physical damage.
On our shop floor, I've been told by workers themselves that wearing PPE is tantamount to being sissy about it, and that from where they previously worked if you asked for any kind of PPE you would be the only one asking for it and would be alienated for doing so. With that kind of attitude floating around in the workplace, most likely initiated and supported by management, and management not caring to enforce any OSHA reg's because it hurts profits and is just plain irritating and in their opinion unnecessary, and with local/state gov't entities being controlled/favored by these businesses, who else can enforce safety reg's but the fed gov't?
To those supporters that favor local control and self regulation of safety issues, this is one real world reason why that doesn't work in most situations. Workers don't like wearing PPE for various reasons and management don't like it that PPE cost them "unnecessarily". Yet, I constantly hear about guys going on worker's comp/TDI due to carpal tunnel, asthma, eye injuries and other work related injuries/illnesses. I also hear it from management how angry they are over absenteeism and how much it costs them to provide health coverage when they are adding to that cost by promoting lax safety policies.
Self-regulation? Doesn't work unless management is serious about it and most aren't.