The Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration has rules that protect workers against extremely unlikely events, but no rules to protect workers from some more likely hazards. We can do better.

It’s good news, then, that the Labor Department is proposing new rules for evaluating different health risks. This rationalized approach to worker on-the-job safety will reduce costs to business — which helps to preserve jobs — without spending money on needless bureaucratic procedures. Both American workers and the American public will benefit.

According to a summary released yesterday by the Office of Management and Budget, “The proposed rule requires DOL agencies to follow a consistent, reliable, and transparent set of procedures when conducting risk assessments, outlines the components that should be included in a risk assessment, and provides for improved public access to rulemaking information.”

Once OMB has reviewed and approved the draft of proposed rulemaking from the Department of Labor, as is expected, it will be published in the Federal Register and the public — including employees and unions — will have at least 30 days to try to influence the final shape of the new rules.

The major units of the Labor Department that would be affected are the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

Congress first recognized the problem of inconsistency in evaluating health risks in 1990 and created a Presidential Congressional Commission on Risk Assessment and Risk Management. The commission convened in May 1994, its members appointed by the then-Democratic Congress, President Clinton, and the president of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Commission found that OSHA conducted risk assessment and risk characterization on an ad hoc basis without any systematic or coherent pattern and recommended that OSHA publish written guidelines governing its approach to on-the-job safety. It has taken more than 14 years, but the Labor Department has finally gotten around to publishing the guidelines.

Traditionally, when OSHA evaluates worker health risks, it assumes that workers hold the same jobs for 45 years, and that they work 40-hour weeks for 50 weeks out of the year.

This was never realistic, and certainly isn’t so today. In some ways it might exaggerate risk, because nowadays workers change jobs more frequently than they used to. Rather than holding one job for an entire career, a worker is more likely to spend a few years at a variety of jobs.

In other ways, the usual methodology might underestimate the risk, because workers frequently work overtime, and exceed a 40-hour week. It’s possible that working a 50-hour week for a 5-year period might result in greater health risks than working a 40-hour week for 45 years.

That’s why it’s important to use real epidemiological data on job-related illness and accidents to measure true dangers to workers.

It’s also important to assess relative risk, and to make sure that the most dangerous conditions are being dealt with first. A former administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at OMB, Harvard professor John Graham, has written extensively about the shortcomings of assessing risk by federal agencies.

OSHA has long had a problem with transparency in how it conducts risk assessments to determine safe occupational exposure levels to hazardous chemicals for workers.

The risk assessment process is shrouded in mystery. Once the agency proposes an exposure level in a proposed rule it is virtually impossible to change the scientific assumptions in the public comment period.

As a result, many OSHA health rules are immediately challenged in court by worker advocate groups, unions, and business interest groups, all dissatisfied with the rulemaking. This creates uncertainty that benefits no one.

Some OSHA rules have more stringent standards than do American trading partners, with the result that businesses have an incentive to move production offshore. This results in lost jobs for Americans. When the government makes regulations, it needs solid evidence that what is proposed will in fact protect workers.

The challenge now is whether the Labor Department can get these rules finalized before the inauguration of the next president. A new administration from either party will realistically want to take a fresh look at all proposed rules in the pipeline. That could take another 14 years, during which American workers would continue to suffer from irrational regulation.

Ms. Furchtgott-Roth, dfr@hudson.org, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.