WHEN SENATOR Dan Quayle, R-Ind., was asked during the vice- presidential debate to defend the Reagan/Bush administration's poor record in the area of occupational health and safety, he responded by assuring the American public of his "commitment to the safety o our working men and women." "They deserve it," he said, "and we're committed to them."

In an evening replete with disingenuous and misleading remarks, this one stood out. Sen. Quayle's "commitment" to the health and safety of American workers had not been so apparent when he helped kill the High Risk Occupational Disease Notification and Prevention Act earlier this year. Bladder and skin cancer, pesticide poisoning, lead poisoning and a variety of other occupational diseases are needlessly killing between 62,000 and 87,000 U.S. workers each year, according to the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources. The lives of thousands who must work with hazardous chemicals, radiation, viruses and other toxic substances could be saved through a simple program of early detection, notification and early treatment of these diseases.

The federal government today knows of hundreds of workplaces where hundreds of thousands of current and former employees are at risk of contracting occupational diseases. Tragically, the Reagan/Bush administration has prevented the government from releasing this information, and no federal statute currently requires that workers at risk be notified.

This year, the U.S. Congress was well on its way to enacting the first law of its kind to require the federal government to notify workers exposed to toxic substances. The bill would have authorized medical monitoring and health counselling so exposed workers could discover these diseases at their earliest stages, when treatment is most effective. The costs of this program were estimated at $20-27 million per year--an amount that pales in comparison to the staggering costs of medical care and lost earnings occupational diseases entail. That is one reason the measure, which had already passed the House, received broad backing from not only the public health community and organized labor, but also from business heavyweights such as the Chemical Manufacturers Association, the National Paint and Coatings Association, IBM, General Electric, Union Carbide, W.R. Grace and Atlantic Richfield.

A small contingent in the Senate, however, killed the bill. Leading the anti-labor forces were Republican senators Orrin Hatch of Utah and Dan Quayle. Quayle, who serves on the Senate Labor Committee, opposed the bill in committee, even after having helped weaken it substantially. But Quayle's efforts did not stop there. Along with Hatch, Quayle led a filibuster on the Senate floor, preventing the Senate from voting on the bill and ending consideration of it for the remainder of the session.

The bill would have established a government-appointed panel composed of medical authorities and scientists, which would be charged with identifying workers at risk of serious occupational disease. The government would have then notified these high-risk workers of their susceptibility to work-related illnesses, and would have required employers, with the exception of some small businesses, to provide medical monitoring for early detection and prevention. To appease the business community, the bill also contained extremely restrictive liability provisions preventing the act of notification or the initiation of medical monitoring from providing the basis for any compensation proceeding or lawsuit.

But these liability restrictions, too constricting in our view, were too loose for Sen. Quayle. Despite clear language to the contrary, Quayle insisted that the bill might establish liability of an employer for an occupational health hazard. He was also concerned, despite the overwhelming prospect of saving thousands of lives with the bill, that a few workers not actually at risk might be told to seek medical assistance. Rather than take this chance, and neglecting the assurances of experts who dismissed the scope and likelihood of such a problem, Quayle preferred that no workers be notified. The sincerity of Sen. Quayle's averred "commitment" to worker safety is doubtful. The old advice, "Watch what I do, not what I say," is appropriate, and what Quayle has done is ensure that the tragedy of unsuspecting workers being stricken with disease will continue.