Safety Training Program Highlights

About The OSHA Lead Standards

For years OSHA has been concerned about worker exposure to lead and lead-based materials.

Both workplace experience and empirical studies have shown that lead contamination can cause serious health problems, even death, for exposed workers.

Lead exposure can be due to many things, from removal of lead-based paint to working with lead itself.

Overexposure can occur both on an "acute" basis (where large amounts of lead are absorbed into the body in a short period of time) or on a "long-term" basis (where small amounts of lead are absorbed at any one time, eventually accumulating to cause significant health problems).

As a result, in 1978 OSHA issued a Lead Standard for General Industry.

However, this regulation did not apply to the Construction industry. After pressure from Congress and the courts, in 1993 OSHA issued the Interim Final Rule for Lead Exposure in Construction.

This standard extended the same protection provided by the general industry standard to workers in construction environments.

One of the major compliance requirements in both regulations is for employee training.

OSHA puts significant emphasis on this particular requirement. They are convinced that a number of the problems that employees have experienced in the past with lead contamination have been due to a lack of knowledge about the proper procedures for working in an environment where lead or lead-based materials are found.

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OSHA Lead Standards