Occupational Safety and Health Administration Logs

What are OSHA's policies about air quality in factories?

I want to know how OSHA gets involved when air quality is questioned. What are the standards as far as air quality in the workplace goes? Do workers need proof of illness caused by poor air quality in order to get OSHA and the health department involved? Thank you!!

Public Comments

1. If you feel the air quality is substandard, contact OSHA & they will send someone to the business to monitor the air quality.
2. OSHA has Permissible Exposure Limits (PELs) which describe the amount of harmful materials to which workers can be exposed. If you feel there is danger, you can contact OSHA online or by phone.
3. As badhabyt pointed out there are PEL's which should limit your exposure to harmful contaminents. The only tricky part is if you are talking about multiple contaminents it seriously reduces the PEL levels. The PEL's are law, but were based on 1971 data (think we as a society might know more about the effect of chemicals than they did in 1971?) anyway OSHA tried to change it but was sued. My point is ACGIH produces a list of Treshhold Limit Values TLV's that are more up to date-published every year. So if you reference anything understand all your employer has to do is follow OSHA. ASHRAE has ventilation and air quality standards which are incorporated by reference into OSHA, these are pretty strict about quality of breathing air and return and clearance of buildings. You can approach OSHA, but usually unless it is going to kill someone yesterday they are shortstaffed so very few CSHO's to do inspections. When you do call if you feel you are in emminent danger you move up the inspection list. And for something like this OSHA will usually write a letter to the company and ask them to explain what programs they have in place to combat IAQ issues. Have you approached the Health and Safety manager for the company? He should be a point of contact as by law OSHA 5 (a), if it is a known or anticipated hazard you as an employee have the right to a hazard free workplace. It depends what state you are in as some states administer their own HSE plans, but they still have to meet OSHA minimums. One problem with Air quality sickness is unless it is immediate, the doctor/nursing staff usually treat it as self responsible injury-(you have pneumonia must be linked to you smoking-not the workplace) some figures as high as 85% of workplace related injuries are not properly classified as such. Finally, I would contact the HSE Manager and ask them to test the air and for the results to be posted, study for yourself the PEL's so when the results come out and there is 49 PPM of CO and the test was done after hours you know that it is 1 ppm off of being over the limit, and most importantly DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT, and DOCUMENT. This is by far your most important tool, document smells, weather (dampness causes a lot), how you feel..., buy a journal and only use it for this-don't tear out any pages and ensure you date it etc. Then when the company questions why they need to test or OSHA does come, you have all the supporting documents. If you get no action from either party you may try contacting your group insurance provider and talking to a rep ffrom there, as if it were work related then they (insurance) dont want to pay for it and would want to recoup their money through subregation.