by Holt Andron, CSP, CHST, CRIS, AGC Safety Management Consultant
TLDR (too long, didn’t read):
- Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Division (OSHA) lead rules apply no matter the amount of lead on site, regardless of how miniscule, if employees may be exposed to it due to their work activities.
- In most cases where employees may be exposed to lead due to their work activities, initial air monitoring is required to achieve compliance with Oregon OSHA standards.
- Multiple regulatory agencies beyond Oregon OSHA have requirements for working with lead. OSHA compliance isn’t “full” compliance, depending on the work environment.
- Oregon OSHA’s Hazard Communication (Hazcom) standard intersects with lead rules in that the Hazcom standard includes specific requirements for employee training, retaining SDS sheets, and maintaining a written program.
- Effective control measures for lead exposures are generally similar to controls for silica, e.g., the use of wet methods where possible, using high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) vac tools, and wearing respirators.
Understanding lead rules for the construction industry can be confusing, especially if you don’t deal with them often. It gets even harder if you have a safety background where you’re typically controlling for workplace injuries and not illnesses.
To further complicate things, the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Construction Contractors Board (CCB), and Oregon Health Authority (OHA) all have lead requirements to abide by depending on where you’re working. For example, OHA manages lead issues for work in child-occupied homes and facilities (schools, homes, day cares, etc.).
In addition, contractors in Oregon working on pre-1978 homes or child-occupied facilities must be certified by the CCB in Lead-Based Paint Renovation (LBPR) and follow EPA lead-safe work practices. Contractors must also complete Renovation, Repair, and Painting (RRP) certification, which requires completing an eight-hour training course in addition to holding a CCB lead license.
And don’t forget about the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT)—your ODOT contract may require you to have a lead plan and sample when any amount of lead is in soil that you’ll be working with.
Yikes!
This makes working with lead kind of like a regulatory three-legged stool, where you may have to comply with each entity’s rules depending on what and where your work activity is.
If you’re still reading, you’re brave. The point of this article is to make it easier to quickly understand the basic front-end lead requirements for Oregon OSHA. This is not an exhaustive look at all the lead rules; it’s just the first rules you need to know when working with lead. If you’re a glutton for punishment, AGC can help with understanding the DEQ, CCB, ODOT, and OHA requirements, but for this article, we’re just sticking with OSHA.
Starting at the top, here’s what you need to know:
When do I need to worry about lead on a project?
If your project involves any of the following work activities, you will need to plan on dealing with lead in some capacity:[1]
- Disturbing paint on structures built before 1978
- Doing demolition and salvage work
- Removing or encapsulating materials containing lead
- Renovating structures that contain lead
- Installing products that contain lead
- Emergency cleanup of lead-contaminated materials
- Transporting, storing, or disposing of lead-containing materials where construction work is performed
- Doing maintenance work involving these activities
Making an initial determination regarding the presence or absence of lead on a project is an important first step. Lead can be present in a wide range of materials, including paints and other coatings, lead mortars, and base metals to be welded on or treated with abrasive blasting.
Look at the age of the building or structure, the presence of coatings and other materials that may contain lead, and information from the property owner. Make sure this evaluation happens before/during the bidding process so that you account for the possibility of encountering lead.
What other methods are used to make an initial determination regarding the presence of lead? Unfortunately, you can’t use lead paint test kits, X-ray fluorescence (XRF)[2], or laboratory testing as your only source of information to support a negative initial determination (i.e., the absence of lead). Oregon OSHA generally does not accept surface testing alone as sufficient because these methods can’t show that there is no lead at all. For example, personal exposure exceedances have been documented when lead concentrations are below the 0.1 mg/cm2 (detection limit) value when measuring using XRF.[3]
From the Oregon OSHA “Lead in Construction” fact sheet: “A lead concentration of 0.0015 percent can still lead to airborne exposures at the action level.”
This is reinforced with a federal OSHA Letter of Interpretation: “Accordingly, for all tasks governed by OSHA’s Lead in Construction standard (29 CFR 1926.62) involving paints having any level of lead, employers must comply with the assessment measures and any applicable protections of that standard.”
Bottom line: if there’s any lead at all on a job, and your workers may be exposed to it due to the nature of their work activities, the lead rules apply. Do your research and due diligence at the start so you’re not dealing with surprises in the middle of your project.
What is the first thing I need to know if we’re going to be disturbing lead?
The lead rule requires you to perform an initial exposure determination. This means air monitoring. Unless you have objective data or historical monitoring data, there is no exception, carve-out, or grandfathering to this requirement.
What’s more, even if you have objective/historical data, if you’re performing one of the trigger tasks in the rule, you still have to do the air monitoring. This is because the trigger tasks are presumed to automatically overexpose workers to lead levels above the Permissible Exposure Limit (PEL).
What are the tasks? They’re broken into groups based on presumed exposure level, with Group 1 the lowest and Group 3 the highest. For a detailed breakdown of these tasks, see the rule (1926.62) or page E-4 of Oregon OSHA’s Program Directive A-208.
Okay, so what is objective/historical data?
Historical data is sampling data you have collected in the last 12 months. Historical data is further described by Oregon OSHA’s Program Directive A-208 as: “…the data must provide the levels of exposures to lead that employees receive during work operations conducted under workplace conditions closely resembling the processes, type of material, control methods, work practices, and environmental conditions used and prevailing during the current work operations…”.
Basically, this means that if you’re using historical data to forgo the air monitoring requirement, the current work conditions need to be substantially similar to the conditions in place at the time of the sampling relied upon for the historical data.
Objective data comes from manufacturers or industry studies. Per the regulation, objective data is that which: “can be obtained from an industry-wide study or from laboratory product test results from manufacturers of lead-containing products or materials. The data the employer uses from an industry-wide survey must be obtained under workplace conditions closely resembling the processes, types of material, control methods, work practices, and environmental conditions in the employer’s current operations.”
How do I get air monitoring done?
AGC members receive industrial hygiene services as part of their participation in AGC workers’ comp program; this includes performing air monitoring to determine employee exposure levels. We will evaluate exposures and provide guidance on next steps, after which you can decide on the best path forward based on site conditions.
Oregon OSHA consultation also provides air monitoring at no cost. Independent safety/industrial hygiene consulting firms can conduct ongoing air monitoring if the situation requires it. If you will need ongoing air monitoring but don’t want to hire a private consultant/firm, AGC can loan you the pumps and train you how to do the sampling!
Final thoughts
We’re stopping here because the point of this article wasn’t to get too far in the lead weeds (I may have failed at that). It should be noted that exposure control methods for lead really boil down to controlling for inhalation and ingestion hazards, which are the primary routes of exposure to lead. Many of the same techniques used to control silica exposure (HEPA vac tools, wet methods where feasible, use of respirators) are used to effectively control airborne lead exposure. Ingestion hazards can be effectively controlled by washing your hands and face before eating, drinking, or smoking.
Once you get past the alphabet soup of regulatory agencies, understanding initial exposure determination requirements, and what trigger tasks employees may be doing, things start to make sense with some basic controls that most everyone in construction is familiar with. For more information on the rules for lead in construction, please reach out to your AGC safety management consultant.