RECORD IDD93-09-006

STANDARD NUMBER
1926.62

INFORMATION DATE
9/3/1993 12:00:00 AM

SUBJECT
Lead standard: trigger levels

DISCLAIMER
The information contained in this response is a technical clarification to a DOE Rule or Directive and should only be applied to the specific conditions described in this response. These responses represent the best available technical knowledge available from the Department’s subject matter experts and are NOT binding upon the DOE. These responses DO NOT represent approval of a variance, exemption, or equivalence for any requirements. Requests for exemptions or equivalences for Directives requirements must follow the procedures in DOE O 251.1C. Interpretive rulings, that are binding on DOE, may only be made the Office of General Counsel.

QUESTION
The caller was concerned that the new OSHA lead standard specifically mentions wanting to be as stringent as HUD but they don't use the same trigger level as HUD. If construction work involves paint containing any quantity of lead, must a containment be built? The caller has one job involving 50 feet of 0.07% lead- based paint on a hand rail that they want to cut off. What approach should they take? What is the significance of the 0.06 percent lead trigger?

REGULATORY REVIEW
The recent OSHA standard for lead in construction, 29 CFR 1926.62, "applies to all construction work where an employee may be occupationally exposed to lead." The project described by the caller would be covered by this standard. However, OSHA points out in the preamble on page 26598 that, "It should be recognized that although this standard may apply to a particular employer or workplace, almost all of the obligations in the standard are triggered by certain minimum levels of lead exposure. For example, the employer is required to provide requirements for periodic exposure monitoring and medical surveillance only if employees are exposed to airborne lead in excess of the action level. Employers whose employees are exposed below this level are not required to comply with most provisions of the standard." The Action Level under 29 CFR 1926.62 is 30 micrograms of airborne lead per cubic meter of air as an 8 hour time weighted average. The caller expressed concern about difference between the HUD guidelines and the new OSHA standard even though Congress mandated that OSHA issue a standard that provided workplaces that are "as safe and healthful as those that would prevail under" the HUD guidelines. In the preamble to the standard, OSHA indicates it understood this mandate to provide them some flexibility. Further, "After careful consideration, OSHA has concluded that the Guidelines were intended to be understood in conjunction with OSHA's lead standard for general industry." The preamble stipulates that, "The trigger criteria for the OSHA general industry standard and the HUD Guidelines appear to be different...Chapter 8 of the Guidelines seems to require the employer to comply with all provisions where there is any potential of exposure to lead at any level." OSHA goes on in the preamble to cite the 1 mg/square centimeter trigger that HUD uses to determine when a surface needs to be abated. This is not a trigger for worker protection and OSHA cites studies that show widely differing airborne levels with this same amount of lead in paint, depending on how the paint is removed. This leads OSHA to conclude that "there is no reliable connection between such a concentration and any risk of adverse health effects." Consequently, the concentration in the paint is not critical for OSHA. As the preamble indicates on page 26594, "The air lead levels that trigger the standard are determined by an employee exposure assessment, most often containing air sampling." OSHA added a provision not found in either its general industry standard nor in the HUD guidelines to avoid the problems that arise because of the time lapse between sampling and receiving results. OSHA added three lists of tasks, "the performance of which in the presence of lead trigger basic protective provisions prior to air lead monitoring." It is important to note that all three lists are based on tasks that will exceed the Permissible Exposure Limit of 50 micrograms per cubic meter of air. The concentration of paint in the project cited by the caller, if correct, is quite low. The figure of 0.07 percent is only slightly above the Consumer Products Safety Commission figure of 0.06% which is the amount that paint makers must stay below in order to have a "lead-free" paint. Given this low amount of lead and the limited amount of work that is planned, it is difficult to conceive of 8 hour time weighted exposures exceeding the OSHA Action Level. Even if the PEL were exceeded, however, the OSHA standard does not require that a containment be built. In the absence of air sampling data, the caller may want to consider conducting personal sampling during the work and providing respiratory protection as an additional precaution, irrespective of whether it is required under the OSHA standard.