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A RocketLevel guide for restoration owners and technicians, backed by decades of experience in the trade. About an 8-minute read.
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Reviewed October 2026. OSHA standards and state rules change, and states like California set stricter ones. Use this page to know what to ask, then confirm with OSHA, your state plan or a qualified safety professional before you rely on it.
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Every restoration job puts a different hazard in front of your crew. Clean water needs little more than gloves and eye protection. A sewage backup, a mold remediation, a fire job, a trauma scene, each demands more, and the most important step up is respiratory protection. In our experience this is the piece crews under-do most, because a respirator looks like something you can pull off the shelf and hand to a tech. Under OSHA 29 CFR 1910.134, the instant your work requires a respirator, you owe a written program behind it. It is a general industry part number and it still binds you, because 1926.103 adopts 1910.134 verbatim for construction. Every OSHA and EPA section named here is free to read, and the links go straight to the standard rather than to a summary of it.
PPE scales with what the work exposes the crew to. Build the actual list from a hazard assessment; the general shape by job type runs like this.
Clean water (Category 1, a supply line or fresh tap source). Nitrile gloves, safety glasses, and closed-toe boots are usually the floor. The hazards on this job are mostly slips, lifting, and sharp debris.
Category 3 water (sewage, flooding, ground water, anything grossly contaminated). The water carries bacteria and pathogens. Step up to fluid-resistant suits or coveralls, gauntlet-style chemical and biological gloves, eye protection or a face shield, rubber boots, and respiratory protection. Treating a Category 3 job like a clean-water job is how a tech gets sick.
Mold remediation. The hazard is airborne spore and the dust of demolition. Respiratory protection is standard, the level set by the exposure and your assessment. Add a suit that keeps spore off skin and clothing, gloves, and eye protection. Containment and air control work alongside the PPE, not instead of it.
Fire, soot, and char. Soot is a fine, irritating, sometimes toxic particulate, and fire debris hides other regulated materials. Respiratory protection, suits, gloves, and eye protection are the baseline. Painted surfaces bring in the lead standard, 29 CFR 1926.62, which applies to all construction with no building-year cutoff, action level 30 µg/m³ measured without regard to the use of respirators, and permissible exposure limit (PEL) 50. Those are the federal numbers. California replaced them effective January 1, 2025: 8 CCR 1532.1 sets the action level at 2 µg/m³ and the PEL at 10, so painted-surface soot work that sits comfortably under the line federally can be over it in California. Cutting or grinding concrete, masonry, or tile brings in silica, 1926.1153, PEL 50 µg/m³ with a 25 action level. The cleaning chemicals used on soot add their own glove and ventilation requirements. Read the label and the safety data sheet before the first bucket gets mixed.
Biohazard and trauma. Bloodborne pathogens drive this one. Fluid-resistant or impervious suits, double gloves, eye and face protection, and respiratory protection per the scene. This work sits under OSHA's bloodborne pathogens standard, 29 CFR 1910.1030, on top of everything here. It is worth knowing why, because the same standard does not reach your water losses: 1910.1030 does not apply to construction work, and a trauma or crime scene cleanup is a service activity rather than construction. For trauma work, that means a written exposure control plan reviewed annually, 1910.1030(c)(1), and hepatitis B vaccination offered to every exposed employee at no cost within ten working days of assignment, 1910.1030(f)(2). The technical practice standard is IICRC S540, the Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification (IICRC) standard, 2nd Edition (2023). Note that the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) webstore still shows the superseded 2017 edition, so buy by edition number, not by whatever the listing defaults to. Your state may also regulate the waste side separately, so look up yours. California, for one, requires trauma scene waste management practitioner registration under Health and Safety Code 118321.1 before you take the work.
Asbestos, at the awareness level. If you suspect asbestos-containing material, in older drywall, joint compound, floor tile, or pipe insulation, a better mask does not solve it. OSHA presumes thermal system insulation and surfacing material in any building constructed no later than 1980 is asbestos-containing, 29 CFR 1926.1101(b), and the presumption stands until a qualified inspector rebuts it. Separately, EPA's asbestos National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) rule requires a thorough inspection for asbestos before any demolition or renovation, 40 CFR 61.145(a), and there is no quantity floor. The 260 linear feet, 160 square feet, and 35 cubic feet figures are notification and work-practice thresholds, not a small-job pass on the inspection. Notification runs 10 working days ahead. NESHAP reaches "facilities," and 40 CFR 61.141 leaves out residential buildings of four or fewer dwelling units, so on a house check your state and local air rules; the OSHA presumption above applies either way. The right move is to stop, test, notify, and bring in a licensed abatement contractor, not to push through in a respirator.
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A respirator handed out without a program, a medical clearance and a fit test leaves the tech unprotected and leaves you out of compliance. A filtering facepiece or a half mask carries an assigned protection factor of 10, so an exposure your assessment puts at 50 times the exposure limit needs a respirator rated at 50 or higher, such as a full facepiece. Before a required respirator goes on a face, 29 CFR 1910.134 requires a written program with a named administrator, a medical evaluation and clearance, and a fit test for that exact make, model, and size. Facial hair at the sealing surface voids the fit on any tight-fitting respirator, and no amount of retightening fixes it. The requirements are at 29 CFR 1910.134.
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The respirator question is really a question of how much protection the exposure demands. Working up the ladder:
A filtering facepiece (the N95 and its kin) is a disposable particulate filter. It can be appropriate for nuisance dust and lower-level particulate exposure. Read the letter as well as the number, because the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) grades filters under 42 CFR Part 84 on two axes and crews only ever quote one of them. The number is efficiency against the most-penetrating particle size: 95, 99, or 100, where 100 means 99.97 percent. The letter is oil resistance: N is not resistant to oil aerosols at all, R tolerates them for a single shift, P is oil proof. Soot, smoke residue, and a lot of what gets aerosolized on a fire job carry an oil phase, which is why a P100 is the honest filter on that work and an N95 is not. This is the one rung with a break in the rules, and crews need to know it. Under 29 CFR 1910.134(c)(2)(ii), when a worker's only respirator use is voluntary use of a filtering facepiece, you are not required to put that worker in the written program, which means no medical evaluation and no fit test for that use. You still owe the user the advisory information in Appendix D of the standard. The break is narrow. It does not cover a filtering facepiece you require, and it does not cover an elastomeric worn by choice.