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A resource from RocketLevel for restoration company owners, backed by decades of experience in the trade. About a 25-minute read.
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Reviewed October 2026. OSHA standards and penalty amounts change, and state plans add their own. 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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For several hazards, OSHA requires a written program that says exactly how you keep people safe, with training and records to back it up. Restoration work touches more of these than the average small business because of what your crews are exposed to: contaminated water, chemicals, energized equipment, heights, and tight spaces. The list is knowable, and OSHA publishes model programs you can build from.
If your crews use chemicals (antimicrobials, cleaners, solvents), and most restoration shops use plenty, the hazard communication standard at 29 CFR 1910.1200 applies, and it requires a written program, labeled containers, accessible safety data sheets (SDS) for every product, and training.
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There is a live deadline on this one and it is close. OSHA's 2024 revision to the hazard communication (HazCom) standard set separate compliance dates for chemical makers and for employers. After a four-month extension published January 15, 2026, the employer deadline for substances is November 20, 2026. By that date you have to update any alternative workplace labeling you use under 1910.1200(f)(6), update the written hazard communication program under (h)(1), and deliver additional training under (h)(3) on any newly identified physical or health hazard. The corresponding employer deadline for mixtures is May 19, 2028. If your HazCom program has not been touched since it was written, this is the item on this page to handle first.
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One more piece of HazCom catches restorers specifically on commercial jobs. Under 1910.1200(e)(2), when your employees work at a site controlled by another employer, the multi-employer piece of the rule requires the SDSs and the labeling and precautionary information to be made available to the other employers on that site. That runs both directions. You owe the general contractor and the other trades the sheets for what you are spraying in their building, and you are owed the sheets for whatever the building or another trade has going in the space your crew is standing in. Ask for them in writing.
This is one of OSHA's most commonly cited standards and one of the easiest to get right: keep a current SDS binder or digital library, label everything, and train your people on what they are using and how to handle it.
Restoration owners often apply this standard to the wrong job, so get the trigger right before you build the plan.
29 CFR 1910.1030 is triggered by occupational exposure, which the standard defines as reasonably anticipated contact with blood or other potentially infectious materials (OPIM). Two limits on that follow from OSHA's own interpretations and they cut in opposite directions.
Sewage is usually not the trigger. OSHA has stated that urine, feces, and the other biological components of human waste in sewage are not within the standard's definition of other potentially infectious materials unless they are visibly contaminated with blood, and that it does not generally consider contact with diluted raw sewage not originating directly from a health care facility to be covered by the standard. So a Category 3 sewage backup, on its own, usually does not put you under 1910.1030. It still puts you in full PPE, containment, and hot-zone discipline, because Category 3 under ANSI/IICRC S500 Fifth Edition 2021, a paid standard sold by the Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification (IICRC) and through the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) webstore, is grossly contaminated water carrying pathogenic and toxigenic agents. The duty there comes from your hazard assessment and the PPE rules, plus the general duty clause, not from the bloodborne standard. Do not let a crew conclude that because the sewage job is not a 1910.1030 job, the PPE is optional.
Trauma and crime-scene work is the trigger. Blood and human tissue at an unattended death, a suicide, or an assault scene is squarely blood and OPIM, and that work is not construction. ANSI/IICRC S540 Second Edition 2023, also paid and sold through the same two channels, is the trade standard for it. If you run a biohazard or trauma line at all, you are inside 1910.1030 and you need the full program.
And know which body of rules your job sits in. OSHA's position, stated in interpretation letters going back to 1992, is that 1910.1030 does not apply to construction work as defined at 29 CFR 1910.12, and that it does apply to general industry activities including maintenance operations. Nothing in the scope text itself says this. 1910.1030(a) reaches all occupational exposure and never mentions construction, so the exclusion comes from the Part 1910 and Part 1926 structure rather than from a sentence you can point at. Read the maintenance half carefully, because it is the half that catches restoration shops. OSHA's May 13, 1994 letter puts the standard back on employees performing maintenance activities that keep a structure, fixture, or foundation in proper condition in a routine, scheduled, or anticipated fashion where those employees have occupational exposure. A recurring janitorial or facility-maintenance contract is maintenance. The emergency water loss you run in the same building next week is construction. Same building, same crew, two different answers, and the contract type is what decides it.
Trauma cleanup, contents and biohazard remediation, and shop work are general industry. Water mitigation demolition and reconstruction are construction work. Where the standard does not reach, OSHA has said it will use Section 5(a)(1), the general duty clause, to cite an employer that fails to provide a workplace free of recognized bloodborne pathogen hazards, along with the construction PPE and training standards. In plain terms, the protection is owed either way. Only the citation changes.
One state closes the gap, one narrows it, and a third is unsettled, so check yours before you decide the standard does not reach you. North Carolina carries 1910.1030 into its construction rules at 29 CFR 1926.1130 under 13 NCAC 07F .0207, but only for exposure that may result from performing collateral first aid duties. A construction employee you designate to give first aid is covered there. A tech tearing out wet drywall is not. Washington closes the gap outright: it does not run the federal 1910 and 1926 split at all, and WAC 296-823-100 applies the whole chapter to any employer with employees who have occupational exposure, with no construction carve-out in the chapter. Michigan is the one to ask about rather than assume, because Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration (MIOSHA) Part 554 sits in the General Industry series while its own scope rule, R 325.70001(1), reaches all employers with exposed employees and excludes nobody. On a Washington construction job the full written program is the standard itself, not a general duty clause fallback, and in North Carolina the same holds for anyone you designate as a first aid responder.