Amending the Medical Evaluation Requirements in the Respiratory Protection Standard for Certain Types of Respirators

DEPARTMENT OF LABOR <SUBAGY>Occupational Safety and Health Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>29 CFR Part 1910</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket # OSHA-2025-0006]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1218-AD48</RIN> <SUBJECT>Amending the Medical Evaluation Requirements in the Respiratory Protection Standard for Certain Types of Respirators</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Department of Labor. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> OSHA is proposing to remove some medical evaluation requirements in the Respiratory Protection Rule for certain types of respirators. This proposed change would only impact filtering facepiece respirators and loose-fitting powered air-purifying respirators. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before September 2, 2025. <E T="03">Informal public hearing:</E> OSHA will schedule an informal public hearing on the proposed rule if requested during the comment period. If a hearing is requested, the location and date of the hearing, procedures for interested parties to notify the agency of their intention to participate, and procedures for participants to submit their testimony and documentary evidence will be announced in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> <E T="03">Written comments:</E> You may submit comments and attachments, identified by Docket No. OSHA-2025-0006, electronically at <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov, which is the Federal e-Rulemaking Portal. Follow the instructions online for making electronic submissions.</E> <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions must include the agency's name and the docket number for this rulemaking (Docket No. OSHA-2025-0006). All comments, including any personal information that is provided, are placed in the public docket without change and may be made available online at <E T="03"> http://www.regulations.gov. Therefore, OSHA cautions commenters about </E> submitting information they do not want made available to the public, or submitting materials that contain personal information (either about themselves or others), such as Social Security Numbers and birthdates. When uploading multiple attachments to <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov, please number</E> all of your attachments because <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov</E> will not automatically number the attachments. This numbering will be very useful in identifying all attachments in the preamble for the final rule. For example, Attachment 1—title of your document, Attachment 2—title of your document, Attachment 3—title of your document. For assistance with commenting and uploading documents, please see the Frequently Asked Questions on <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov.</E> <E T="03">Docket:</E> To read or download comments or other materials in the docket, go to Docket No. OSHA-2025-0006 at <E T="03">http://www.regulations.govthe http://www.regulations.gov</E> index; however, some information ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> copyrighted material) is not publicly available to read or download through that website. All comments and submissions, including copyrighted material, are available for inspection through the OSHA Docket Office. Documents submitted to the docket by OSHA or stakeholders are assigned document identification numbers (Document ID) for easy identification and retrieval. The full Document ID is the docket number plus a unique four-digit code. Some Document ID numbers also include one or more attachments. When citing exhibits in the docket, OSHA includes the term “Document ID” followed by the last four digits of the Document ID number. For example, document OSHA-2025-0006 would appear as “Document ID 0006.” Citations also include the attachment number or tab number, if applicable. In a citation that contains two or more Document ID numbers, the Document ID numbers are separated by semi-colons ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> “Document ID 1231, Attachment 1; 1383, Attachment 1”). OSHA may also cite items that appear in another docket. When that is the case, OSHA includes the full document ID for the corresponding docket entry. This information can be used to search for a supporting document in the docket at <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov.</E> Contact the OSHA Docket Office at (202) 693-2350 (TTY number: 877-889-5627) for assistance in locating docket submissions. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> <E T="03">For press inquiries:</E> Contact Frank Meilinger, Office of Communications, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, U.S. Department of Labor; telephone (202) 693-1999; email <E T="03">oshacomms@dol.gov.</E> <E T="03">For general information:</E> Contact Andrew Levinson, Director, Directorate of Standards and Guidance, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, U.S. Department of Labor; telephone (202) 693-1950; email: <E T="03">osha.dsg@dol.gov.</E> <E T="03">For copies of this</E> <E T="7462">Federal Register</E> <E T="03">document:</E> Electronic copies of this <E T="04">Federal Register</E> notice are available at <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov.</E> This notice, as well as news releases and other relevant information, are also available at OSHA's web page at <E T="03">www.osha.gov.</E> A 100-word summary of this proposed rule is available on <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Executive Summary</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Health Literature Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Discussion</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Pertinent Legal Authority</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Additional Requirements</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">i. OMB Review Under the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">ii. State Plans</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">iii. NEPA</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">iv. Statutory and Executive Order Considerations</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Summary and Explanation</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Authority and Signature</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Proposed Regulatory Text</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Executive Summary</HD> In 1971, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) adopted the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard Z88.2 1969, “Practices for Respiratory Protection,” as well as ANSI Standard K13.1 1969, “Identification of Gas Mask Canisters” as its standard for respiratory protection. In April of 1971, OSHA promulgated 29 CFR 1926.103, the initial respiratory protection standard for the construction industry. On February 9, 1979, OSHA announced that 29 CFR 1910.134 would be formally recognized as also being applicable to the construction industry (44 FR 8577). On November 15, 1994, OSHA issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to revise 29 CFR 1910.134 (59 FR 58884). On January 8, 1998, OSHA issued a Final Rule in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (63 FR 1152) revising 29 CFR 1910.134. The prior respirator standard was re-designated as 1910.139 and applied only to respiratory protection against M. tuberculosis (TB). On December 31, 2003, OSHA withdrew 1910.139 and made compliance with 1910.134 effective immediately (68 FR 75776). On August 24, 2006, OSHA published revisions to the 1910.134 Final Rule, to add definitions and requirements for Assigned Protection Factors (APFs) and Maximum Use Concentrations (MUCs) (71 FR 50122). The revisions also supersede the respirator selection provisions of existing substance-specific standards with these new APFs (except for the respirator selection provisions of the 1,3-Butadiene Standard). The current OSHA Respiratory Protection Standard (29 CFR 1910.134) aims to protect workers from inhaling hazardous airborne contaminants ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> dusts, fogs, fumes, mists, gases, smokes, sprays, vapors) in the workplace by requiring employers to establish a comprehensive written respiratory protection program that includes procedures for respirator use, training, and fit testing. A key component of this program is medical evaluation, which determines whether employees are physically able to wear respirators safely. Before using a respirator, employees must be evaluated by a physician or other licensed health care professional (PLHCP), using the mandatory OSHA medical questionnaire or an equivalent method, to assess medical conditions that could interfere with respirator use, such as cardiovascular or pulmonary diseases. A medical evaluation helps ensure that any employee required to use a respirator can tolerate the physiological burden associated with respirator use which is crucial to ensure worker safety. Additionally, the standard mandates fit testing for tight-fitting facepiece respirators, training on proper use and maintenance, and ongoing monitoring of workplace conditions to ensure the selected respirators provide adequate protection. The program must be regularly evaluated for compliance and effectiveness, with records maintained for medical evaluations, fit testing, and training, to reduce the risk of respiratory-related occupational illnesses. OSHA is proposing an update to the Respiratory Protection Standard to amend the medical evaluation requirements specified in paragraph (e) where an employee is required to wear either a filtering facepiece respirator (FFR) or loose-fitting powered air-purifying respirator (PAPR) and seeks comment on all aspects of this proposal. Using a respirator may place a physiological burden on employees that varies with the type of respirator worn, the job and workplace conditions in which the respirator is used, and the medical status of t ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 66k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━