Asbestos duties for employee housing and wallboard sampling

February 5, 1997

Mr. Paul Cotter
Assistant Director
Texas Tech University
[Recipient address omitted]
Dear Mr. Cotter:

This is in response to your letter dated October 12, 1996, where you requested clarification of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA) Asbestos standard. To avoid excessive delays in providing answers to your questions, one of my staff recently discussed with you by telephone the sections about which you inquired. This letter is a follow-up to that conversation.

The first question you ask is, does the OSHA regulation, 1926.1101(k), apply to owners in private residential housing? Homeowners are not considered "building owners" when they have work done in their private homes and are not affected by this OSHA regulation. One of the conditions stated in the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act) stipulates that an employer/employee relationship must exist for OSHA regulations to apply.

Your letter went on to describe different scenarios which can be summarized and answered accordingly.

When an organization or business provides housing to their employees as part of the compensation package, the "building owners" are responsible for compliance with paragraph (k) of the asbestos standard. This would be particularly important if plans were made to remodel or repair the building. The General Contractor has similar responsibilities in communicating to employees performing the work and those employees adjacent to the areas of work of the hazards of asbestos.

To answer your inquiry about state and local government agencies that supply housing to their employees, Federal OSHA does not have jurisdiction over municipal, local, or state employees. Federal agencies and federal employees are covered by the Act and are required to comply with OSHA standards. In those states with their own Occupational Safety and Health programs, public employees are covered. A list of state plan states is enclosed for your reference.

The final issue to clarify is OSHA's position on composite sampling of wall board and joint compound. Building Owners are responsible for locating the presence and quantity of presumed asbestos containing material (PACM) in buildings built before 1981. Technically, this process does not require any special training since PACM is easily recognized. PACM is thermal system insulation (TSI, such as pipe-wrap or duct insulation) and sprayed on and troweled on surfacing material (such as fireproofing material or acoustical material). OSHA limited the list to those asbestos-containing building materials that were installed most frequently and may present the greatest exposure hazard when the materials are disturbed. These are the only materials that OSHA requires an employer to bulk sample, and then, only if the employer chooses to rebut the designation of PACM.

Other building materials may contain asbestos but unless an employer has specific knowledge or should have known through the exercise of due diligence that these other materials contain asbestos, the standard does not compel the Building Owner to sample these materials. The removal of wallboard systems that contain asbestos is covered by the standard as a Class II operation and the employer needs to comply with the appropriate sections of the standard. Class II operations require that the employer conduct personal sampling but not bulk sampling. Any additional sampling an employer performs such as multi-layered composite sampling is beyond what is required by the OSHA standard. If you are sampling wallboard systems to meet the requirements of another agency, it is advisable that you use their sampling protocol.

We hope you have found this information useful. If you have additional questions please contact [the Office of Health Enforcement at (202) 693-2190].

Sincerely yours,
John B. Miles, Jr., Director
Directorate of Compliance Programs

Enclosure

[Requester letter reproduced on OSHA page; omitted here.]