Permit-Required Confined Spaces

This final rule amends the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standard on Permit-Required Confined Spaces (permit spaces) (29 CFR 1910.146) to provide for enhanced employee participation in the employer's permit space program, to provide authorized permit space entrants or their authorized representatives with the opportunity to observe any testing or monitoring of permit spaces, and to strengthen and clarify the criteria employers must satisfy when preparing for the timely rescue of incapacitated permit space entrants. The revisions being made to the final rule will substantially enhance the protections being provided to permit space entrants and will additionally clarify a number of issues that have arisen since promulgation of the final Permit-Required Confined Spaces rule in 1993. Specifically, OSHA is clarifying and strengthening the requirements in revised paragraphs (d), Permit-required confined space program, and (e), Permit system, to allow for greater employee participation in the permit-space program and for employee access to program information developed under the standard. The Agency is also revising paragraphs (c) and (d) to specify that employers must provide those employees who are authorized permit space entrants, or their authorized representatives, an opportunity to observe any testing of the space that is conducted prior to entry or subsequent to such entry. The Agency believes that these revisions are necessary to ensure that permit space entrants, whose work often requires entry into potentially life-threatening atmospheres, have the information necessary to protect themselves and their co-workers from confined space hazards. Allowing authorized entrants or their authorized representatives to observe the testing of the spaces they are required to enter will help to ensure that the testing has been done properly, that the respirators and other personal protective equipment being worn are appropriate, and that the entrants unde