• Love Canal and Valley of the Drums disasters led to a series of laws, one of which required OSHA to promulgate regulations to protect employees in hazardous waste operations. Those regulations became the HAZWOPER Standard we know today.

The Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response (HAZWOPER) Standard was not the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) idea. The regulation itself was actually mandated by a law signed by President Reagan in 1986. To understand the HAZWOPER Standard, it may help to know the history behind the regulation and how the regulation came about.

In the past, massive quantities of hazardous waste were stored or disposed of in poor conditions at unsafe locations. Many of these “dump sites” were abandoned and presented potential danger to human health and/or the environment. In the 1970s, lawmakers and the public started to realize that improperly treated, stored, or discarded hazardous waste was a serious problem.

Two environmental disasters got the public’s attention:

• Love Canal in Niagara Falls, New York — Large amounts of abandoned, buried hazardous waste caused extensive contamination of the area, declaration of the area as a disaster by the federal government, and eventual relocation of most area residents. While the disaster came to a head in the 1970s, its history started in the late 1800s. For further information, see the Love Canal information in the CERCLA, SARA, EPCRA topic.
• Valley of the Drums in Louisville, Kentucky — Once investigations and cleanup began, over 100,000 drums were discovered on the property. Many of the drums were in poor condition and leaking into the soil and the waters of Wilson Creek, a tributary of the Ohio River. Around 140 different chemical compounds were found on the land, and it took years to clean up the site. For further information, see the Valley of the Drums information in the CERCLA, SARA, EPCRA topic.

Because of the seriousness of the problem, Congress enacted legislation to control it:

• Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 (RCRA) — This law established a regulatory system to manage hazardous wastes from the time they are generated to their final disposal.
• Comprehensive Environmental Resource, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA) —This law gave the government authority to deal with threats from hazardous waste sites to human health and the environment. It forced responsible parties to pay for the cleanup of abandoned hazardous waste sites and take action to respond to emergencies involving uncontrolled releases of hazardous substances.
• Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA) — This law made several changes to CERCLA, increased communities’ awareness of extremely hazardous chemicals located near them, and helped communities develop emergency response plans.

It turns out that the treatment and disposal of hazardous wastes under RCRA and CERCLA created a significant risk to the safety and health of employees who worked in cleanup, treatment, storage, disposal, and emergency response operations. This risk was addressed by SARA, which specifically required OSHA to issue a regulation for the health and safety of employees engaged in hazardous waste operations. This regulation became the HAZWOPER Standard, found at:

• OSHA 29 CFR 1910.120, HAZWOPER Standard for general industry;
• OSHA 29 CFR 1926.65, HAZWOPER Standard for construction; and
• EPA 40 CFR 311, Worker Protection Standard for state and municipal workers not protected by OSHA or an OSHA-approved state agency.

Note that a “hazardous waste operation” means any operation conducted within the scope of the HAZWOPER Standard.