• Washing facilities must be kept sanitary and provided with the proper running water, cleansing agents, and drying methods.

Sanitary washing facilities are vital for promoting hygiene and preventing the spread of diseases. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requires employers to:

• Maintain washing facilities in a sanitary condition;
• Provide lavatories with hot and cold running water, or tepid running water;
• Provide hand soap or similar cleansing agents; and
• Provide, as is convenient to each toilet room, either:
  • Individual hand towels or hand-towel sections made of cloth or paper,
  • Warm air blowers, or
  • Clean individual sections of continuous cloth toweling.

Certain OSHA regulations require employers to provide showers in the workplace. Whenever showers are required by a particular regulation, employers must:

• Provide 1 shower for each 10 employees of each sex or fraction thereof who are required to shower during the same shift;
• Provide body soap or other appropriate cleansing agents convenient to the showers;
• Provide showers with hot and cold water that feed a common discharge line; and
• Provide individual clean towels for employees who use showers.

Change rooms

Whenever employees are required by a particular standard to wear protective clothing because of possible contamination with toxic materials, employers must provide change rooms with storage facilities for street clothes and separate storage facilities for the protective clothing.