Occupational Safety and Health standards and Environmental Protection Agency

EPA & OSHA WORK HAND AND HAND

EPA and OSHA have the statutory responsibility to ensure the safety and health of the public and America's workforce through the timely and effective implementation of a number of federal laws and implementing regulations. In some areas, the responsibilities of the agencies are separate and distinct. In others, they are complementary. EPA and OSHA wish to work together to maximize the efforts of both agencies to ensure the efficient and effective protection of workers, the public, and the environment.

EPA & OSHA ON THE FLIGHT LINE

Aircraft's fly thousands of miles daily. It takes thousands of maintainers to keep those aircraft in the air. On the ground the maintainers face various health and safety hazards such as being suck down the intake of an aircraft engine, or being blown by the engine's exhaust. Those are just the obvious. When performing maintenance the maintainer have to handle hazardous chemicals such as fuel and oil. This is where EPA and OSHA comes to play. When dealing handling fuel OSHA requires personnel to wear eye protection, gloves and apron. The EPA requires all excess fuel and oil leaks or drains be caught in buckets. To protect the environment we can not allow the excess fuel and oil to leak or drain onto the ground. Another obvious one is hearing protection. When working around running aircraft engines personnel are required to wear ear protection. Over a period of time one starts loosing their hearing. This is why the Air Force annually test its maintainers hearing.