Department of Labor

Small Business Handbook Department of Labor

SMALL BUSINESS HANDBOOK:
Small Business Safety and Health Management Series
OSHA 2209 02R 2005

About

This handbook is provided to owners, proprietors and managers of small businesses by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), an agency of the U. S. Department of Labor. For additional copies of this publication, write to the U. S. overnment Printing Office, ( PO), Superintendent of Documents, Mail Stop SDE, 732 N. Capitol Street, NW, Washington, DC 20401, or call the OSHA Publications Office at (202) 693-1888, or fax (202) 693-2498 for ordering information. Please note that the entire text of the Small Business Handbook is available on OSHA's website at http: //www.osha.gov/Publications/ osha2209.pdf. The handbook should help small business employers meet the legal requirements imposed by the Occupational Saf ty and H alth Act of 1970 (the Act), and achieve an in-compliance status before an OSHA inspection. An excellent resource to accompany this information is OSHA's Safety and Health Program Management uidelines, (54 Federal Register 3904-3916, January 26, 1989), also available on OSHA's website. This handbook is not a legal interpretation of the provisions of the Act and does not place any additional requirements on employers or employees. Employers cannot be cited under the eneral Duty Clause in Section 5(a)(1) of the Act for failure to follow recommendations in this handbook. The materials in this handbook are based upon Federal OSHA standards and other requirements in effect at the time of publication and upon generally accepted principles and activities within the job safety and health field. They should be useful to small business owners or managers and can be adapted easily to individual establishments. It is important to point out that 24 states, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands operate their own OSHA-approved safety and health programs under Section 18 of the Act. While the programs in these State Plan States may differ in some respects from Federal OSHA, this handbook can be used by employers in any state because the standards imposed by State Plan States must be at least as effective as Federal OSHA standards. A list of states that operate their own safety and health programs can be found on OSHA's website at www.osha.gov.

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* The version of this publication is as described above (this article is updated after each new edition).

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