Your responsibility:
To make sure voluntary use of respirators by employees does not create job safety or health hazards.
You must:
Make sure voluntary use of respirators is safe
Keep voluntary use respirator program records
important:
• Respirator use is not voluntary if a respiratory hazard, such as exposure to a substance over the permissible exposure limit (PEL) or hazardous exposure to an airborne biological hazard, is present.
• To evaluate respiratory hazards in your workplace, see WAC
296-307-624, Respiratory hazards.
• Some requirements in this section do not apply if only filtering-facepiece respirators are used voluntarily. Some filtering-facepiece respirators are equipped with a sorbent layer for absorbing "nuisance" organic vapors. These can be used for voluntary use, but are not NIOSH certified for protection against hazardous concentrations of organic vapor.