About This Refresher and What It Does Not Replace

This course is an eight-hour annual refresher aligned with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standard for Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response, known as HAZWOPER. The general industry version is 29 CFR 1910.120, in Title 29 of the Code of Federal Regulations. The construction version, 29 CFR 1926.65, is written in almost the same words.

It is for workers and supervisors who have already completed their initial HAZWOPER training (the 40-hour or the 24-hour course, with the supervised field days that go with it) and who need their yearly refresher. The lessons add up to eight hours of learning time, and the certificate of completion prints that time.

The standard says what a refresher must cover: the subjects of the initial training, a critique of incidents from the past year that can serve as training examples, and other relevant topics. The eight modules follow that order: the standard, last year's lessons, the site plan, toxicology, air monitoring, protective equipment, safe work on site, and emergencies.

Why the employer decides

The refresher duty belongs to the employer. The employer must make sure each worker has the training the standard requires before that worker does hazardous waste work. An online course can deliver the knowledge part well. It cannot watch you put on a suit, run a decontamination line or bump test a meter. OSHA has said in its guidance that computer-based training may meet some refresher requirements if it covers topics relevant to the workers’ duties, but that it must be supplemented by the chance to ask questions of a qualified trainer and by an assessment of hands-on performance of work tasks. Your employer may add a practical session, a toolbox talk or a site drill to this course.

If your company works on more than one site, each site also has its own site safety and health plan. That plan, not this course, sets the action levels, the protective equipment and the emergency signals you will actually use.