Professional Safety Training Services, Inc. Teaches Oil Spill Response Workers How to Clean up Oil Soaked Beaches and Polluted Waterways in Accordance With OSHA’s Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response Standard.

Emergency Response vs. Post-Emergency Response

The HAZWOPER standard identifies two basic phases of a response action: emergency response and post-emergency response. Depending on the size of the spill, these phases may be managed differently. In addition, workers who participate only in post-emergency response require different training than emergency response workers receive.

Emergency response is “a response effort...to an occurrence which results, or is likely to result, in an uncontrolled release of a hazardous substance” (29 CFR 1910.120(a)(3)). For marine oil spills, an uncontrolled release is a situation in which the oil and its associated airborne and surface contamination hazards are releasing into the environment or are in danger of releasing into the environment and posing a worker exposure hazard.

Oil in grounded ships, which is in danger of being released into the environment, represents an emergency response situation. On water containment, skimming operations, and underwater oil recovery operations also are considered to be emergency response activities because the oil is still in danger of being released into the environment. Shoreline cleanup is normally considered to be a post-emergency response unless the oil is below the high-tide mark or storm surge boundary (active or forecasted) and can reasonably be expected to be re-released into the marine environment.

Professional Safety Training Services (PSTS), Inc. an international Environmental Training firm, specializes in Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response (HAZWOPER) and HAZMAT training to ensure that emergency response workers will work safely at all times during the cleanup of oil and various types of chemical spills that occur in the waterways, in the air, and on land.

The unique and realistic hands-on type of training that PSTS provide is designed to demonstrate and simulate the actual techniques used to control and contain oil and sludge into a concentration area through the use of booms, skimmers and sorbent materials to prevent the spread of contamination onto other ships, onto beaches, and more importantly to prevent the oil-soaked contamination of wildlife, fish, fowl and etc. PSTS has provided such training services in the USA and U.S. Virgin Islands, and is willing to travel to teach anywhere.