My company supplies contract employees to health care facilities. What are my responsibilities under the Bloodborne Pathogens Standard?
A5. OSHA considers personnel providers, who send their own employees to work at other facilities, to be employers whose employees may be exposed to hazards. Since your company maintains a continuing relationship with its employees, but another employer (your client) creates and controls the hazard, there is a shared responsibility for assuring that your employees are protected from workplace hazards. The client employer has the primary responsibility for such protection, but the “lessor employer” likewise has a responsibility under the Occupational Safety and Health Act. In the context of OSHA’s standard on Bloodborne Pathogens, 29 CFR 1910.1030, your company would be required, for example, to provide the general training outlined in the standard; ensure that employees are provided with the required vaccinations; and provide proper follow-up evaluations following an exposure incident. Your clients would be responsible, for example, for providing site-specific training and personal prot
