Alaska Hazard Communication : What you need to know

Alaska has adopted the federal Hazard Communication Standard (HCS) requirements in their entirety. The state has also added some requirements that are stricter than federal standards for notification to employees about physical agents and posting of information. Both private sector (private businesses and nonprofit organizations) and public sector (state and local government offices and operations) employers are subject to state workplace safety and health requirements.

Alaska Occupational Safety and Health (AKOSH) administers and enforces the HCS requirements in Alaska.

Each regulated employer must have a physical agent data sheet for each physical agent present in the employer's workplace. "Physical agent" means heat stress, cold stress, hand-arm (segmental) vibration, ionizing radiation, lasers, noise, radio frequency and microwave radiation, or ultraviolet radiation that exceeds the threshold established in the 1995–1996 edition of Threshold Limit Values for Chemical Substances and Physical Agents and Biological Exposure Indices in the Work Environment, published by the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists.

Each physical agent data sheet must be in English and contain the same information required in safety data sheets (SDSs) for hazardous substances under the federal HCS.

Physical agent data sheets may be kept in any form, including in a manual of operating procedures, and may be designed to cover groups of physical agents in a work area where it may be more appropriate to address the hazards of an entire process rather than of individual physical agents. The ...