Nurses confront infectious diseases every day, but the emergence of new serious infectious diseases like avian flu, SARS, and MRSA and the persistence of tuberculosis (TB) are cause for great concern.  In the event of an infectious disease outbreak, nurses will be on the front lines to treat patients and prevent the spread of the disease.  

But there is no OSHA standard requiring hospitals and health care facilities to ensure the safety of health care personnel.  The proposed TB standard, which would have provided adequate protections against many types of airborne infectious diseases, was canceled by OSHA under the Bush Administration. 

OSHA’s Respiratory Protection Standard does offer some protection for health care workers exposed to patients with TB—but OSHA has been prevented from enforcing a basic part of the standard, a requirement that workers who need to use respirators get an annual fit-test to ensure they have a respirator which works properly. 

Read more background on Congressional efforts to prevent OSHA from enforcing the fit-testing provision of the Respiratory Protection Standard to protect health care workers against TB.