TechTALK

Justrite’s line of hazardous material safety cabinets are designed in accordance with the latest National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and International Fire Code (IFC) standards to ensure full regulatory compliance when storing hazardous materials.

The Uniform Fire Code, which first addressed safety issues caused by improper storage, handling, use, and disposal of hazardous materials, as well as the architecture for the equipment used to store these materials, has now become NFPA 1 Fire Code. Developed more recently, the NFPA 400 Hazardous Material Code focuses specifically on the handling and storage of hazardous materials. The focused work in the NFPA 400 was subsequently adopted into the 2012 revisions of the NFPA 1 Fire Code and the IFC.

Laws such as those driving these requirements are typically enforced once the jurisdictional authorities become aware of them. This takes time. Your local jurisdiction may not be fully aware and/or enforcing these regulations yet. Best safety practices follow a proactive, rather than reactive, approach to compliant hazardous material storage.

OSHA recognizes—generally encourages the use of—the NFPA Codes. The federal labor laws that govern OSHA are slow to change, mainly because of the complexity involved in making those changes and the requirements to have it voted into law.

Many states have adopted the 2012 revision of either the NFPA1 or the IFC, which specifies the use of a hazardous material safety cabinet. Please check with your Authority Having Jurisdiction (AHJ) for further guidance on state by state adoption.

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