Rhode Island Code of Regulations › Title 216 - Department of health › Chapter 50 - Environmental health › Subchapter 15 - HEALTHY ENVIRONMENT › Part 1 - Asbestos Control › Section 216-RICR-50-15-1.3 - Definitions

Current through June 14, 2024
A. Whenever used in these rules and
				  regulations, the following terms shall be construed as follows:
1. "Act" means R.I. Gen. Laws Chapter
				  23-24.5, entitled Asbestos Abatement.
2. "Adequately wet" means sufficiently mixed
				  or penetrated with liquid to prevent the release of particulates. If visible
				  emissions are observed coming from ACM, then that material has not been
				  adequately wetted. However, the absence of visible emissions is not sufficient
				  evidence of being adequately wet.
3. "Agent" means any individual performing
				  work on an asbestos abatement project for the Asbestos Contractor, that is not
				  an employee of the Contractor (e.g. industrial hygiene
				  subcontractor).
4. "Amended water"
				  means water to which a surfactant has been added.
5. "Asbestiform materials" means those
				  naturally occurring fibers of similar shape, size, strength, surface and
				  characteristics of asbestos fibers as are otherwise described in the
				  publication entitled "Non Occupational Health Risks of Asbestiform Fibers"
				  published by the Committee on Non Occupational Health Risks of Asbestiform
				  Fibers, Board on Toxicology and Health Hazards of the Commission on Life
				  Sciences of the National Research Council; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
				  and National Academy of Sciences, National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1984,
				  E.P.A. 68-01-4655.
6. "Asbestos"
				  means a unique group of naturally occurring minerals that separate into fibers
				  of high tensile strength, resistant to heat, wear and chemicals, described as
				  the following types: chrysotile, amosite, crocidolite, tremolite,
				  anthophyllite, and actinolite, and every product containing any of these
				  materials that have been chemically treated and/or altered which, after
				  manufacture, are used for such products and end uses as insulation, textiles,
				  paper, cement sheets, floor tile, wall covering, decorations, coating,
				  sealants, cement pipe and reinforced plastics and other compounds.
7. "Asbestos abatement" means any activity
				  involving the removal, encapsulation, enclosure, renovation, repair, demolition
				  or other disturbance of friable asbestos containing materials. Asbestos
				  Abatement shall be synonymous with Asbestos Management for the purposes of this
				  Part.
8. "Asbestos consultant"
				  means an Asbestos Inspector, Asbestos Management Planner, or Asbestos Project
				  Designer licensed by the Department.
9. "Asbestos abatement project" means all
				  activities, including site preparation and clean-up, associated with asbestos
				  abatement, from the time of initial arrival of the contractor on-site through
				  obtaining an acceptable final clearance air sample in the abatement area(s)
				  and/or removal of all abated ACM from the project site, whichever is
				  later.
10. "Asbestos supervisor"
				  means an employee of a licensed Asbestos Contractors who supervises asbestos
				  abatement projects.
11. "Asbestos
				  worker" means any employee of a licensed Asbestos Contractor who engages in
				  Asbestos Abatement.
12. "Asbestos
				  containing material" or "ACM" means any material or product which contains more
				  than one percent (1%) asbestos, as determined using the method specified in
				  Appendix A, Subpart F,  40 C.F.R. Part 763, Section 1, Polarized Light Microscopy
				  (PLM). If the asbestos content of friable material is less than 10 percent as
				  determined by a method other than point counting by PLM, the asbestos content
				  must be verified by point counting using PLM.
13. "Asbestos containing waste materials"
				  means RACM waste and materials contaminated with asbestos including disposable
				  equipment and clothing.
14.
				  "Asbestos contractor" means any person or entity engaged in asbestos abatement
				  as a business and whose employees perform the asbestos abatement work. (see
				  also: Asbestos Abatement)
15.
				  "Asbestos hazard emergency response act regulations" or "AHERA regulations"
				  refers to specific amendments to Title II of the Toxic Substances Control Act
				  enacted by  15 U.S.C. §§
												2641 - 2654  and the regulations of the U.S.
				  Environmental Protection Agency contained in
				   40 C.F.R. §§
												763.80 through  763.99  (Subpart
				  E).
16. "Asbestos inspector" means
				  an individual who:
a. conducts inspections
				  and reinspections to identify locations of friable and nonfriable
				  ACM;
b. collects bulk samples of
				  homogeneous areas of friable surfacing materials;
c. conducts surveillance of thermal systems
				  insulation; and/or
d. discharges
				  other such related activities.
17. "Asbestos management planner" means an
				  individual who, for any school or school building subject to the AHERA
				  regulations:
a. develops an asbestos
				  abatement/management plan for abatement action(s) no larger than small-scale
				  short-duration maintenance activities, as defined by  40 C.F.R. §
													763 Subpart E, Appendix C incorporated by reference at §
												1.2(B)   of
				  this Part, that disturb friable ACM and/or for minor fiber release
				  episode(s);
b. maintains records
				  and reports of asbestos activities relating to the implementation of
				  abatement/management plans;
c. is
				  responsible for the implementation and administration of the
				  abatement/management plan; and/or
d. discharges other such related
				  activities.
18. "Asbestos
				  project designer" means an individual who:
a.
				  designs all types of abatement actions including other than small-scale,
				  short-duration maintenance activities, as defined by  40 C.F.R. §
													763 Subpart E, Appendix C, and major fiber release episodes; and/or
b. discharges other such related
				  activities.
19.
				  "Authorized asbestos disposal facility" means a location approved for handling
				  asbestos waste by the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management or by
				  an equivalent regulatory agency if the material is disposed of outside the
				  state of Rhode Island.
20.
				  "Auxiliary work" means work activity which does not directly involve the
				  performance of an asbestos abatement project but may, in the process of
				  assisting in the performance of that project, disturb or cause exposure to
				  asbestos or asbestos-containing materials.
21. "Category I nonfriable asbestos
				  containing material" means any ACM in the form of packings, gaskets, resilient
				  floor covering, and asphalt roofing products.
22. "Category II nonfriable asbestos
				  containing material" means any ACM, excluding Category I nonfriable ACM, that,
				  when dry, cannot be crumbled, pulverized, or reduced to powder by hand
				  pressure.
23. "Clean room" means an
				  uncontaminated area or room which is a part of the worker decontamination
				  enclosure system with provisions for storage of worker's street clothes and
				  clean protective equipment.
24.
				  "Competent person" means a designated public employee, designated public
				  maintenance person, maintenance worker in the private sector, teacher and/or
				  parent representative certified under the provision of §
											1.19   of this Part.
25. "Cutting" means penetrating with a
				  sharp-edged instrument. This term also includes sawing, but does not include
				  shearing, slicing, or punching.
26.
				  "Demolition" means the wrecking or taking out of any load-supporting structural
				  member of a facility together with any related handling operations or the
				  intentional burning of any facility (see also: Structural Member).
27. "Department" means the Rhode Island
				  Department of Health.
28.
				  "Emergency asbestos abatement project" means any Asbestos Abatement Project
				  which was not planned but results from a sudden, unexpected event. This
				  includes operations required by non-routine failures of equipment.
29. "Emergency renovation operation" means a
				  renovation operation that was not planned but:
a. results from a sudden, unexpected event
				  that, if not immediately attended to, presents a safety or public health
				  hazard;
b. is necessary to protect
				  equipment from damage; or
c. is
				  necessary to avoid imposing an unreasonable financial burden.
d. This term also includes operations
				  necessitated by nonroutine failures of equipment.
30. "Encapsulation" means the application of
				  an encapsulant to asbestos containing materials to control the release of
				  asbestos fibers into the air. The encapsulant creates a membrane over the
				  surface (bridging encapsulant) or penetrates the material and binds its
				  components together (penetrating encapsulant). [c.f. also: Removal
				  Encapsulant]
31. "EPA" means the
				  U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
32. "Equipment room" means a contaminated
				  area or room which is part of the worker decontamination enclosure system with
				  provisions for storage of contaminated clothing and equipment.
33. "Facility" means any institutional,
				  commercial, public or industrial structure, installation or building. For
				  compliance with §
											1.24   of this Part, this
				  definition also includes any ship and any structure, installation, or building
				  containing condominiums or individual units operated as a residential
				  cooperative, but excluding residential buildings having four or fewer dwelling
				  units. For the purposes of this definition, any building, structure, or
				  installation that contains a loft used as a dwelling is not considered a
				  residential structure, installation, or building. Any structure, installation,
				  or building that was previously subject to either the NESHAP regulations  40 C.F.R. §
												61, Subpart M incorporated by reference at §
											1.2(N)   of
				  this Part, or this Part is not excluded, regardless of its current use or
				  function. This term does not include a private residence as defined in the
				  Act.
34. "Facility component" means
				  any part of a facility including equipment.
35. "Friable asbestos material" means any ACM
				  that, when dry, can be crumbled, pulverized or reduced to powder by hand
				  pressure.
36. "Glove bag" means a
				  sealed compartment with attached inner gloves used for the handling of asbestos
				  containing materials. Properly installed and used, glove bags provide a small
				  work area enclosure typically used for small-scale asbestos stripping
				  operations.
37. "Grinding" means
				  reducing to powder or small fragments. This term also includes mechanical
				  chipping or drilling.
38. "HVAC"
				  means heating, ventilation and air conditioning system.
39. "HEPA filtration" means high efficiency
				  particulate air filtration found in respirators and vacuum systems capable of
				  filtering 0.3-micron particles with 99.97% efficiency, for use in asbestos
				  contaminated environments.
40.
				  "High priority areas" means those areas of a building which are used or
				  occupied by a high percentage of the building population on a regular basis.
				  Such areas include classrooms, cafeterias, gymnasiums, offices, places of
				  assembly, work stations, corridors, lobbies, restrooms, and others that may be
				  determined by the Director of Health.
41. "High priority building" means a child
				  inhabited or child frequented structure either privately or publicly owned.
				  This category shall include, but not be limited to, public and parochial
				  schools (Grades Pre-K to 12), day care centers, nurseries, acute or chronic
				  children's hospitals (or wardrooms thereof) as otherwise defined by the
				  National Building Code Use Groups E, B and I. Private residences used for the
				  above purposes and housing or occupied by ten (10) children or less are
				  excluded from this group.
42.
				  "Homogeneous material" means asbestos containing material having a similar
				  distribution of mineralogical types of asbestos and approximately the same
				  percentages of each type throughout.
43. "Individual" means any human
				  being.
44. "Industrial hygiene
				  consultant" means an individual who provides industrial hygiene services in one
				  or more of the following categories: Collection of Air Samples; Compliance
				  Monitoring of Asbestos Abatement/ Management Plans; and/or Respiratory
				  Protection Programs.
45. "In poor
				  condition" means the binding of the material is losing its integrity as
				  indicated by peeling, cracking, or crumbling of the material.
46. "Installation" means any building or
				  structure or any groups of buildings or structures at a single demolition or
				  renovation site that are under the control of the same owner or operator (or
				  owner or operator under common control).
47. "Intermediate priority building" means
				  public buildings, other than those in the high and low priority groups, which
				  are designated within the National Building Code Use Groups as follows: Places
				  of public assembly (Group A); structures occupied by adult inmates and/or
				  patients, and state employees (Group I); colleges, hospitals, and auditoriums
				  (Group I); and occupied places of employment (Group F). Also included are
				  private buildings which are: private colleges, hospitals, banks, and other
				  business, industrial, educational and mercantile institutions (Groups M, H, I,
				  R1 and R2) including, but not limited to, hotels, motels, multi-family
				  dwellings and places of employment with more than ten (10) employees.
48. "Leak-tight" means solids or liquids
				  cannot escape or spill out. This term also means dust-tight.
49. "License" means the permit issued by the
				  Department to allow an Asbestos Contractor to engage in asbestos abatement
				  projects.
50. "Low priority areas"
				  means those areas of a building which are used or occupied by a small fraction
				  of the building population or very infrequently used. Such areas include
				  general access storage rooms and manned boiler rooms unless these areas supply
				  ventilation air to other parts of the building, in which case they would be
				  classed according to the areas served by the ventilation air. These are areas
				  where exposure to asbestos would be limited to a small number of people and
				  where a reasonable course of action would be educating occupants or users of
				  these areas in proper prevention and safety techniques.
51. "Low priority building" means public or
				  private buildings which are not in the other groups and which are infrequently
				  used or closed, or abandoned or scheduled for same in the immediate future and
				  those structures which are private residences (Groups S, R3 and 4).
52. "Major fiber release episode" means the
				  falling or dislodging of greater than three (3) square or linear feet of
				  friable ACM.
53. "Minor fiber
				  release episode" means the falling or dislodging of three (3) square or linear
				  feet or less of friable ACM.
54.
				  "NESHAP" means the National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air
				  Pollutants.
55. "NIOSH" means the
				  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
56. "Nonfriable asbestos containing material"
				  means any ACM that, when dry, cannot be crumbled, pulverized, or reduced to
				  powder by hand pressure.
57.
				  "Nonscheduled renovation operation" means a renovation operation necessitated
				  by the routine failure of equipment, which is expected to occur within a given
				  period based on past operating experience, but for which an exact date cannot
				  be predicted.
58. "Outside air"
				  means the air outside buildings and structures including, but not limited to,
				  the air under a bridge or in an open-air ferry dock.
59. "Owner" means the person or entity having
				  legal title to property and/or buildings. For purposes of publicly owned
				  property only, the owner shall be defined to be the chief executive officer of
				  the state or municipal agency which owns, leases or controls the use of the
				  property.
60. "Owner or operator of
				  a demolition or renovation activity" means any person who owns, leases,
				  operates, controls, or supervises the facility being demolished or renovated or
				  any person who owns, leases, operates, controls, or supervises the demolition
				  or renovation operation, or both.
61. "OSHA" means the Occupational Health and
				  Safety Administration of the U.S. Department of Labor.
62. "Particulate asbestos material" means
				  finely divided particles of asbestos or material containing asbestos.
63. "Person" means any individual,
				  corporation, partnership, firm, association, trust, estate, public or private
				  institution, group, agency, political subdivision of this State, and other
				  State or political subdivision or agency thereof, and the legal successor,
				  representative, agent or agency of the foregoing.
64. "Planned asbestos abatement project"
				  means an asbestos abatement project or many such projects in which the amount
				  of asbestos containing material to be removed, stripped or otherwise disturbed
				  within a given period can be predicted. Individual, non-scheduled abatements
				  are included if many such operations can be predicted to occur during a given
				  period based on operating experiences.
65. "Planned renovation operations" means a
				  renovation operation, or many such operations, in which some RACM will be
				  removed or stripped within a given period and that can be predicted. Individual
				  nonscheduled operations are included if many such operations can be predicted
				  to occur during a given period based on operating experience.
66. "Private residence" means any structure
				  which is designated within National Building Code Use Groups R3 or
				  R4.
67. "Regulated asbestos
				  containing material" or "RACM" means:
a.
				  Friable asbestos material;
b.
				  Category I nonfriable ACM that has become friable;
c. Category I nonfriable ACM that will be or
				  has been subjected to sanding, grinding, cutting, or abrading; or
d. Category II nonfriable ACM that has a high
				  probability of becoming or has become crumbled, pulverized, or reduced to
				  powder by the forces expected to act on the material during the demolition or
				  renovation operations regulated by this Part.
68. "Removal" means the taking out of RACM or
				  facility components that contain, or are covered with, RACM from any
				  facility.
69. "Removal encapsulant"
				  means a penetrating encapsulant specifically designed for use in removal of
				  asbestos containing material rather than for permanent encapsulation.
70. "Renovation" means altering a facility or
				  one or more facility components in any way, including the stripping or removal
				  of RACM from a facility component. Operations in which load-supporting
				  structural members are wrecked or taken out are demolitions.
71. "Repair" means the restoration of
				  asbestos containing insulation that has been damaged, usually located on pipes,
				  boilers, tanks, turbines, ducts or other facility components. Repair usually
				  consists of the application of duct tape, rewettable glass cloth, canvas,
				  cement or other suitable material to seal exposed areas where asbestos fibers
				  may be released. Repair of previously encapsulated asbestos containing
				  materials may involve filling damaged areas with non-asbestos substitutes and
				  re-encapsulating. Repair of enclosures around asbestos containing materials is
				  also included in this category of abatement.
72. "Restricted use areas" means those areas
				  of a building which have infrequent occupancy such as unmanned boiler rooms,
				  mechanical rooms, electrical rooms and secured storage rooms unless those areas
				  supply ventilation air to the other parts of the building, in which case they
				  would be classed according to the areas served by the ventilation
				  air.
73. "Resilient floor covering"
				  means Asbestos containing floor tile, including asphalt and vinyl floor tile,
				  and sheet vinyl floor covering containing more than one (1%) percent asbestos
				  as determined using the methods specified in Appendix A, Subpart F,  40 C.F.R. Part 763, Section 1, Polarized Light Microscopy
				  or any other method approved by the EPA for this type of analysis.
74. "Shower room" means a room between the
				  clean room and the equipment room in the worker decontamination enclosure with
				  hot and cold or warm running water controllable at the tap and suitably
				  arranged for complete showering during decontamination.
75. "Spot repair" means any removal, repair,
				  encapsulation, enclosure or other disturbance which encompasses:
a. up to ten (10) linear feet of asbestos
				  from piping and/or
b. up to
				  twenty-five (25) square feet of asbestos from any surfaces other than pipes.
				  Large project divided into smaller segments are not Spot Repairs.
76. "Strip" means to take off RACM
				  from any part of a facility or facility components.
77. "Structural component " means any pipe,
				  duct, boiler, tank, reactor, turbine or furnace at or in a facility or any
				  structural member of a facility. (see also: Structural Member)
78. "Structural member" means any
				  load-supporting member of a facility, such as beams and load-supporting walls
				  or any non-load-supporting member, such as ceilings and non-load-supporting
				  walls.
79. "Structure" means a
				  whole facility, building or a major portion thereof, such as a building
				  wing.
80. "Visible emissions" means
				  any emissions, which are visually detectable without the aid of instruments,
				  coming from RACM or Asbestos Containing Waste Material.
81. "Waste generator" means any owner or
				  operator of a facility covered by this Part whose act or process produces
				  Asbestos Containing Waste Material.
82. "Waste shipment record" means the
				  shipping document, required to be originated and signed by the waste generator,
				  used to track and substantiate the disposition of Asbestos Containing Waste
				  Material.
83. "Wet cleaning" means
				  the process of eliminating asbestos contamination from building surfaces and
				  objects by using cloths, mops or other cleaning utensils which have been
				  dampened with amended water or diluted removal encapsulant and afterwards
				  thoroughly decontaminated or disposed of as asbestos contaminated
				  waste.
84. "Wet methods, wetted or
				  wetting agents" means the use of amended water or removal encapsulants to
				  control fiber release from asbestos containing materials.
85. "Working day" means Monday through Friday
				  and includes holidays that fall on any of the days Monday through
				  Friday.