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An Emergency Action Plan (EAP) under 29 CFR 1910.38 is a distinct document from a Chemical Hygiene Plan, a Fire Prevention Plan, or a Bloodborne Pathogens exposure control plan. Those govern routine safe handling. An EAP governs the moment routine handling has already failed: who reports the emergency, how people get out, who is allowed to stay behind to shut something down first, how you confirm everyone is actually out, and who does rescue or first-aid duty in the meantime. Most published EAP templates are written for an office building — a fire, one evacuation route, one alarm tone, everyone walks to the same parking lot. A research laboratory routinely has three emergency profiles that a generic template never distinguishes: a chemical release, a biological spill, and a cryogen oxygen-deficiency event — and each one changes who evacuates, who is allowed to stay for a few seconds, and what the alarm actually means.
What 29 CFR 1910.38 Actually Requires
The plan must be in writing and available to employees; OSHA’s one exemption is that employers with 10 or fewer employees may communicate it orally instead of maintaining a written document (1910.38(b)). Where a written plan is required, 1910.38(c) sets six minimum elements:
- 1910.38(c)(1) — procedures for reporting a fire or other emergency.
- 1910.38(c)(2) — evacuation procedures, including the type of evacuation and exit route assignments.
- 1910.38(c)(3) — procedures for employees who must perform or shut down critical operations before they evacuate.
- 1910.38(c)(4) — procedures to account for all employees after an evacuation.
- 1910.38(c)(5) — procedures for employees performing rescue or medical duties.
- 1910.38(c)(6) — the name or job title of every employee who can be contacted for more information about the plan or an employee’s duties under it.
1910.38(d) requires an alarm system meeting 29 CFR 1910.165: the signal must be perceptible above ambient noise or light levels in the affected area, and it must be distinctive and recognizable as a signal to evacuate or to take the specific action the EAP assigns to it — one tone does not have to mean the same thing everywhere in the building. 1910.38(e) requires the employer to designate and train enough employees to assist in a safe, orderly evacuation. 1910.38(f) requires the plan to be reviewed with each employee when the plan is first put in place, when the employee is newly assigned, when the employee’s responsibilities under the plan change, and whenever the plan itself changes.
None of that language is lab-specific. It is written to cover an office evacuating to a parking lot, and it says nothing about which of your emergencies calls for evacuating the room, evacuating the building, or not evacuating at all.
Chemical Release: The Shutdown Element Does the Real Work
A Chemical Hygiene Plan governs how chemicals are stored, handled, and cleaned up when a spill stays inside the response capability documented in your spill kit and response procedures or your secondary containment. The EAP only has to answer one question the CHP doesn’t: at what point does this stop being a spill response and become an evacuation? That threshold — airborne release beyond what local exhaust ventilation controls, an unknown-quantity or unknown-identity release, a reaction that is generating heat or gas faster than the response team can manage — belongs in the EAP itself, not left implicit in the CHP.
1910.38(c)(3) is where a chemical-release EAP earns its keep in a lab: unlike an office, a lab often has equipment mid-run that cannot simply be walked away from — a reaction under active stirring and heating, a gas line that needs to be valved off, a fume hood sash that needs to be lowered. The plan should name, by role rather than by individual, who is authorized to spend the extra seconds on a specific shutdown step before evacuating, and draw the line explicitly: any release large enough to threaten the exit route itself removes that authorization, no exceptions. Pair this with your spill response training program so the people designated for (c)(3) duties are the same people trained to recognize when the release has crossed from “respond” to “evacuate.”
Biological Spill: A Different Kind of “Stay Behind”
Biological releases raise the same (c)(3) shutdown question as chemical releases, but the decision looks different because the hazard is contamination and cross-exposure rather than acute toxicity or fire. The Bloodborne Pathogens Standard and an institution’s biosafety-level containment procedures already dictate the routine spill-cleanup steps for material within a biosafety cabinet or on an open bench. The EAP element that a generic template skips is the escalation trigger: a spill involving an aerosol-generating device (a centrifuge tube that cracks mid-run, a sonicator, a homogenizer), a spill outside primary containment, or any spill of a risk-group agent above the level the room’s engineering controls were designed for should be a defined “evacuate and lock the room” event, not a judgment call made in the moment by whoever is standing there. Name the specific equipment failures that trigger it — centrifuge or incubator shutdown before leaving, door signage, who calls facilities/biosafety versus who calls 911 — and cross-reference the bloodborne pathogens training already required for anyone with this (c)(3) role.
Cryogen Oxygen Deficiency: The Alarm Means Something Different Here
Liquid nitrogen expands roughly 694:1 as it vaporizes, and OSHA’s minimum acceptable working oxygen level is 19.5%, with immediate evacuation required once an area’s oxygen concentration drops to 18.0% or below. That single fact is why a cryogen storage room cannot share an undifferentiated alarm tone with the building fire alarm: 1910.38(d)/1910.165’s requirement for a signal that is “distinctive and recognizable as a signal to… perform actions designated under the emergency action plan” is doing real work here, because the correct response to an oxygen-deficiency alarm is immediate evacuation with no (c)(3) exceptions — there is no version of this event where someone is authorized to finish a step first, unlike a chemical or biological release. Asphyxiation from oxygen displacement is undetectable without an installed monitor; by the time a person notices anything is wrong, they may already be too impaired to self-rescue. The plan should therefore say explicitly that an oxygen-monitor alarm is always an unconditional room-evacuation trigger, and that rescue of a downed person from an alarmed, oxygen-deficient space is a trained-responder task, not something a coworker attempts unprotected. See CASRAI’s guides on liquid nitrogen and cryogen handling and cryogenic storage and dewar safety for the underlying handling controls this EAP scenario sits on top of.
Building the Written Plan Around Three Scenarios
A practical structure documents the six 1910.38(c) elements once, generically, and then adds a short scenario table underneath so the plan actually answers “what do I do right now” rather than making the reader infer it:
| Scenario | Alarm signal | Evacuate or shelter | (c)(3) shutdown authorized? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chemical release | Building fire/evacuation alarm (or a local room alarm if defined) | Evacuate room, escalate to building evacuation if release threatens the exit route | Yes, defined shutdown steps only, revoked once the exit route is threatened |
| Biological spill | Local room alarm or verbal call, per institution policy | Evacuate and lock the affected room; building evacuation only if containment fails | Yes, limited to naming equipment to power down (centrifuge, incubator) before leaving |
| Cryogen oxygen deficiency | Dedicated oxygen-monitor alarm, distinct tone from fire alarm | Immediate evacuation, no exceptions | No |
Use your existing laboratory hazard risk assessment to confirm which rooms actually carry each of these three profiles before assigning alarm zones, and keep the base lab safety rules and fire extinguisher class placement cross-referenced rather than restated.
Training, Review, and Keeping the Plan Current
1910.38(e) requires the employer to designate and train employees to assist in a safe, orderly evacuation — in a lab this should map directly onto whoever the plan names for each scenario’s (c)(3) shutdown duty, so the same people who are authorized to stay a few extra seconds are the people specifically trained to know when that authorization has run out. 1910.38(f) sets the review triggers: when the plan is first developed, when an employee is newly assigned, when that employee’s responsibilities under the plan change, and whenever the plan itself is revised. OSHA’s text does not set a numeric drill frequency for a 1910.38 plan; many institutions tie a walkthrough or tabletop review to those same (f) triggers, on at least an annual cadence, and a stricter local fire code or institutional EHS policy governs where one applies.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does a small lab need a written emergency action plan?
Only if it has more than 10 employees. 1910.38(b) allows employers with 10 or fewer employees to communicate the plan orally instead of maintaining a written document, though most institutions write one anyway once any of the three scenarios above is present, since the (c)(3) shutdown-authorization language is hard to communicate reliably by word of mouth.
Is a Chemical Hygiene Plan the same thing as an Emergency Action Plan?
No. The Chemical Hygiene Plan, required under 29 CFR 1910.1450, governs routine safe handling, storage, and exposure control for chemicals used in the lab. The EAP, required under 1910.38, governs what happens once an event has escalated past routine response — evacuation, accounting for people, and who is authorized to do what before leaving. A lab typically needs both, and the EAP should reference the CHP’s spill-response procedures rather than duplicate them.
How is a Fire Prevention Plan different from an Emergency Action Plan?
1910.39 (Fire Prevention Plan) addresses controlling fuel sources, housekeeping, and ignition-source hazards to prevent a fire from starting. 1910.38 (Emergency Action Plan) addresses what to do once an emergency — fire or otherwise — is already happening. OSHA does not require the two to be combined into one document, but many employers do combine them for convenience.
How often must the emergency action plan be reviewed?
1910.38(f) requires review with each employee when the plan is initially developed, when the employee is newly assigned, when that employee’s responsibilities under the plan change, and whenever the plan itself is modified — OSHA does not set a separate numeric drill interval on top of those triggers.
