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1.1 Definitions

(1) In this Occupational Health and Safety Regulation

"acceptable to the Board"
Note: Many sections of the Occupational Health and Safety Regulation refer to standards, procedures, or means "acceptable to the Board." Information on what is acceptable to the Board may be obtained by referring to the OHS Guidelines on the particular section at or other Board publications, or by contacting the Board.

"administrative controls" means the provision, use and scheduling of work activities and resources in the workplace, including planning, organizing, staffing and coordinating, for the purpose of controlling risk;

"B.C. Electrical Code" has the same meaning as in the Electrical Safety Regulation;

"Board" means the Workers' Compensation Board;

"combustible liquid" means a liquid that has a flash point at or above 37.8 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit) and below 93.3 degrees Celsius (200 degrees Fahrenheit);

"contaminant" means a harmful or irritant material, or nuisance dust, foreign to the normal composition of a substance, or a material that varies the normal proportions of components in a mixture such as air;

"engineering controls" means the physical arrangement, design or alteration of workstations, equipment, materials, production facilities or other aspects of the physical work environment, for the purpose of controlling risk;

"flammable liquid" means a liquid that has a flash point below 37.8 degrees Celsius (100 degreees Fahrenheit);

"hazard" means a thing or condition that may expose a person to a risk of injury or occupational disease;

"hazard area" means an area in a workplace where a hazard exists, or is created, due to a condition in the area or the activities conducted in it;

"hazardous product" means any product, mixture, material or substance that is classified in accordance with the regulations made under section 15 (1) of the Hazardous Products Act (Canada) in a category or subcategory of a hazard class listed in Schedule 2 of that Act;

"HEPA" means, in reference to air filtration, a high efficiency particulate air filter meeting the specifications of a nuclear grade filter, providing a 99.97% filtration efficiency at a 0.3 micrometre particle size;

"incident" includes an accident or other occurrence which resulted in or had the potential for causing an injury or occupational disease;

"IDLH atmosphere" means an atmosphere containing a substance at a concentration which is immediately dangerous to life or health (IDLH) because the concentration is greater than that from which one could escape without any escape-impairing symptoms or irreversible health effects, and includes an atmosphere with an unknown concentration with the potential to be immediately dangerous to life or health;

"mg/m3" means milligrams of a substance per cubic metre of air;
Note: It is a measure of weight and generally applies to aerosols such as dusts, fumes and mists.

"oxygen deficient" means, in relation to air, a condition in which there is less than 19.5% oxygen by volume, or the partial pressure of oxygen is less than 16.3 kPa (122 mm Hg);

"ppm" means parts of a vapour or a gas per million parts of contaminated air by volume at a temperature of 25 degrees Celsius and an atmospheric pressure of 760 millimetres of mercury;

"practicable" means that which is reasonably capable of being done;

"professional engineer" means a person who is registered or licensed to practice engineering under the provisions of the Engineers and Geoscientists Act;

"professional geoscientist" means a professional geoscientist or licensee under the Engineers and Geoscientists Act;

"qualified" means being knowledgeable of the work, the hazards involved and the means to control the hazards, by reason of education, training, experience or a combination thereof;

"qualified registered professional" means

(a) a professional engineer or professional geoscientist, and

(b) in relation to a forestry operation, a person referred to in paragraph (a) or a registered professional forester, registered forest technologist or holder of a special permit under the Foresters Act;

"rated capacity" or "rated load" means the load that machinery or a piece of equipment is, in accordance with its design, rated to bear under section 4.8;

"resource road" means a road or portion of a road on Crown land, and includes a bridge, culvert, ford or other structure or work associated with the road, but does not include a highway within the meaning of the Transportation Act,

"risk" means a chance of injury or occupational disease;

"safety data sheet" or "SDS" means a document that contains, under the headings that, by virtue of the regulations made under section 15 (1) of the Hazardous Products Act (Canada), are required to appear in the document, information about a hazardous product, including information related to the hazards associated with any use, handling or storage of the hazardous product in the workplace;

"sensitizer" means a substance that has been shown to elicit an allergenic type of response in humans after an initial exposure, resulting in development of symptoms upon subsequent exposure at much lower concentrations;

"supervisor" means a person who instructs, directs and controls workers in the performance of their duties;

"utility service" means a petroleum pipeline, sanitary sewer line, enclosed storm sewer, water line, steam line or electrical cable;

"WHMIS" means the Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System referred to in section 5.3;

"working load limit" or "WLL" means the maximum load which a product is authorized by the manufacturer to support in a particular service.

(2) Subject to subsection (3), in this Regulation, "workplace" does not include a resource road.

(3) A portion of a resource road is a workplace during any period within which the portion is being built, maintained, repaired, rehabilitated, stabilized, upgraded, removed or deactivated.

(4) Although a resource road does not constitute a workplace for the purposes of this Regulation, other than in one of the limited circumstances referred to in subsection (3), a reference to a workplace in this Regulation continues to include a thing or place that constitutes a workplace even though that thing, or an activity or the result of an activity initiated or carried out at that place, is in whole or in part on a resource road.

[Amended by B.C. Reg. 253/2001, effective January 28, 2002.]

[Amended by B.C. Reg. 312/2003, effective October 29, 2003.]

[Amended by B.C. Reg. 315/2003, effective October 29, 2003.]

[Amended by B.C. Reg. 20/2008, effective May 1, 2008.]

[Amended by B.C. Reg. 258/2008, effective January 1, 2009.]

[Amended by B.C. Reg. 312/2010, effective February 1, 2011.]

[Amended by B.C. Reg. 305/2012, effective October 16, 2012.]

[Amended by B.C. Reg. 30/2015, effective August 4, 2015.]

[Amended by B.C. Reg. 9/2017, effective May 1, 2017.]

Disclaimer: The Workers' Compensation Board of B.C. ("WorkSafeBC") publishes the online version Occupational Health and Safety Regulation ("OHS Regulation") in accordance with its mandate under the Workers Compensation Act to provide information and promote public awareness of occupational health and safety matters. The online OHS Regulation is not the official version of the OHS Regulation, which may be purchased from Crown Publications. WorkSafeBC endeavours to update the online OHS Regulation as soon as possible following any legislative amendments. However, WorkSafeBC does not warrant the accuracy or the completeness of the online OHS Regulation, and neither WorkSafeBC nor its board of directors, employees or agents shall be liable to any person for any loss or damage of any nature, whether arising out of negligence or otherwise, arising from the use of the online OHS Regulation. Employers are legally obligated to make a copy of the Workers Compensation Act and the OHS Regulation readily available for review by workers. The circumstances under which WorkSafeBC may consider an employer's providing access to electronic versions of the Act and OHS Regulation to have satisfied this obligation are described in Guideline G-D3-115(2)(f).