Are Public Safety Divers Exempt from OSHA? What NC and SC Dive Teams Need to Know

Brent Clevenger Jun 18, 2026

By Brent Clevenger, Owner, Sink or Swim Scuba
Category: Public Safety Diving

If you run or dive on a public safety dive team in North Carolina or South Carolina, you have probably heard someone say it with confidence: "We're public safety divers, so we're exempt from OSHA." I have said something close to it myself over the years. It sounds right. It feels right. And for most teams in the Carolinas, it is not actually correct.

I want to walk through this the way I wish someone had walked through it with me years ago, because the word "exempt" is causing teams real confusion, and that confusion can show up at the worst possible time: after something goes wrong, when your team has to defend its actions.

To be clear up front, this article is not legal advice. I am a dive professional with a law enforcement and public safety diving background, not an attorney. What I am sharing here is meant to help your team ask better questions and make better operational decisions. For binding determinations, talk to your agency's legal counsel and your state OSH office.

The First Mistake: "Exempt" Is the Wrong Word

Here is the part almost everyone gets backwards. To be exempt from OSHA's Commercial Diving Standard (29 CFR 1910, Subpart T), you first have to be covered by it at all.

Coverage comes first. Exemption is a narrow door inside the house. If you are standing outside the house entirely, you do not need the door.

So the real question is not "Are we exempt?" The real question is "Are we even covered, and if we are, what applies to us?" Once you frame it that way, the whole subject gets a lot clearer.

The Two Questions That Actually Decide It

For practical purposes, two questions determine where your team stands.

Question one: Are you an employee or a volunteer?

OSHA's authority runs through the employer and employee relationship. Volunteers who receive no pay or compensation generally are not under OSHA's jurisdiction. Uniformed military personnel are not covered either. If there is no employer and employee relationship, OSHA does not have a seat at the table.

Question two: Do you work in a State Plan state or a Federal OSHA state?

This is where the Carolinas matter. Both North Carolina and South Carolina operate their own OSHA approved State Plans that cover state and local government workers. That single fact changes the answer for most paid public safety divers in our region.

Why North Carolina and South Carolina Are Different

In a state where only Federal OSHA applies, Federal OSHA does not have authority over state and municipal employees. Teams in those states can end up with no enforceable OSHA diving standard over them at all.

The Carolinas are not those states. Because North Carolina and South Carolina are State Plan states, paid public safety dive teams here generally are covered. And if you are covered, you are not broadly exempt. What you have is a narrow, temporary allowance to deviate from safe diving practices during a genuine immediate response, and only for as long as it takes to get back to safe diving practices.

The moment a full team and proper equipment are on scene and safe diving is possible, that allowance is gone.

Who Actually Regulates Dive Teams in NC and SC?

This is where a lot of teams stop short, because the answer is not just "OSHA." In the Carolinas, the occupational safety authority over your team is your state program, not federal OSHA, and there are several other layers of authority and standards that can come into play. It is worth knowing who actually has a say.

North Carolina: the NC Department of Labor, OSH Division. North Carolina runs its own OSHA approved State Plan, and the NC Department of Labor adopts the federal OSHA standards, including the Subpart T commercial diving standard, largely verbatim with certain state specific exceptions. In practice, that means commercial diving operations in North Carolina are enforced by the NCDOL Occupational Safety and Health Division, using the same Subpart T framework along with the state's enforcement guidance. You can read the state's own commercial diving overview directly from the source: NCDOL Commercial Diving and Which OSHA Standards Apply.

South Carolina: SC OSHA, under LLR. South Carolina operates its State Plan through SC OSHA, which sits within the South Carolina Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation. SC OSHA covers all state and local government workers plus most private sector workplaces, and adopts the federal standards with a handful of exceptions. For South Carolina teams, SC OSHA is the enforcing body for commercial diving. The official coverage details are here: South Carolina State Plan.

Beyond OSHA, other authorities and standards can apply. Even after you have sorted out OSHA coverage, your team rarely answers to OSHA alone. Depending on your mission and jurisdiction, several other layers can shape what is expected of you:

Your own agency's policies and standard operating procedures. These are frequently stricter than OSHA, and they are usually what gets enforced day to day. In a lawsuit, your own SOPs are often the first document examined.
NFPA consensus standards. NFPA 1006 (Standard for Technical Rescuer Professional Qualifications, which includes dive rescue) and NFPA 1670 (Standard on Operations and Training for Technical Search and Rescue Incidents) are widely referenced in the fire and rescue world. They are not laws by themselves, but agencies often adopt them, and they are commonly cited as the standard of care if your actions are ever challenged.
DHS/FEMA NIMS Resource Typing. The federal National Incident Management System defines public safety dive team typing, which matters for mutual aid deployment and for grant eligibility.
Maritime and navigable waters. Maritime work is carved out of both state plans, so dives in those settings can pull federal OSHA and the U.S. Coast Guard back into the picture.

The takeaway is simple: in NC and SC, "Are we exempt from OSHA?" is only one piece. The fuller question is which combination of state OSH authority, agency policy, consensus standards, and incident command structure applies to the specific dive you are about to make.

The Hard Part: What the Exemption Does Not Cover

This is the part that surprises most teams, and it is the part worth sitting with.

The public safety allowance is built for true immediate response. Saving a life. Preventing serious injury. Stopping major environmental or property catastrophe. It is not built for the missions most teams actually run most of the time.

Body recovery of a known deceased victim, evidence recovery, weapon recovery, and routine vehicle or boat recovery that does not pose an immediate threat to life are generally not covered by the immediate response allowance. Neither are training dives or routine searches. In other words, the bread and butter work of a public safety dive team often falls outside the very exemption people assume protects them.

OSHA does not even recognize "public safety diver" as a category of diving. To them, you are a diver, and your purpose at the moment of the dive is what matters.

So What Should a Team Actually Do?

Here is the approach I believe in, and the one I help teams build toward: voluntary compliance with the parts of the commercial diving standard that genuinely apply to your operations.

You do not have to dive like a saturation crew on an oil rig. Plenty of the commercial standard simply does not apply to what a public safety team does. But the sections that do apply, things like dive team qualifications, safe practices, predive and postdive procedures, and equipment, are worth meeting on purpose rather than by accident.

Two reasons. First, it protects your divers, which is the whole point. Second, if your team ever has to defend its actions in a civil or criminal proceeding, being able to show that you trained to and operated within the applicable standards puts you in a far stronger position than hoping the word "exempt" carries the day.

How Sink or Swim Scuba Helps

This is the world we live in. With a law enforcement and public safety diving background, ERDI training facility status, and authorized Interspiro sales and service under one roof, we are positioned to do something most vendors cannot: train your team, equip your team, and service that equipment, all in one place.

We support fire, law enforcement, EMS, and recovery teams across North Carolina, South Carolina, and the East Coast. If you want to talk through where your team stands, build out an operational training plan, or evaluate equipment, that conversation is exactly what we are here for.

You can learn more on our public safety diving page, explore our public safety dive team readiness support, or see our training pathway from open water to operational public safety diver. If equipment is the priority, we are an authorized Interspiro distributor for the region.

Start the Conversation

If your team is sorting through training, compliance posture, or equipment decisions, give us a call at (704) 823-0501 or reach out through our public safety dive consultation page. We are glad to help you think it through.

Again, this article is educational and is not legal advice. For binding answers about your specific team, confirm with your agency's legal counsel and your state OSH program (the NC Department of Labor OSH Division in North Carolina, or SC OSHA under LLR in South Carolina).