A reasonable number of different people should have Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response (HAZWOPER) training at some point in their professional careers. It has been mandated that several different types of employees in organizations which frequently deal with hazardous waste be trained to do the five different kinds of clean-up work which is often required in the areas where a hazardous material spill or other pollution action has occurred. OSHA, which is short for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration ( a branch of the U.S. federal government which mandates a healthy work place for employees), has designated several different levels of hazardous material instruction and supervised experience.

Among the least rigorous of these procedural instruction sessions is for people who work at treatment, storage and disposal facilities. These employees are required to have 24 hours of classroom style instruction, followed up with eight hours of refresher course work on an annual basis. As one's level of hazardous material responsibility rises, however, so does the need to have extensive course work, supervised experience - sometimes for several days - and plenty of additional annual refresher courses. While they are at the low level of the training spectrum for hazardous waste product employees, they do still undergo a rather long instructional period.

However, treatment and storage workers are not the only kinds of employees who should be trained in the clean up operations that are involved when hazardous waste is spilled. In truth, every type of employee requires training or some sort, when their health may be impacted by the existence and immediate presence of such types of materials. For example, general workers whose jobs require them to be on site where and when hazardous waste is known to be present in environments different from the previously-mentioned disposal facilities must actually have 40 hours of classroom style instruction, three days of being supervised during the real thing, and be retrained every year for no less than eight hours. As for people who are to be considered First Responders, they actually require that level of instruction, and an additional eight hours or more to ensure their competency.

Granted that the guidelines which have been mentioned thus far only apply to lower tier employees. As for any managerial and supervisory staff, the certification requirements are even more substantial. For these types of personnel, who must ensure the safety and knowledge level of those who are beneath them, no less than eight hours of education on the topic of hazardous materials above and beyond what their best trained employees have.