During the COVID-19 pandemic, N95 respirators were in critically short supply. On April 3, 2020, OSHA issued interim enforcement guidance to its compliance officers allowing temporary flexibility under the Respiratory Protection standard (29 CFR 1910.134) so employers could use respirators certified under foreign standards.
OSHA permitted use of filtering facepiece respirators and elastomeric air-purifying respirators certified by Australia, Brazil, China, the European Union, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Mexico. One critical limitation applied: devices certified exclusively under standards of the People's Republic of China, and not made by a NIOSH certificate holder, could not be used for aerosol-generating procedures in healthcare settings 'unless the only feasible alternative is a facemask or improvised nose/mouth cover.'
Employers had to prioritize equipment in a set sequence: NIOSH-certified equipment first, then foreign-certified devices, then facemasks, with homemade masks only as a last resort. Regardless of where a respirator was certified, all workers still had to perform user seal checks per 1910.134 Appendix B-1. OSHA exercised citation discretion only when employers demonstrated good-faith efforts to obtain appropriate alternatives and implemented engineering and administrative controls to reduce the need for respiratory protection. Note that this is an archived document reflecting historical pandemic guidance.