Public safety diving

[1] In the US, many public safety divers are volunteers, but career law enforcement or fire/rescue personnel also often take on these additional responsibilities as part of their occupation.

Firefighters will find the diving equipment has similarities to the full face masks and breathing apparatus worn in smoke filled environments.

The exemption was written to include the ability to deviate from safe diving practices under limited conditions where compliance would be impracticable due to time constraints or the possible consequences of failing to perform the task overwhelm the risks taken using available facilities.

This exclusion does not apply during training, recovery operations, searches where there is no reasonable probability of rescue of a living person or there is no real and immediate public safety hazard.

In other cases the purpose of the diving operation may be to mitigate a specific environmental threat, like a spillage, and the methods used are chosen to minimise the overall effects of the incident.