KPA launches VOC Air Monitoring and Hazardous Waste Analysis service

KPA last week launched its Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) Air Monitoring and Hazardous Waste Analysis service.

It is the first time KPA has offered laboratory testing, providing an end-to-end service for the automotive industry that includes:

• Sampling
• Certified laboratory analysis
• Expert interpretation
• Documentation regulators require

managed as one program.

Backed by certified laboratory partners and KPA's in-house EHS consultants, the services give dealerships, collision centers, and auto care businesses lab-verified data on what employees are breathing and what their business waste contains - the proof OSHA and EPA look for when a respiratory program or waste determination gets questioned.

Regulators require measurable evidence

Compliance comes down to what a business can prove.

OSHA's respiratory protection standard (29 CFR §1910.134) requires employers to make “a reasonable estimate of employee exposures.” If they can't, they’re required to treat the air as immediately dangerous to life or health (IDLH), likely forcing the use of the most protective and expensive respirator approved for these conditions.

KPA said using reasonable estimates isn’t enough, as OSHA has not established exposure limits for the certain isocyanates in automotive clearcoats and hardeners, though NIOSH has warned for decades that exposure to diisocyanates can cause occupational asthma and, in documented cases, death.

The same need for evidence applies to hazardous waste. EPA rules (40 CFR §262.11) require businesses to support their own waste determinations and retain the records for at least three years, with penalties reaching $93,058 per day, per violation.

Regulators are paying attention: respiratory protection was OSHA's fifth most cited standard in fiscal year 2025.

“Every compliance program gets tested eventually, either by an inspector, an insurer, or an injured employee's attorney,” said Wayne Curtis, CEO at KPA. “What matters at that point is the evidence behind your decisions. The assumptions that fail are rarely dramatic: a respirator picked for a hazard nobody measured, or a drum labeled non-hazardous because that is how it was labeled last year. Repeated across dozens of rooftops, that stops being a paperwork problem and becomes dozens of employees breathing something nobody checked. No one had built this end to end for automotive, so we did. It protects the business, and more to the point, it protects the people in the shop and the communities around them.”

Add-on services to KPA’s EHS programs

Both services are available as add-ons to KPA's Environmental Health and Safety programs:

• Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) Air Monitoring - validate respirator decisions with shop-specific data: After a full-shift personal air sampling event, a certified laboratory measures employee exposure to airborne chemicals and delivers a respiratory exposure assessment based on the materials and processes in use at that location. Shops use it to confirm whether respirators are required, and back their respiratory protection program with their own numbers instead of industry averages.
• Hazardous Waste Analysis - classify mixed waste streams correctly the first time: KPA tests mixed-composition waste for toxicity, ignitability, and corrosivity, covering the streams hardest to call from process knowledge alone: paint booth filters, sludge, absorbents, solvent blends, and more. The lab-verified results determine hazardous waste status, establish the right disposal path, and cut risk on both sides: penalties for under-classifying waste, and the cost of paying hazardous rates for waste that isn't.

Interpretation stays in-house: KPA's certified environmental experts, whose credentials include Certified Hazardous Materials Manager (CHMM) and Registered Environmental Professional (REP), review every lab result before it reaches the customer, prepare the final report, and work with each location through what the findings require.

“A lab report is a data point, not a compliance program,” said Mike Tanguay, National Director, EHS Field Services at KPA. “The value shows up when a credentialed consultant who knows the shop turns those results into decisions: this waste stream changes disposal profiles, that booth needs a different respirator. Testing tells you what's true. We tell you what to do about it.”

The launch builds on expanded EHS products KPA introduced in July and represents the company's latest addition to its automotive EHS program this year.

KPA supports more than 15,000 dealerships, collision centers, and auto care businesses with more than 150 in-house compliance consultants who make roughly 24,000 visits a year and more than 400 automotive-specific training courses. KPA's software, consulting, and training solutions have helped more than 8 million employees identify risk and maintain compliance across their organizations.