In brief
On 06 September 2026 two familiar pieces of South African occupational health and safety law are repealed in their entirety. The Environmental Regulations for Workplaces, 1987 and the Noise-Induced Hearing Loss Regulations, 2003 fall away, and the Physical Agents Regulations, 2024 and the Noise Exposure Regulations, 2024 take their place. This is not a consultation, a draft or a proposal. It is a date, fixed by the regulations themselves, and it is close. The new instruments are heavier than the ones they replace, and they are heavier in a particular direction: they turn occupational health from something an employer does into something an employer must be able to prove, on a schedule, for forty years.
What is actually changing
Both instruments were published in Government Gazette 52226 on 06 March 2025, under sections 43(1)(a) and (b) of the Occupational Health and Safety Act 85 of 1993. [1][2] Notice 5952 promulgated the Physical Agents Regulations, 2024. Notice 5953 promulgated the Noise Exposure Regulations, 2024. [1][3]
Neither took immediate full effect. Regulation 21 of the Physical Agents Regulations provides that the Environmental Regulations for Workplaces, 1987 are repealed 18 months after promulgation. Regulation 18 of the Noise Exposure Regulations does the same for the Noise-Induced Hearing Loss Regulations, 2003. Eighteen months from 06 March 2025 is 06 September 2026. [1][2] On that date the old regulations are repealed in their entirety, and the new ones stand alone.
Two independent law firms, ENSafrica and Webber Wentzel, arrive at the same date from the same regulations. [1][2] We treat it as settled.
The scope is wider than most employers assume
The phrase "physical agents" sounds narrow and technical. It is not. The regulations define a physical agent as a source of energy which may result in injury or disease after exposure, and expressly include cold stress, heat stress, vibration, non-ionising radiation and illumination. [1][2] Indoor air quality is separately covered. [2]
Read plainly, that means the new regulations reach the lighting levels in a warehouse aisle, the heat in a kitchen or a roof space, the cold in a chiller, the vibration in a hand tool or a forklift seat, and the air in an office with a struggling ventilation system. Very few workplaces fall outside all of these.
The Noise Exposure Regulations apply where people are exposed to continuous or impulse noise at or above the noise-rating limit or the noise action level, and to designers, manufacturers, importers and suppliers of plant and machinery for workplace use. [1][2]
What the new duties actually require
The new regulations replace a compliance style built on general standards with one built on documented, repeating, dated activity. [2]
- A documented risk assessment by a competent person, at least every two years.
- Where the assessment shows exposure at or above the limits, an exposure monitoring programme, conducted by a competent person. For noise, that monitoring must be done by an approved noise inspection authority, at least every two years.
- A documented medical screening programme where the risk assessment identifies the need, or where the employee is a "vulnerable employee", a new category defined as an employee at higher risk of injury, disease or complications from exposure. [2]
- Medical screening carried out by an Occupational Medicine Practitioner immediately before an employee starts work, then at intervals the practitioner sets but not exceeding two years, and again on exit unless screening was done within the previous six months.
- A documented system of medical surveillance overseen by an Occupational Medicine Practitioner, with the employee's written informed consent.
- For noise, audiometry for any employee who may be exposed, conducted under the Code of Practice for Audiometry. [3]
- Elimination of exposure at source so far as is reasonably practicable, and where that is not practicable, reduction below the occupational exposure limits through a prescribed hierarchy of controls, with the controls themselves inspected and tested by a competent person at intervals not exceeding two years. [2]
- Consultation with health and safety representatives and the health and safety committee before assessments, monitoring and surveillance, and disclosure of the documented outcomes to them.
- Training that includes practical and theoretical knowledge of the sources of exposure, the risks, the controls, the personal precautions and how to access one's own records, with refresher training annually. Training is no longer a once-off event. [2]
- Retention of records of training, risk assessments, action plans, monitoring, measurements, medical screening, surveillance and control maintenance for forty years, available on demand to the health and safety representative, the committee or an inspector. [2]
The two-year and forty-year problem
Read that list again and notice its shape. Almost every duty is either a cycle or an archive.
The cycles are two-yearly (risk assessment, exposure monitoring, medical screening intervals, control inspection) and annual (refresher training). The archive is forty years. A duty that repeats on a two-year cycle is exactly the kind of duty that quietly lapses, because nothing in the working week reminds anyone of it and the person who did it last time has often moved on. A record that must survive forty years is exactly the kind of record that does not survive a laptop change, an office move, or the departure of the safety officer who kept the folder.
An inspector arriving in 2027 will not ask whether the workplace is safe. They will ask for the dated risk assessment, the monitoring report, the audiometry results, the training register with this year's refresher on it, and the consent forms. Those are documents with dates, and dates are the easiest thing in the world for an inspector to check and the hardest thing in the world for a paper system to keep current.
One open question, and what to do about it
Webber Wentzel notes an ambiguity: it is not clear whether both sets of regulations apply concurrently until 06 September 2026, or whether the new Physical Agents Regulations only take effect on that date. Their advice, and it is the right advice, is that employers should begin implementation now, so far as is reasonably practicable, in order to be fully compliant by the effective date. [2]
There is a second, narrower loose end. The same gazette carried Notice 5954, amending the General Safety Regulations. ENSafrica describes that notice as unclear, contradictory and confusing, and takes the view that the Department of Employment and Labour should withdraw it and promulgate a proper one. [1] So the General Safety Regulations position is less settled than the two main instruments. That is worth watching, but it is not a reason to delay on the parts that are settled.
GRC Shop view
Our view is that this transition, not the Construction Regulations and not the OHS Amendment Bill, is the compliance event that will most visibly separate South African employers over the next twelve months, and that it is being badly under-noticed.
The reason is structural. Most of what an SME calls its health and safety system is a set of documents that were correct on the day they were signed. The new regulations are indifferent to documents that were correct once. They ask for a cycle that is currently running and an archive that has not lost anything in forty years. Those two demands are close to impossible to meet with folders, spreadsheets and the memory of whoever holds the safety portfolio this year, and they are ordinary to meet with a living record that knows what is due, what has expired, and where the evidence is.
We also expect this architecture, dated assessment, monitoring, surveillance, refresher training, long retention, to become the template for the wider OHS reform rather than an exception to it. Employers who build the habit for physical agents and noise now will find the rest of the decade's regulation asks them for the same shape of proof.
None of this changes who owns the duty. The employer must appoint the competent person, commission the monitoring, engage the Occupational Medicine Practitioner and run the training. What a platform can do is make sure nothing in that cycle silently lapses, and that when an inspector asks, the evidence trail is there and dated.
If you want your compliance record to be live rather than historical before September, start here: https://www.grcshop.co.za/get-a-quote
Abbreviations
- OEL: occupational exposure limit
- OHS: Occupational Health and Safety
- OHSA: Occupational Health and Safety Act 85 of 1993
- OMP: Occupational Medicine Practitioner
- PPE: personal protective equipment
- SME: small and medium enterprise
References
The sources below are external links to third party websites. We link only to publicly accessible pages and check periodically that the links still work.
[1] ENSafrica, "South Africa: Occupational Health and Safety Act, 1993 (OHASA), Physical Agents Regulations 2024, Noise Exposure Regulations 2024, and Amendment of the General Safety Regulations 2025", 11 Mar 2025. https://www.ensafrica.com/news/detail/9836/south-africa-occupational-health-and-safety-a
[2] Webber Wentzel, "Recent amendments to the Occupational Health and Safety Act: new regulations", 2025. https://www.webberwentzel.com/News/Pages/recent-amendments-to-the-occupational-health-and-safety-act-new-regulations.aspx
[3] South African Government, "Occupational Health and Safety Act: Noise Exposure Regulations 2024, Code of Practice for Audiometry and explanatory notes, Government Gazette 52226", 06 Mar 2025. https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/202503/52226gon5953.pdf