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Do I have to keep an OSHA 300 log?

By Bryant Price · September 2, 2026 · 19 min read · Last reviewed September 11, 2026

Whether you have to keep an OSHA 300 log comes down to three questions, in this order: does the rule reach you at all, does this case belong on the log, and when do you have to pick up the phone. Nothing else is worked through here, and what is left out is named at the bottom.

Everything below is 29 CFR part 1904, with the paragraph number beside the sentence it comes from.

1. Does the rule reach you at all?

There are two exemptions from keeping a log, one by size and one by industry. They work differently, both have a condition attached that people drop, and neither one turns on the headcount you would give somebody who asked.

Out by size

If your company had 10 or fewer employees at all times during the last calendar year, you do not need to keep OSHA injury and illness records, unless OSHA or the Bureau of Labor Statistics informs you in writing that you must keep records under 1904.41 or 1904.42. 1904.1(a)(1) If you had more than ten at any time during the last calendar year, you must keep records unless your establishment is in a partially exempt industry under 1904.2. 1904.1(a)(2)

The exemption is based on the number of employees in the entire company, not in one yard. 1904.1(b)(1) And the number that counts is your peak employment during the last calendar year, not your average: you qualify only if you had no more than 10 employees at any time in it. 1904.1(b)(2)

A gray paragraph number after a sentence means the sentence is the rule, and that is where to go and read it. My reading: means the sentence goes past the rule's own words and is my conclusion, not OSHA's.

My reading: a company with two locations of eight and nine people is a seventeen-person company and is outside the size exemption, and a company that runs six people all winter and thirteen for six weeks in the summer is outside it too. Neither of them knows whether it keeps a log until it has run the industry exemption as well.

My reading, and this one is a warning rather than an answer: part 1904 does not say whether people you get from a staffing service, and supervise yourself, count toward that ten. It says their injuries go on your log if you supervise them day to day 1904.31(b)(2), and it says the exemption counts employees in the entire company 1904.1(b)(1), and it never joins them. A payroll under ten, plus a handful of hands you run yourself, is exactly the shape that turns on it. Nothing on this page settles it, and if that is your shape it is worth asking OSHA rather than reading a page.

Out by industry, decided location by location

If your business establishment is classified in a specific industry group listed in appendix A to subpart B, you do not need to keep OSHA injury and illness records, unless the government asks you to keep the records under 1904.41 or 1904.42. 1904.2(a)(1) Appendix A says the same thing in its own words and slightly wider: the exemption holds unless you are asked in writing to keep records by OSHA, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, or a state agency operating under the authority of OSHA or the BLS. appendix A to subpart B of part 1904

This one is decided location by location. The partial industry classification exemption applies to individual business establishments, so a company with several establishments in different lines of business may have to keep records at some and not at others. 1904.2(b)(1) And if one or more of your establishments is in a non-exempt industry, you must keep records for all of those establishments unless you are partially exempt by size under 1904.1. 1904.2(a)(2)

The list is 82 NAICS codes. The ones that matter around here: pipeline transportation of crude oil (4861), pipeline transportation of natural gas (4862) and other pipeline transportation (4869) are all on it, and so is freight transportation arrangement (4885), which is what a load broker is. No code on the list begins with 211 (oil and gas extraction), 213 (support activities for mining), 238 (specialty trade contractors) or 484 (truck transportation). appendix A to subpart B of part 1904

My reading: a Bakken service company, a workover outfit, a hot-shot trucking company or a dirt contractor building pads is not industry-exempt, so the only way out for those is the size exemption. A gas gathering company on a pipeline code can be exempt at any headcount, until somebody writes to it.

North Dakota

Some states run their own OSHA programs under an approved state plan, and those states must have recording and reporting requirements substantially identical to this part. 1904.37(a) The approved plans are listed in 29 CFR part 1952, which carries 29 of them: twenty-two that reach private sector employers, including Puerto Rico, and seven that cover state and local government employees only, including the Virgin Islands. North Dakota is in neither list. 29 CFR part 1952

A state plan's recording and reporting requirements have to be substantially identical to this part 1904.37(a), and what is recordable and how it is recorded has to be the same as the federal rule. 1904.37(b)(1) For other part 1904 provisions, and the rule gives industry exemptions, reporting of fatalities and hospitalizations, record retention and employee involvement as examples rather than as the list, a state plan's requirements may be more stringent than or supplemental to the federal ones, though the state has to consult federal OSHA and get its approval first. 1904.37(b)(2)

My reading: a private employer in North Dakota answers to federal OSHA on this, so part 1904 applies here exactly as written, with no state layer on top of it. The moment the same company works in Wyoming, Utah or Minnesota, all of which run approved plans, the four subjects named above are worth checking against that state's rule, and so is anything else in part 1904 that matters to you, because those four are the rule's examples rather than the whole of what a plan may go further on.

2. Does this case go on the log?

A case goes on the log if it is work-related, and it is a new case, and it meets one or more of the general recording criteria in 1904.7 or the criteria for specific cases in 1904.8 through 1904.12. All three, not any one. 1904.4(a)

That cross-reference is worth a warning. Section 1904.12 does not exist in the current Code of Federal Regulations. Subpart C runs 1904.4 to 1904.11, and then 1904.13 through 1904.28 are marked reserved. 29 CFR part 1904, subpart C

A definition and a note carry the rest of this, so they come first.

The rest of question 2 turns on a physician or other licensed health care professional more than once, and the rule defines the phrase: somebody whose legally permitted scope of practice, meaning their license, registration or certification, allows them to independently perform, or to be delegated the responsibility to perform, the activities described by this regulation. 1904.46

And the other one, from the top of the part: recording a case is not an admission of anything. Recording or reporting a work-related injury, illness or fatality does not mean the employer or the employee was at fault, that an OSHA rule has been violated, or that the employee is eligible for workers' compensation or other benefits. note to 1904.0

Is it work-related?

An injury or illness is work-related if an event or exposure in the work environment either caused or contributed to the condition, or significantly aggravated a pre-existing injury or illness. Work-relatedness is presumed for anything resulting from events or exposures in the work environment, unless an exception in 1904.5(b)(2) specifically applies. 1904.5(a)

The work environment is the establishment and other locations where one or more employees are working or are present as a condition of their employment, and it includes the equipment or materials the employee uses during the course of the work, not only physical places. 1904.5(b)(1)

This page does not print the nine exceptions in 1904.5(b)(2), the separate rule for a crew on travel status in 1904.5(b)(6), what to do when it is not obvious whether the event happened in the work environment in 1904.5(b)(3), or the test for an employee working at home in 1904.5(b)(7). The recordability checker asks about the exceptions and about travel status as its first question and names the paragraph each answer rests on.

Significant aggravation of a pre-existing condition has its own test, and it is a short closed list: the workplace event has to result in death, loss of consciousness, one or more days away or of restricted work or job transfer, or medical treatment where none was needed before or a change in the medical treatment, in each case where that would not have happened but for the occupational event or exposure. For death and for loss of consciousness the rule asks whether the pre-existing injury or illness would likely not have resulted in that, but for the work event, which is a question about what was probable rather than about what was certain. 1904.5(b)(4)(i) to (iv) A pre-existing condition is one that resulted solely from a non-work-related event or exposure outside the work environment. 1904.5(b)(5)

Is it a new case?

It is a new case if the employee has not previously had a recorded injury or illness of the same type affecting the same part of the body, or if they had one, recovered completely, meaning all signs and symptoms had disappeared, and an event or exposure in the work environment caused the signs or symptoms to reappear. 1904.6(a)(1) and (a)(2)

Does it meet the criteria?

The general criteria are six, and any one of them puts the case on the log: death, days away from work, restricted work or transfer to another job, medical treatment beyond first aid, loss of consciousness, or a significant injury or illness diagnosed by a physician or other licensed health care professional even where none of the other five happened. 1904.7(a) 1904.7(b)(1)(i) to (vi)

The significant-diagnosis one has a floor the rule states outright: work-related cancer, chronic irreversible disease, a fractured or cracked bone, or a punctured eardrum must always be recorded, at the time of diagnosis by a physician or other licensed health care professional. 1904.7(b)(7) My reading: that is a floor and not a ceiling. The criterion itself is the open phrase in 1904.7(a), a significant injury or illness diagnosed by a physician or other licensed health care professional, and nothing in the section says those four are the only ones. What the section does not give you is a test for anything outside them. Beyond 1904.7(b)(7) itself, the note to 1904.7 is the only place part 1904 says anything more about the word significant, and its own conclusion names the same four. Read it anyway, because it works two of them out: a punctured eardrum and a fractured toe or rib are significant injuries even where no treatment and no restriction are recommended, and byssinosis, silicosis and some cancers are significant progressive diseases that must be recorded at the initial diagnosis even where treatment is postponed. A case outside the four is a judgment this page cannot settle for you, and having no test does not mean having no duty: 1904.7(a) makes a significant diagnosis recordable on its own, whether or not anything was treated or restricted. The fractured toe the note names is inside them: it goes on the log on a diagnosis by one of them, with no treatment and no restriction, because a fractured bone is one of the four. note to 1904.7 Loss of consciousness records the case however long the employee was out. 1904.7(b)(6)

Medical treatment means the management and care of a patient to combat disease or disorder. 1904.7(b)(5)(i) Medical treatment beyond first aid is the criterion that decides most cases and it is the one people get wrong, because first aid is a closed list of fourteen items in the rule and nothing else is on it. 1904.7(b)(5)(ii) 1904.7(b)(5)(iii) The professional status of whoever provided the treatment does not change the answer in either direction. 1904.7(b)(5)(iv) The rule takes two things out of medical treatment before the first aid list is reached, and between them they decide a lot of clinic visits: a visit to a physician or other licensed health care professional solely for observation or counseling is not medical treatment, and neither is a diagnostic procedure such as an x-ray or a blood test, including a prescription medication given solely for diagnostic purposes. The rule's own example of that one is eye drops to dilate pupils. 1904.7(b)(5)(i)(A) and (B) My reading: that second carve-out is about a medication administered so somebody can look, not about the word prescription. Outside it, a prescription medication is not on the closed first aid list, so using one is medical treatment beyond first aid. This page does not reprint the fourteen-item first aid list. The recordability checker does, item by item, with the citation on each one, and it runs in your browser.

And the same shape governs treatment: if a physician or other licensed health care professional recommends medical treatment beyond first aid and the employee does not follow the recommendation, you record the case anyway. 1904.7(b)(5)(v) It can turn on who recommended it: a non-prescription medication is first aid at nonprescription strength, and for a medication available in both prescription and non-prescription form, a recommendation by a physician or other licensed health care professional to take it at prescription strength is medical treatment. 1904.7(b)(5)(ii)(A)

3. When do you have to call OSHA?

Neither exemption touches the duty to report a severe outcome. All employers covered by the OSH Act, including those partially exempted by size or by industry classification, must report to OSHA any work-related incident that results in a fatality, the in-patient hospitalization of one or more employees, an amputation, or the loss of an eye. 1904.1(a)(1) 1904.2(a)(1) 1904.39

The section carries a deadline for making the report and, separately, a window that decides whether the outcome is reportable at all, and they are easy to run together. The deadline for making the report is eight hours after a death 1904.39(a)(1) and twenty-four hours after an in-patient hospitalization, an amputation or a loss of an eye. 1904.39(a)(2)

Separately, whether the outcome is reportable at all turns on when it arrives: a death only if it happens within 30 days of the incident, and a hospitalization, an amputation or an eye only within 24 hours of it. Either way the case must still be recorded on your injury and illness records, if you are required to keep such records. 1904.39(b)(6)

A motor vehicle accident on a public street or highway is not reportable unless it happened in a construction work zone, and neither is an event on a commercial or public transportation system such as an airplane, train, subway or bus. Both must still be recorded on your injury and illness records, if you are required to keep such records. 1904.39(b)(3) 1904.39(b)(4)

The report is made by telephone or in person to the Area Office nearest to the site of the incident, on OSHA's 800 number, or through the reporting application on OSHA's website 1904.39(a)(3)(i) to (iii), and if the Area Office is closed you must use the 800 number or the application, not an answering machine, a fax or an email. 1904.39(b)(1) My reading: that last one decides a fatality on a night tour, which is when a lot of them happen.

What this page does not cover, by name

The risk with a short page is that you can finish it and think you have the whole picture. Here is what is missing, by name, with the paragraph it lives in.

  • The nine exceptions to work-relatednessThe closed list of nine, and the two notes with it: the one that makes contaminated or employer-supplied food work-related after all, and the one that stops the cold-and-flu exception spreading to other contagious disease. Also the duty to evaluate an employee’s work duties and environment where it is not obvious whether the event happened at work at all. 1904.5(b)(2) and (b)(3)
  • Crews on travel status, and work done at homeWhen a motel is a home away from home, which drives are covered and which are not, and when an injury in an employee’s own house is work-related. 1904.5(b)(6) and (b)(7)
  • Restricted work, job transfer, and counting the daysWhat counts as restricted work, when a recommendation on its own is enough, what to do with a vague light-duty note, how many days you enter, and the four places the count stops, one of which you must apply rather than may, and one of which is the 180-day cap. 1904.7(b)(3) and (b)(4)
  • Illnesses that come back, and two doctors who disagreeThe illnesses recorded once and only once, the ones a new exposure makes into a new case, and what to do with two recommendations. 1904.6(b)
  • Privacy concern casesThe six kinds of case whose name comes off the log, the confidential list you keep instead, and the rule on handing the forms to anybody outside the group entitled to them. 1904.29(b)(6) to (b)(10)
  • The 300-A annual summary and its posting datesThe year-end review, what goes on the summary, who may certify it, and posting it no later than February 1 and keeping it up until April 30. 1904.32
  • Electronic filing to OSHAThe three categories that file every year without being asked, the March 2 deadline, and the two industry appendices that decide two of the three categories, the third being decided by headcount alone. Neither appendix is the list that exempts you above. 1904.41 and appendices A and B to subpart E
  • The forms themselvesThe 300, the 300-A and the 301, which box takes what, the seven-day entry deadline, and what makes a form equivalent. The blank forms are free. 1904.29 and OSHA’s forms package
  • Who can ask to see the log, and how fastThe end-of-next-business-day clock for an employee, the seven-calendar-day clock for an authorized employee representative asking for 301s, the four-business-hour clock for a government representative, the reporting procedure you owe your own crew, and the ban on retaliating against somebody who uses it. 1904.35 and 1904.40
  • Borrowed crews, contractors and temporary workersWhose log a case goes on when the hand is not on your payroll. The day-to-day supervision test decides it, and the two employers are told to coordinate so the case is recorded once rather than twice. 1904.31
  • Establishments, and how long you keep the recordsThe full definition and its two tests, a log for each establishment, records kept centrally, five years of retention, and updating a year already closed. 1904.30, 1904.46 and 1904.33
  • The four sections that record a case on their own termsNeedlestick and sharps injuries, medical removal, hearing loss and tuberculosis. Each is a route onto the log that the six criteria in question 2 do not decide, so a case can be recordable under one of them after question 2 has come back no. The work-related test and the new-case test still apply to all four, and two of the four send you back to 1904.5 and 1904.7 by name. 1904.8 through 1904.11
  • Finding your own NAICS code, and the rest of the exempt listThe routes the rule gives you for working out which industry group you are in, including asking your nearest OSHA office. The codes named in question 1 above are the ones that come up most around here and not every code on the list that could reach a business in this basin, and nothing on this page settles how a business whose activity is arguable, a gathering system being the local example, gets classified in the first place. 1904.2(b)(2)
  • The two written requests that lift an exemptionQuestion 1 above quotes both exemptions with the condition attached, and the condition names two sections. What OSHA’s notification under 1904.41 does, and separately the Bureau of Labor Statistics letter under 1904.42, which is the one that reaches a company that is exempt by size or by industry, are not worked through here. 1904.41 and 1904.42
  • Variances, and records you already keep for another agencyA variance from the recordkeeping rule is a third route out that this page does not cover, and so is the case where records you make for another government agency count instead. 1904.38 and 1904.3
  • The rest of the reporting sectionWhat counts as an amputation and what counts as an in-patient hospitalization, the relief for an admission that is only observation or diagnostic testing, the answer on a fatality or a hospitalization caused by a heart attack, how the clock moves when you learn about a case late, and the eight things the report itself has to contain. 1904.39
  • Three questions the rule leaves open, and one it half answersWhether an owner counts toward the ten: 1904.31(a) answers it for a sole proprietorship and a partnership, where the owner or partners are not employees for recordkeeping purposes, and says nothing about an owner-officer of a corporation or an LLC. What the size test means for a company in its first calendar year, which is the one case where the last calendar year has nothing in it. And the staffing-service question raised in question 1 above. 1904.1(b)(2) and 1904.31(a)

Two of these are answered better by a tool than by a paragraph. The recordability checker walks question 2 case by case, prints the fourteen-item first aid list with the citation on each item, and runs the question 3 clock. The TRIR and DART calculator does the arithmetic the 300-A feeds. Both are free and run in your browser.

Sources

Every sentence on this page that states a rule is lifted, with its citation, from my long reference page on the same subject, whose text was read from the local copy of Title 29 pulled September 10, 2026 from GovInfo bulk data (Title 29 last amended August 31, 2026). Every quotation here was re-checked against that copy on September 11, 2026. The list of what this page does not cover, and the sentences about how the page itself is built, are written for this page, carry no citation, and are not the rule.

29 CFR 1904.0 · https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/part-1904/section-1904.0
29 CFR 1904.1 · https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/part-1904/section-1904.1
29 CFR 1904.2 · https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/part-1904/section-1904.2
Appendix A to subpart B of 29 CFR part 1904, the partially exempt industry list · https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/part-1904/subpart-B
29 CFR 1904.3 · https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/part-1904/section-1904.3
29 CFR 1904.4 · https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/part-1904/section-1904.4
29 CFR 1904.5 · https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/part-1904/section-1904.5
29 CFR 1904.6 · https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/part-1904/section-1904.6
29 CFR 1904.7 · https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/part-1904/section-1904.7
29 CFR part 1904 subpart C, the specific-case sections 1904.8 to 1904.11 · https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/part-1904/subpart-C
29 CFR 1904.29 · https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/part-1904/section-1904.29
29 CFR 1904.30 · https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/part-1904/section-1904.30
29 CFR 1904.31 · https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/part-1904/section-1904.31
29 CFR 1904.32 · https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/part-1904/section-1904.32
29 CFR 1904.33 · https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/part-1904/section-1904.33
29 CFR 1904.35 · https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/part-1904/section-1904.35
29 CFR 1904.37 · https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/part-1904/section-1904.37
29 CFR 1904.39 · https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/part-1904/section-1904.39
29 CFR 1904.40 · https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/part-1904/section-1904.40
29 CFR 1904.38 · https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/part-1904/section-1904.38
29 CFR 1904.41 · https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/part-1904/section-1904.41
29 CFR 1904.42 · https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/part-1904/section-1904.42
Appendices A and B to subpart E of 29 CFR part 1904 · https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/part-1904/subpart-E
29 CFR 1904.46 · https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/part-1904/section-1904.46
29 CFR part 1952, approved state plans · https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/part-1952
OSHA recordkeeping forms, blank 300, 300-A and 301 · https://www.osha.gov/recordkeeping/forms

This is a plain-language guide, not legal advice, and it is not a substitute for reading the paragraph next to the sentence you care about. If a case is close, the safe move is to record it and say why.

Or stop keeping it by hand

F&H STAC builds the 300, the 300-A and the 301 out of one incident entry, in your own app, with the privacy case and the reporting clock handled for you.

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