TUF International provides specialist commercial diving services to chemical plants, petrochemical facilities, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and industrial process sites where conventional diving is not possible due to hazardous, contaminated, or chemically active environments. Our teams are equipped and trained to operate in ATEX-classified zones and COSHH-regulated environments — maintaining safe, compliant, and efficient operations across 154+ countries.

ATEX — short for Atmosphères Explosibles — is the European Union's regulatory framework governing equipment and protective systems used in potentially explosive atmospheres. In practice, this means that all electrical and mechanical equipment deployed in ATEX-classified zones must be certified to prevent ignition of flammable gases, vapours, mists, or dusts. For commercial diving contractors working in chemical plant environments, this classification extends to underwater lighting, communication systems, and tooling — requirements that eliminate the use of standard commercial diving equipment and demand specialist, zone-rated alternatives.

COSHH — the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations — places a legal duty on employers to assess and control exposure to hazardous substances in the workplace. In underwater industrial environments, this framework governs everything from the selection of drysuit materials and glove compounds to the design of post-dive decontamination stations and the monitoring of diver exposure to specific chemical agents throughout the operation.
Beyond regulatory compliance, successful diving operations in these environments depend equally on pre-dive planning, real-time atmospheric monitoring, standby rescue capability, and post-dive medical surveillance. Permit-to-work systems — mandatory across most chemical and pharmaceutical plant sites — add a further layer of coordination between the diving team, the site safety officer, and plant operations personnel before any underwater work may begin.

Our teams carry full COSHH assessments, ATEX-compliant equipment, and site-specific risk plans for every operation — enabling planned maintenance, emergency incident response, and structural inspection to be delivered safely inside live process environments where no other access method is viable.