Bleeding Control Kits: Laws, Compliance & Requirements

Uncontrolled bleeding is one of the most survivable causes of traumatic death. But that's only true if someone nearby knows what to do and has the right tools close by. A person can bleed to death in as little as five minutes. That's often faster than emergency crews can arrive, especially in large buildings, rural areas, or during a mass-casualty event. A bleeding control kit is built to close that gap between injury and professional help.

It's also becoming a legal requirement. Connecticut became the 15th state to pass a bleeding control law in 2025. The trend has moved well past California and Texas. It now reaches municipal buildings and, for the first time in several states, public universities. If you manage a facility, campus, or workplace, the question "do we need one of these" is quickly becoming "how many, and where."

This guide covers what a bleeding control kit needs to contain. It also covers the current state-by-state legal landscape, including the new university-specific rules. It covers how to size a program for your facility, and how Safety Kits Plus can help you get compliant kits in place. When you call, a real person answers the phone.

Quick Answer: Bleeding Control Kit Requirements

• What's required varies by state, but 15+ states now mandate bleeding control kits in schools, public buildings, or universities.
• A compliant kit should include a tourniquet, a pressure bandage, hemostatic gauze, a chest seal, trauma shears, and gloves.
• Newest laws: Connecticut (2025, includes public universities), Missouri (2025), and Virginia and West Virginia (2025).
• The standard to check against: ANSI/ISEA Z308.1-2021, which added tourniquets and splints to Class B kit requirements.

Full state-by-state breakdown and kit specs are below.

Why Bleeding Control Kits Matter

Severe bleeding is one of the few medical emergencies where a bystander with no medical training can make the difference between life and death. This can happen in the first few minutes, before EMS even reaches the building. That's the idea behind Stop the Bleed®, the national bleeding-control training campaign run by the American College of Surgeons (ACS). Since its national launch in 2015, the program has trained more than 5 million people across all 50 states and at least 141 countries. It teaches three core skills anyone can learn in about 90 minutes. Apply direct pressure. Pack the wound, ideally with hemostatic gauze. Apply a tourniquet if the bleeding doesn't stop.

The campaign traces back to a genuinely difficult origin. After the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, trauma surgeon Dr. Lenworth Jacobs brought together a panel of national trauma experts. That panel is now known as the Hartford Consensus. It studied how bystander response could improve survival after mass-casualty events. Their recommendations became the foundation for Stop the Bleed, launched by the White House in October 2015. Dr. Jacobs has since said bleeding control belongs alongside CPR. It's something ordinary people can learn, and are increasingly expected to know.

A standard first aid kit isn't built for this. It's designed for cuts, scrapes, and minor injuries, not the kind of severe arterial or limb bleeding that can prove fatal within minutes. A dedicated bleeding control kit is a different category of equipment. It's built to stop catastrophic blood loss fast.

State Laws & Requirements: Where Bleeding Control Kits Are Now Mandatory

Bleeding control legislation has moved fast. Connecticut became the 15th U.S. state to pass a bleeding control law in 2025, and several more states have bills under active consideration. Requirements vary by state. Here's where things stand for the states with the most established or newest mandates.

California

California's Assembly Bill 2260 (AB 2260), the Tactical Response to Traumatic Injuries Act, took effect January 1, 2023. Assembly Bill 70 (AB 70), passed in 2023, expanded it to cover major renovations. Together, they require trauma kits in:

• Assembly buildings with occupancy of 300 or more.
• Business, educational, factory, institutional, mercantile, and residential buildings (excluding single- and multi-family homes) with occupancy of 200 or more.
• Existing buildings undergoing renovations or tenant improvements valued at $100,000 or more in a calendar year.

California law requires at least six trauma kits per qualifying building. Kits must be in clearly marked, accessible spots. They must get inspected and maintained on a regular basis. Tenants must be told where the kits are. The law also gives Good Samaritan protection to anyone who uses or maintains a kit.

Texas

Texas House Bill 496 has been in effect since January 1, 2020. It requires every public and charter school campus to install bleeding control stations in accessible locations. These stations must be stocked with tourniquets, pressure bandages, gloves, trauma shears, and instructions. School staff must be trained to use them.

Connecticut: Now Including Universities

Connecticut's HB 7200 (Public Act No. 25-160) was signed in 2025 and takes effect July 1, 2026. It's one of the broadest bleeding control laws passed to date. It requires at least one bleeding control kit on every floor of covered buildings, plus staff training. It's also one of the first state laws to name higher education directly. Covered facilities include:

• Public K-12 schools.
• State colleges and universities, including the entire Connecticut State Colleges and Universities (CSCU) system.
• Municipal buildings, such as town halls and libraries.
• Places of public accommodation, such as theaters, hotels, restaurants, and similar venues.
• Newly constructed or substantially renovated public buildings.

Connecticut's Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection will oversee a statewide training program to support compliance.

Missouri

Missouri's Stop the Bleed Act (SB 68) was signed into law in July 2025. It requires the state's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to develop a traumatic blood loss protocol for schools. It also mandates bleeding control kits stocked with bandages, gloves, and tourniquets in high-traffic areas like gyms, cafeterias, and auditoriums. At least one staff member per school must complete annual training. Staff who use a kit in good faith get Good Samaritan protection.

Virginia and West Virginia

Virginia's House Bill 1700, passed in March 2025, requires bleeding control kits in all public elementary and high schools. West Virginia's Stop the Bleed Act takes effect for the 2025-26 school year. It requires every county board of education to set up a bleeding control program, with kits in accessible spots and staff training every other year.

The Broader Trend

New York, Washington, Colorado, Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, and Arkansas all have bleeding control laws or active bills of their own. The list keeps growing every legislative session. Even where a kit isn't yet required by law, the direction is clear. Bleeding control is on its way to becoming as standard in a building's safety equipment as a fire extinguisher or an AED.

Universities & Higher Ed: A New Compliance Frontier

Connecticut's inclusion of its entire public university system in HB 7200 marks a real shift. Bleeding control is no longer just a K-12 issue. Several universities were already ahead of any legal requirement. The University of California, Riverside runs a Stop the Bleed program tied to California's AB 2260 mandate. The University of Georgia maintains its own campus-wide Bleeding Control Kit Program. It governs purchasing, placement, training, and departmental oversight. Johns Hopkins University funded kit placement across campus and trained its HERO responders and campus police. It did this voluntarily, ahead of any state requirement.

If you run a campus, public or private, the practical questions are the same, whether or not your state currently mandates it. Where do kits go? Common answers are dorms, athletic facilities, lecture halls, and anywhere large groups gather. Who gets trained? Who owns ongoing inspection and restocking? Waiting for a state mandate to force the question means starting a compliance program from zero, on someone else's timeline.

What a Compliant Bleeding Control Kit Should Contain

There's no single national "bleeding control kit" certification, the way there is for some safety equipment. But the ANSI/ISEA Z308.1-2021 standard, the same standard that governs workplace first aid kits, was updated to address this category. The 2021 revision added tourniquets and splints to Class B kit requirements. It also set minimum specs for bleeding control equipment: compression devices at least 1.5 inches wide, effective across a 7–33 inch limb-size range.

Whether you're buying to a specific state law or just building a real capability, a properly equipped bleeding control kit should include:

• A CoTCCC-recognized tourniquet, proven effective for severe limb bleeding.
• A pressure/compression bandage, for direct wound pressure.
• Hemostatic gauze, which speeds clotting in deep wounds.
• A chest seal, for open chest injuries.
• Trauma shears, to safely cut away clothing.
• Nitrile gloves, for responder protection and infection control.
• A marker or pen, to record tourniquet application time, which matters for follow-on care.
• A clear, illustrated instruction card, so an untrained bystander can still act correctly.

A kit missing these items isn't necessarily useless. But it's not built to what most current state laws expect. And it's not what ANSI/ISEA Z308.1-2021 defines as a real bleeding control kit, versus a padded-out first aid kit with a new label.

Browse our full range of bleeding control kits to compare options that meet these specs for your building, campus, or program.

Who Needs a Bleeding Control Kit?

Beyond anywhere the law already requires one, a few categories of facility carry real risk and real responsibility:

• Schools and universities: required by law in a growing list of states, and a real gap everywhere else. Kits belong near AEDs: main offices, gyms, cafeterias, dorms, and athletic facilities.
• Workplaces: offices, warehouses, factories, retail, and hospitality venues with meaningful foot traffic or equipment-related injury risk.
• Public venues: theaters, arenas, convention centers, and anywhere large groups gather are higher-risk locations for mass-casualty events by definition.
• Government and municipal buildings: courthouses, libraries, community centers, and town halls, increasingly covered directly by state law (see Connecticut, above).
• Construction and industrial sites: high-risk environments where equipment-related trauma is a real, not hypothetical, possibility.
• Community centers and houses of worship: gathering places without an OSHA mandate behind them, but with the same practical exposure as any other public venue.

How to Use a Bleeding Control Kit

Owning a kit and knowing how to use it are two different things. Bleeding control training is widely available at no cost. Many local fire departments, hospitals, EMS agencies, and community organizations offer free hands-on sessions (often built on the same nationally recognized curriculum referenced in the state laws above), typically around 90 minutes. Ask your local provider, or ask us when you order. We're happy to help point you toward options in your area. In the meantime, here's the core framework, sometimes taught as the "ABCs":

1. Alert: call 911 immediately, and make sure the scene is safe before approaching.
2. Bleeding: find the source. Severe bleeding is often more obvious than people expect, but check under clothing.
3. Compress: apply firm, direct pressure with your hands, then a dressing, escalating to a tourniquet if bleeding continues.

Tourniquet: place it 2–3 inches above the wound, toward the torso, tighten until bleeding stops, and note the time it was applied. That timestamp matters for the medical team that takes over.

Hemostatic gauze and pressure bandages: pack the gauze directly into the wound, apply firm pressure, and secure with a pressure bandage.

Chest seals: apply directly over an open chest wound to stop air from entering.

None of this replaces real training. A kit with a clear instruction card can guide an untrained bystander through the basics, but a hands-on course is what turns "I think I know what to do" into "I know what to do."

Choosing and Sizing a Kit for Your Facility

The right kit depends less on your industry and more on how many people move through your space and how far they are from help. A single-office wall-mount kit isn't enough for a 300-person auditorium, and a mass-casualty cabinet is overkill for a 12-person job site trailer. As a starting point:

• Small offices and job sites: one individual kit per floor or work area, positioned near existing first aid supplies.
• Schools and mid-size facilities: wall-mounted stations in high-traffic areas (gyms, cafeterias, main offices), typically purchased in multi-packs to cover several locations at once.
• Large venues, campuses, and high-occupancy buildings: multiple-victim response kits or full compliance cabinets built for a mass-casualty scenario, sized to the building's occupancy under whichever state law applies.

If you're not sure which tier fits your building, that's exactly the kind of sizing question our team can walk through with you directly.

Common Compliance Mistakes

• Buying a standard first aid kit and calling it compliant. Most state laws are specific about tourniquets, hemostatic gauze, and chest seals, items a general first aid kit doesn't include.
• No inspection schedule. Kits should be checked on a set schedule (monthly is common practice) and immediately after any use, with expired or used components replaced right away.
• No training behind the kit. A kit with an instruction card helps, but it's not a substitute for actual hands-on bleeding control training for the staff most likely to be first on scene.
• Kits that are hard to find under pressure. Clear signage and placement next to AEDs, a location people already know to look, beats a kit tucked in a supply closet.
• Treating "not currently required by law" as "not needed." Several of the states above didn't have a bleeding control law two years ago. Waiting for a mandate means starting a compliance program from zero on someone else's timeline.

Why Facility Managers Choose Safety Kits Plus

• Kits built to current standards: matched to ANSI/ISEA Z308.1-2021 and the state laws covered above.
• Real sizing help: we'll walk through your building's occupancy and layout with you, not just sell you the biggest cabinet.
• Fast nationwide shipping: because a compliance deadline doesn't wait.
• A real person answers the phone: family-owned, and we treat every account like it matters, because it does.

Sources & further reading: California AB 2260 · California AB 70 · Texas HB 496 · Connecticut HB 7200 · Missouri SB 68