A study examined current age limitation policies affecting Federal public safety personnel and the interrelationship between job performance and aging. The study concluded that mandatory retirement of competent law enforcement officers and firefighters is unnecessary and wasteful and that the Federal Government's failure to recognize this problem should not be compounded by allowing the States and their political subdivisions also to discriminate against their employees based on age. It was recommended that the States and their political subdivisions should, in accordance with the goals of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, test their public safety officers for fitness rather than make stereotyped assumptions of incapacity due to age. (This report has two appendixes, a chronology of legislation affecting Federal public safety and a report entitled "Health and Performance Appraisal of Workers in Certain Occupations Exempt from the Age Discrimination in Employment Act as Amended in 1978" by Carol C. Hogue.) (MN)