Are there any rules or standards about using circuit breakers to control area lights? I feel that from a safety stand point nobody should be routinely going into a panel to access power for lights but I am not able to locate documentation that says its wrong.

The breakers need to be "switch duty rated".

Great thanks, I will check into which ones are currently installed. Are there any standards or safety regs. that say you shouldn't use the breakers as a switch regularly and instead add a switch outside of the panel?

Not that I am aware of.

We have run into the same thing at our company. The issue we had was that in order to operate a circuit breaker HRC 0 at minimum should be worn per NFPA 70E tables. This is difficult to enforce is they are general area employees. Leaving the panel open also gives general employees access to other circuit breakers where they may be prone to resetting tripped breakers.

We also found that older breakers (1970's) are not SWD rated.

Switch Duty Rating (SWD) breakers are for 1-pole 15A and 20A only. The SWD rating is for fluorescent lighting, and UL testing is similar to that of standard light switches.There is a similar rating for High Intensity Discharge lighting, which includes multi-pole breakers up to 50 or 60A.

Other than these additional tests, all breakers are simply endurance tested for electrical and mechanical operations (with and without current), based on 'frame' size and at .80 PF (i.e. 100A< rated for 6,000 @ 100%, and 4,000 @ 0%).

nec 240.83(d)