Provide an Appropriate Supply of First Aid Equipment and Instruction on Its Proper Use
There are some emergencies which can't wait five minutes for EMTs to arrive. Severe bleeding is one of these.
Provide Guards on All Vacuum Pumps and Secure All Compressed Gas Cylinders
A missing or broken vacuum pump guard is one of the most common OSHA violations. Whenever a pulley/belt assembly is within reach, there needs to be an enclosure to prevent fingers, hair, or clothing from being caught.
Maintain a Centrally Located Departmental Safety Library
One of the characteristics of an effective safety program is the availability of reference and resource materials. Employees need to have easy access to this information.
Provide Safety Equipment in Each Lab
Fire Extinguishers, Safety Showers, Eye Wash Fountains, First Aid Kits, Fire Blankets, and Fume Hoods should be provided in each lab. Not only should fire extinguishers be provided but they should be tested or checked monthly.
Provide Adequate Supplies of Personal Protective Equipment
Employers are responsible for providing personal protective equipment (PPE) such as safety glasses, goggles, face shields, gloves, lab coats, and bench top shields. Employees are responsible for using these devices.
Require the Use of Appropriate Eye Protection at All Times in Labs, and Areas where Chemicals are Transported
Appropriate eye protection is defined by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Z-87.1 standard. The most current edition is 1989. The standard describes both the design and performance criteria for various devices and the type of device to be used for particular operations.
Allocate a Portion of the Departmental Budget to Safety
The establishment of a separate accounting line for safety and health related purchases is essential. This allows you to clearly track monies expended for this purpose.
Develop Specific Work Practices for Individual Experiments
Examples of work practices that should specifically address an individual experiment are ones that should be conducted only in a ventilated hood or involve especially hazardous chemicals.
Require Good Housekeeping Practices in all Areas
Good housekeeping is one of the foundations of good safety practice. When people are trained to clean-up and put things away as soon as they are done using them, their work areas are safer, more spacious, and more productive.
Use Warning Signs to Designate Particular Hazards
The use of warning signs to designate particular hazards is not just a good idea—it's the law.
Avoid Purchasing Unnecessary Quantities of Chemicals
One school accumulated 20 five-pound bottles of mercury. Each year they ordered from the same list used the year before! Not a good idea. You need to know what you have and where it's located.
Store Incompatible Chemicals Separately
The proper storage of chemicals has become a focal point of laboratory safety. We need to keep chemicals which are incompatible separated some reasonable distance from each other. At the same time, the law of diminishing returns applies here.
Keep Emergency Phone Numbers Next to Every Phone
In an emergency, you tend to forget even the most common things. Having emergency phone numbers for the fire, police, and local ambulance by every phone is a very important reminder.
Planning for Emergencies
It's important to develop plans and conduct drills for dealing with emergencies such as fire, explosion, poisoning, chemical spill, vapor release, and personal contamination. The list is incomplete. Let's add bleeding, burns, medical situations, electric shock, and weather emergencies.
Do Not Store Food in Chemical Refrigerators
Prohibiting the storage of food in chemical refrigerators is one of the basic rules of good practice. It is intended to prevent the ingestion of toxic or infectious materials. The food will absorb the vapors from the chemicals in the refrigerator and then they will be consumed.
Forbid Smoking, Eating, and Drinking in the Laboratory
The practice of forbidding smoking, eating, and drinking in laboratories is one of the basic good hygiene practices. Unfortunately, it is often one of the most frequently disregarded.
Limit Amounts of Flammable Liquids in Each Lab
There seems to be a special law of nature that leads to the accumulation of chemicals in laboratories. When these chemicals are flammable, the safety of the lab's residents can be seriously compromised.
Extend the Safety Program Beyond the Lab
The effectiveness of safety programs depends on their ability to motivate people to care about their health and safety. When people view this caring process as part of their whole life and not just part of their job, it becomes all the more effective.
Make Safety Training Interesting
Continue reading to learn how to develop training that will keep your attendees interested and focused. These seven guidelines will walk you through the entire process from development to delivery then loop back through evaluating and improving your training programs.
Take the Lead on Safety
Those in your lab may be your colleagues or may be people assigned to you to produce results and for whom you have responsibility. If you are the lab manager, you are the mentor and they will follow your lead and the tone you set for conduct in the lab. These simple steps will encourage safety in your laboratory staff.
Don't Become Complacent About Safety
It’s human nature to become complacent and relaxed in a familiar and comfortable setting. Take a walk through your lab, looking with unprejudiced honesty at all you see. Reevaluate the safety equipment and procedures in your lab and make sure you are not becoming complacent about safety.
How to Read a Chemical's MSDS
The safe handling of chemicals requires an understanding of their properties, hazards, and measures for handling emergencies involving them. This information can be found on the compound's MSDS.
Balance Energy Efficiency with Safety
Before considering money saving solutions for energy efficiency, the laboratory must first be designed for the safety of its occupants. Fume hoods are the major line of defense in the utilization of chemical hazards in a toxicology laboratory. By definition, fume hoods are not energy efficient, but their inefficiency serves the purpose of safety.
Beware of UV Exposure IN the Lab
In addition to sunlight, UV light sources are found in the lab and shop. Sources include some biosafety cabinets, certain types of hand-held light sources, transilluminators, crosslinkers, and some laboratory instruments such as spectrophotometers.
Inventory Your Chemicals
Prudent management of any laboratory using dangerous substances begins with a chemical inventory. Establish written procedures for acquiring chemicals and developing the inventory and ensure that laboratory employees understand and adhere to them.
