22. July 2008 by Jim Kaufman.

When conducting experiments with hazards or potential hazards, ask yourself these four questions:

1. What are the hazards?
2. What are the worst possible things that could go wrong?
3. How will I deal with them?
4. What are the prudent practices, protective facilities, and equipment necessary to minimize the risk of exposure to the hazards?

This is the world’s simplest safety program. It represents the minimalist approach. If you want to know how little you can do and “get by,” being able to answer these four questions is a good beginning point. Can you identify the hazards that are present? Are they chemical, physical, biological, mechanical, electrical, radiation, noise, stress, or high/low pressure. Those are life’s nine hazards and you should look for them before beginning an experiment.

What kinds of emergency situations can you anticipate? Fires, explosions, electrical shocks, bleeding, burns, poisonings, slips and falls, spills, and natural disasters should be considered. What about other medical emergencies and utilities failures. Are you prepared to deal with these kind of problems? Do you have written procedures describing what to do? Do you have the necessary safety equipment and emergency equipment such as deluge showers, eye wash fountains, first aid kits, fire blankets, and fire extinguishers? What about gloves, goggles, and lab coats? What are the generally recognized safety practices that a reasonable person would follow before experimenting? Carefully reading labels and MSDS’s is a good beginning. Hand washing when finished is another.

Have you considered reducing the scale of the experiment, substituting less hazardous chemicals or eliminating the experiment altogether?

Supervisors need to adjust the experiments so that the health and safety risks involved are appropriate for the facilities, the equipment, the experience of the supervisor, and the abilities of the employees.

This is #11 of LSI’s 40 Suggestions for a Safer Lab. Learn all 40 and discover how easy it is to improve your lab safety program at one of this Summer’s 24-Hour Laboratory Safety programs — view locations and register at www.labsafetyinstitute.org

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30. May 2008 by Christina Dillard.

For a Danvers, Massachusetts Company a written operating procedure and an operator checklist would have made a big difference!

In November 2006 a massive explosion and fire at the CAI/Arnel ink and paint products manufacturing facility occurred when a 10,000-pound mixture of flammable solvents overheated. According to an investigation by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB), the steam heat to the mixing tank was most likely inadvertently left on by an operator before he left for the day. As the temperature increased, vapor escaped from the mixing tank, built up in the unventilated building, ignited, and exploded. Yes, unventilated! It was a routine procedure to turn off the building ventilation system at the end of the workday. Well, at least one routine procedure was completed at the end of day — too bad it wasn’t the procedure that would have turned off the heat.

The blast ripped through the adjacent neighborhood, leaving at least 16 homes and three businesses damaged beyond repair. View the CSB video:http://events.powerstream.net/002/00174/player/iPlay.asp?contID=CAI-ArnelBlastwave

OSHA’s Process Safety Management standard 29 CFR 1910.119 http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=STANDARDS&p_id=9760, requires that the company should have conducted a process hazard analysis. Such a review would have identified the need for more sophisticated process control equipment, operator checklists, and continuous building ventilation. The standard also requires the use of written operating procedures, which can reduce the occurrence of human errors.

For more than 30 years LSI has been offering suggestions for safer labs. LSI’s 40 Guidelines include such tips as developing specific work practices (operating procedures) and using proper ventillation. Read our Guidelines at: http://labsafety.org/40steps.htm

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3. May 2008 by Jim Kaufman.

I went to school for 25 years.  But, when I left school and went to work for the Dow Chemical Company in 1973, I learned more about safety in one day than I had in 25 years of school.  My boss spent the whole first day doing nothing but talking about my health and safety at Dow. 

Unfortunately, school/college does not prepare us to teach or practice science safely.  Industry tells me that the most dangerous thing in the lab is not the chemicals, biologicals, or equipment.  It’s a new B.S., M.S., or Ph.D. with no idea of how to work safely.  Not surprisingly, 50% of accidents and injuries happen during the first two years.  And, the accident rate at schools and colleges is about 100-1000 times greater than at Dow and DuPont. 

 I’d been working at Dow for only four weeks.  While driving home, I heard on the radio that there had been an explosion at my graduate school’s chemistry department.  Instead of going home, I drove directly there and went upstairs into the lab. 

The light fixtures that had hung suspended from the ceiling were gone.  Blown away.  The windows along the side of the lab were gone.  Blown away.  The lab benches had those thick stone tops on oak cabinets.  A corner of one bench and the cabinets underneath looked like someone had put a hot knife though butter. 

And, a graduate student blew off parts of both hands doing several things that I’d learned at Dow on the first day that you just don’t do. 

I looked around the room.  As I smelled it and thought what had happened both here and to me over the past month, I realized how ill prepared I was to work safely in an industrial environment.  I decided to try to share what I was learning at Dow with anyone who would listen (and, a few who would not).  That’s why I founded the Laboratory Safety Institute (LSI)  in 1978. Since 1978, LSI has trained over 65,000 science educators and scientists. Our brand of safety training is a unique blend of technical information, practical and inexpensive solutions, humor, and accounts of accidents drawn from a collection of over 5,000 examples.  In 2002, we organized the first international conference on safety in science education.  LSI has produced two lab safety, training audio-visuals: The One-Day Lab Safety Audio Course (5.5 hours) and The Two-Day Lab Safety Video Short Course (eight, 90-minute VHS cassettes or DVD diskettes). 

LSI publishes a newsletter: “Speaking of Safety” (three issues per year). 

LSI offers lectures, seminars, short courses (CEUs and academic credit), audit and inspections, and regulatory compliance and safety program development consultations throughout the world for academic, industrial, medical, and government laboratories.   

LSI operates an Internet discussion list, LABSAFETY-L, and maintains an informative website (http://www.labsafetyinstitute.org). LSI is supported by corporate sponsors, agencies, associations, generous individuals, its members.               

We would like to  invite you and your co-workers to regualrly visit this blog to learn more about lab safety and to share your thoughts on the subject. We also invite you to attend an LSI Short Course.  LSI short courses have the potential to significantly change your approach to lab safety.  Stay tuned to learn why.     

Jim Kaufman

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