Have you ever wondered where the recommendation to leave the area for 30 minutes before cleaning up a BL2 level spill comes from? The 30 minute timeline for re-entering following a BL2 spill is a standard recommendation to prevent aerosol exposure.
The allowance by the Mass DEP and EPA for working container use under certain conditions in laboratories was intended to give labs more flexibility with waste management and to facilitate compliance. However, compliant working container management can be a challenge.
August is National Immunization Awareness Month (NIAM), an annual event sponsored by the CDC to highlight the importance of immunizations. What better time to review your company’s Hepatitis B vaccination program to ensure that it’s fully compliant!
The third annual OSHA Safe + Sound Week is being held August 12-18, 2019. This national event is intended to promote the value of workplace health and safety programs. Employers are encouraged to hold events and activities that highlight the elements of their health and safety program during this week.
Did you know that violations related to the OSHA Hazard Communication standard ranked #2 in the OSHA top 10 list for most frequently cited violations in 2018? Common citations included not having a written program or safety data sheets (SDS) for all chemicals, lack of employee training, and deficiencies related to secondary container labels.
OSHA has been involved with a long-term project to be aligned with the Globally Harmonized System (GHS) of classifying chemical hazards and providing labels and safety data sheets for hazardous chemicals.
The use of fresh blood drawn from company employees is sometimes required when timelines in experiments are too tight to use an outside blood supply vendor. That said, it is considered to be preferable from a safety standpoint, and often a logistical one as well, that an outside blood supply vendor be used rather than establishing an in-house program.
Many of Safety Partners’ clients hold Controlled Substances Registrations (Researcher) for the research use of controlled substances. In Massachusetts, a controlled substance includes all drugs regulated by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in schedules I through V as well as Schedule VI, which is defined as all prescription drugs, which are not included in any other schedule.
Local recombinant DNA ordinances, including those of Boston, Cambridge, and Lexington to name a few, require compliance with the NIH Guidelines for Recombinant DNA Molecules (originally published in1986) as well as revisions and amendments to the Guidelines.
Proposed changes to the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA) Sewer Use Regulations (360 CMR 10.000) were published in April 2019 and a public hearing on the changes was held this week on May 13.
Would you know what to do if an employee at your company had a needlestick injury or other exposure incident? Other routes of exposure to biological material include accidents with other types of sharps as well as exposure to the mucous membranes of the eyes, nose, mouth, and non-intact skin.
After six years of sharing safety tips, we are excited to add more Safety Partners experts to our blog team. Starting next week, our Quality, Research, and Training (QRT) team members will contribute to our weekly posts.
