OSHA requires employers to provide their employees with working conditions that are free of known dangers. This includes providing work environments that are free of ergonomic hazards.
It is important to keep your Emergency Action Plan or Contingency Plan up to date. Don’t wait for the plan to fail in an emergency situation before you update it.
Even if it is not required by a specific regulation, laboratories working with biological materials should have an active biosafety manual in place. Has your facility developed and implemented a biosafety manual, and has it been updated recently?
Individuals entering laboratory space should be informed of the hazards associated with the particular laboratories. Lab workers are required to attend safety training, but does your facility extend the training requirement to ancillary staff?
All work-related incidents, accidents, and near misses need to be reported according to your institutional policy, which typically involves completing an incident report within 24 hours of the occurrence. The critical next step is a review process to evaluate the event.
With the long winter we have had, everyone will be eager to wear their flip flops and shorts this spring. Do you have a policy in place requiring closed-toed shoes and leg covering in your labs?
Does your facility struggle with how to keep food and drink out of laboratory areas? Consuming food and drinks in laboratories and storing food in laboratory equipment increase the chance of contamination and accidental ingestion of hazardous materials.
When was the last time a chemical inventory was conducted in your lab? Do you know what hazardous chemicals are present in your workplace and are you maintaining SDSs for all of them?
Make sure that your facility is in compliance with OSHA recordkeeping rules. Are your incidents and accidents recorded? The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)’s recordkeeping rules (Recording and Reporting Occupational Injuries and Illness, 29 CFR 1904) require employers to record and report work-related fatalities, injuries, and illnesses.
This report is part of the Safety Partners’ “Incidents, Accidents, and Near Misses” series. We are gathering information about incidents in laboratories and small-scale manufacturing operations from public and private sources in order to analyze and share lessons learned with the scientific and engineering community.
