DCHAS-L Discussion List Archive
Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 08:25:39 -0500
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From: Beth Shepard <Beth.Shepard**At_Symbol_Here**SIAL.COM>
Subject: Fw: [DCHAS-L] 6 re: SAFETY
Beth Shepard/cmpl/mke/sial
04/19/2011 08:19 AM
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Re: [DCHAS-L] 6 re: SAFETY
Good morning--
While these are very good points regarding the differences, there are a
couple of things that need to be mentioned.
4. Larger safety budgets; raise the price of the little blue pill
by $1.00, and see your safety budget grow. Institutions, especially
State, are seeing budgets cut, and staffing stagnate.
Apparently, you have an overly optimistic view of industry. If the price
of the products is raised, most of that increase does NOT go to increasing
departmental budgets. While Safety has gotten a much higher profile in the
past 10 years or so, the departmental staff has to justify any
expenditure, which is very hard to do when you're talking about prevention
(it's very hard to prove a negative). Safety has never been considered a
profit-center, in most cases it is considered administrative.
To maximize workspace, we (& many in industry) run 2 or 3 shifts, but they
are also required to follow the rules. No one working with chemical works
alone. No exceptions. Our Production, R&D, Packaging and Material handling
groups all take their breaks and lunches at the same time for this reason.
While that not practical in academia, a buddy system could be instituted.
If a "buddy" can't be found, access to the lab is not allowed. If the
consequences of non-compliance were more stringent, compliance would
improve. Grades were always a good motivator when I was in school.
Anecdotally, one of our new PhDs was working in his lab area years ago,
when the evacuation alarm went off. Everyone else immediately shut down
what had to be shut down & evacuated. He kept working. In this case, it
had been a drill. But that drill almost got this employee fired. Not only
hadn't he evacuated, but he was then working in a lab area alone. He was
still following the culture he had been taught (or allowed to learn) at
the university.
Beth
Beth Shepard / Technical Compliance Specialist
Regulatory Compliance
6000 N. Teutonia Ave. / Milwaukee, WI 53209 / USA
P: (414) 438-3850, x5471
sigma-aldrich.com
"Wawzyniecki Jr, Stefan"
Sent by: DCHAS-L Discussion List
04/19/2011 07:49 AM
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Re: [DCHAS-L] 6 re: SAFETY
In response to Roger McClellan’s comments: Understand that in order for
a "culture" of safety to take hold, one must begin with an educated (in
safety) faculty and staff. I’ll admit that my most safety conscious
researchers are those that come from industry.
Speaking from an academic viewpoint, it is understandable that those in
industry ask the question,
Why should the acceptable standard for safety at Yale, UCLA Texas Tech or
any academic institution be any different than that found at corporations
that have been leaders in emphasizing a safety culture for decades?"
… but what corporations have are multiple advantages not found in
academia. These include:
1. Ability to fire employees at will.
2. Experienced work staff, mentoring younger employees.
3. Long term employees, as opposed to those focused short term
research and academics
4. Larger safety budgets; raise the price of the little blue pill
by $1.00, and see your safety budget grow. Institutions, especially
State, are seeing budgets cut, and staffing stagnate.
5. Better/larger laboratories; in academia, researchers compete for
their 2.5 linear feet of bench space, and fume hoods are a premium.
Working off-hours enables more bench space at the cost of breaking policy.
6. Security/ restrictions on after-hours access to labs. Industry
hires guards.
I’m sure others in academia can add to the list.
Regarding your example of a corprate exec pointing out emergency exits-
How many flights have you been on where you observed many in the cabin
ignoring the flight attendent’s instructions on emergency egress? Are you
suggesting that they are all from academia?
I refer you to Robert Hill’s (ed) book entitled Handbook of Chemical
Health & Safety; it is not limited to CHEMICAL safety; there are
chapters on ergonomics, evacuation/shelter-in-place, process safety
review, and control of hazardous energy.
My son works for a private reseach institution where on any given day, the
execs will shut down operations on a Friday afternoon, bring in snacks,
and have everyone gather to watch a playoff game in the conference room.
That builds a team with buy-in towards the company goals including a
safety culture. That scenario is unlikely to play out in academia.
As the song lyric goes, "The Difficult I’ll do now; the Impossible will
take awhile."
Stefan Wawzyniecki, CIH, CHMM
NRCC-CHO
University of Connecticut
Past Chair DCHAS ACS
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