From: Roger McClellan <roger.o.mcclellan**At_Symbol_Here**ATT.NET>
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] Eating and Drinking in Laboratories
Date: December 2, 2012 2:18:49 PM EST
Reply-To: DCHAS-L <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**MED.CORNELL.EDU>
Message-ID: <A737E4ED-9E95-4677-B82C-7BC4A1EA1035**At_Symbol_Here**cox.net>


Miriam:
  I am not certain I understand the nature of your request unless you are preparing a scientific review on this topic. You certainly should not need this kind of information to enforce a well understood concept of standard practice -- eating and drinking of food stuffs and liquids is not allowed in research or student laboratories nor is the stoage of food or liquids intended for human consumption allowed in laboratories ... end of story. You should not need to provide any evidence for this well understood standard practice. It is unfortunate if you institution has faculty or staff that do not understand this practice and are unwilling to follow this practice and articulate it to other staff and students. Such faculty members are certainly not professionals and on these matters are incompetent and place your institution at risk.
     The President of your institution and all the supervisory individuals between the President and you and the senior staff need to understand that safety standards and practices are not open to negotiation. I am sure that you have more important safety issues to deal with to keep faculty, staff and students from harms way especially  if they do not grasp this fundamental concept.  They need to grow up and start acting like professionals.
       If I fail to grasp the nature of the issue please fill me in on the missing details.
       What I have articulated is the basic guidance I learned and followed in 50 years of working in and managing research laboratories. I would be happy to talk to the President of your Institution and explain the "rules of the road" if she or he does not grasp the fundamental concepts of operating and managing organizations in this modern age when employee and student safety is of prime concern. Sound safety practices and procedures must be followed and safety professionals should not have to negotiate with those who are unwilling to accept the sound practices and procedures. Acceptance of these practices and procedures should be a condition of employment.
    Good luck.
      Roger O. McClellan, DVM, MMS, DSc (Honorary), Diplomate- ABVT and ABT, Fellow-SRA, AAAR, HPS, AAAS, Member -Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences

--- On Sun, 12/2/12, Karen Salazar <kls_1**At_Symbol_Here**COX.NET> wrote:

From: Karen Salazar <kls_1**At_Symbol_Here**COX.NET>
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] Eating and Drinking in Laboratories
To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**MED.CORNELL.EDU
Date: Sunday, December 2, 2012, 8:04 AM

This one is tough.  The BLS doesn't appear to report exposure down to that level, but I am not an expert, so I recommend you contact your nearest federal regional depository library (there is at least one in every state), or contact them online (http://www.gpo.gov/libraries/), to see if they can dig deeper into the numbers for you or perform a more comprehensive search for you.  

FYI. Federal regional depository libraries are required to collect all govt. docs that are issued.  Some libraries choose to collect certain types of govt docs, but then they are not regional depositories.  Any gov doc librarian can help you, but if you find a report that was not born digital or has not been digitized, you can have access to it sooner if you are in a regional depository.  

In the meantime, I found these two reports.  I don't know if this incident counts since someone contaminated the food, then brought it into the lab.


The second report is a pdf file.  I am not allowed to attach it, if you google "SCA-TR-TASK1-0020" you should be able to download the pdf.

Karen



On Dec 1, 2012, at 2:15 PM, Miriam Weil wrote:

Does anyone know where I could find statistical (not anecdotal) data on illness or injuries related to eating and drinking in laboratories?

-- 
Miriam W. Weil, MPH, ScD

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