University of California, Irvine, EH&S officer Dave Melitz applies whipped cream to a student's goggles for the student to rinse off in an eyewash station. Credit: UCI
What safety thing do you know you need to do but haven't yet managed: Lab clean-out? Emergency drill? Write or update standard operating procedures?
The Occupational Safety & Health Administration and other federal agencies have set May 2-6 as a National Safety Stand-Down. It's geared toward preventing falls in construction, but individual labs or departments could certainly use it for inspiration. The idea is to take a break from normal operations to focus on safety. Options to consider, in addition to what's above:
- Teach risk assessment (learn the "bow tie" tool at the ACS meeting in San Diego)
- Hold some sort off safety training, maybe including using a fog machine to demonstrate fume hood flow, adding acid to eggs to show the necessity of eye protection, rinsing whipped cream off goggles in an eye wash station, and having someone use a safety shower (ideas from University of California, Irvine, chemistry department)
- Have your lab group group go through a "what if" analysis of a piece of equipment or experiment to discuss what could go wrong and how to avoid it (idea from Texas Tech University's Dominick Casadonte)
- Run an emergency drill to have lab members walk through how to respond to a worst-case spill, fire, or some other incident
- Go around your department and take photos of good safety practices, then show them before a seminar
- Hold a safety video contest (idea from University of Minnesota chemical engineering and material science department)
- Have lab groups create safety demonstrations related to their research (idea from Stony Brook University chemistry department)
- Develop a contest in which lab groups compete against each other to develop best practices and pass inspections (idea from University of Texas, Austin, chemistry department)
