DEAS/Physics Safety Committee
Wednesday, October 9, 2002
Noon-1:00PM
Lenny Solomon started the meeting with introductions and welcomed everyone back from the summer break.
Lenny gave a brief description of the history and duties of the committee. The DEAS/Physics Safety Committee meets on the second Wednesday of each month from October through June, and the appointed Safety representatives are expected to attend these meetings. Lenny encouraged everyone to visit the Committee's web site at http://www-safety.deas.harvard.edu. All safety reps should take the time to read the online Safety Manual and Chemical Hygiene Plan on the web site, as well as pages dealing with safety training, evacuation plans, and other emergency related items. New members can read some of last year's meeting minutes to get an idea of what we do from month to month.
(a) Lab Inspections - One of the most important functions of this committee is the self-inspection of our labs. Safety reps inspect labs yearly. At the November meeting, Lenny will announce the inspection teams consisting of 3 to 5 safety reps each. During January and February, the teams will inspect their pre-assigned labs and present their results to the Committee. The inspections will focus on equipment, work space, chemical storage, safety violations, and unsafe lab practices (such as evidence of food or drink in lab areas), etc. The local safety rep for each lab will need to address any issues discovered during the inspections and make a follow-up report to the Committee. Building issues will be resolved by Ed Jackson (DEAS) and Stuart McNeil (Physics).
(b) Safety Training
- Safety Seminar Series - Every year from late winter to early spring, the Committee presents a series of live training lectures on a variety of safety issues. These seminars are extremely important for new lab workers or people who need refresher training. A new schedule of the 2002/2003 series will be posted on the web site in the next few months.
- Lab Safety and Hazardous Waste Safety Training - All DEAS/Physics staff and students who work in experimental lab settings must be trained in hazardous waste safety. People take an initial one-hour classroom training session by EH&S and each year thereafter must complete an online retraining test at the EH&S web site.
(c) Training Database - updates due by 10/31/2002
A database is maintained on the Committee's web site to keep an up-to-date record of the training needs of DEAS and Physics personnel and students. Lenny told all of the safety reps they need to create a username and log on to the online database by the end of this month. They should look for records pertaining to their specific group and notify Lenny Solomon or Rob Stanhope, if any new group members are not in the database, or if anyone in their group needs a particular kind of safety training. This is the only way we can keep the database up-to-date.
The Safety Training is located at http://www-safety.deas.harvard.edu/services/dbintro.html.
Public access outside of the DEAS/Physics Safety Committee and its representatives is not permitted, since the information is considered confidential.
Because access is restricted, anyone using the database must first create a user's account (with username and password). This is a simple process which is done online.
An online Help/Guide explains how to sort and filter the database. These sorting and filtering features make the Safety Training database particularly useful to find out who has or has not been trained in a specific lab or group. The Guide provides a key to the abbreviations used in the database.
IMPORTANT! All safety officers must create a username for the database by the end of October!
(d) Safety Equipment Testing - Safety showers, hoods, fire extinguishers, etc. are tested annually. Someone asked whether we had inspected the safety showers last year. Ed Jackson said he would look into that.
(e) Fire Drills - The Safety Committee tries to provide fire drills at least once per year.
(f) Ph.D. Hit Squad - Graduating doctoral students and departing post-docs must be accountable for the chemicals they ordered during their work at Harvard. A list of these chemicals is maintained by the Safety Committee. All chemicals should be labeled with the student's name, date of purchase, and chemical name.
(g) Hazardous Waste Safety - In accordance with EPA regulations, anyone who works with chemicals must be trained by attending a live lecture on laboratory and hazardous waste safety. Cate Thomas provides these training lectures on the 2nd Thursday of each month. See the schedule for time and location at the following web page: http://www.uos.harvard.edu/ehs/onl_tra_sch_ehs.shtml. All new staff and grad students must attend one of these lectures. Retraining is needed every year; this is accomplished by reading a short online retraining course and answering a few questions on the web site. Hazardous waste retraining can be found at: http://www.uos.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/ehs/page_1.pl.
EH&S conducted the annual summer lab inspections. The results are posted on this web site and everyone should read them to see if there are any outstanding issues in their own labs that need to be reconciled. Safety officers should be prepared to tell the committee next month what actions, if any, they took to resolve any of the safety issue raised by the inspections.
- Signs on doors listing contact information need to be replaced every September. Safety reps must check these signs to make sure they are up-to-date with correct home phone numbers and office numbers. The fire department gets very upset when contact info is not correct. You can find the forms and print them out at: http://www-safety.deas.harvard.edu/emerform.html
Lenny gave his annual safety talk to G-1 students in DEAS and Physics at the beginning of September.
The Chemical Hygiene Plan contains the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for each lab in DEAS and Physics. These SOPs need to be updated. Lenny asked the safety officers to update their SOPs and submit them to him by December.
Lenny told the committee it is necessary for every Class 3b and 4 laser to be registered. The laser registration forms are available online. Please fill them out and return them to Lenny by November 13.
Mike Labosky reported that there was an accident at the University of Maine involving an aquaculture tank. He said the accident should serve as a reminder to all of us to maintain safe procedures. Someone suggested that reports of such accidents should be made available on our website so that we can all learn from them.
Rob Stanhope (Safety Coordinator) told the Committee that he will provide monthly reports on the training and retraining of personnel in hazardous waste safety.
Rob will also send out reminders to some safety officers that SAAs need to be inspected each week.
Andrea suggested that we add a talk on perchloric acid to our safety talks.
last updated: Thu Oct 10 17:08:27 2002