DEAS/Physics/EPS Safety Committee
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
Noon-1:00PM
Lenny Solomon opened the meeting by asking everyone to introduce themselves to the committee. There were several new safety officers from the Department of Earth and Planetary Science. EPS has joined with DEAS and Physics on the safety committee.
Lenny gave a brief description of the history and duties of the committee. The DEAS/Physics/EPS Safety Committee meets on the second Wednesday of each month from October through June, and the appointed Safety officers 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.
The Safety Committee tries to be pro-active in identifying safety issues. In addition to its monthly meetings, the Committee performs the following functions:
(a) Lab Inspections - One of the most important functions of this committee is the self-inspection of our labs. Safety officers inspect labs yearly. At the November meeting, Lenny will announce the inspection teams consisting of 3 to 5 safety officers 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 officer for each lab will need to address any issues discovered during the inspections and make a follow-up report to the Committee.
(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 2004/2005 series will be posted on the web site in the next few months.
- Lab Safety and Hazardous Waste Safety Training - In accordance with EPA regulations, anyone who works with chemicals must be trained by attending a live lecture on laboratory and hazardous waste safety. Charles Lichtenwalner provides these training lectures on the 2nd Wednseday of each month. See the schedule for time and location at the following web page:
http://www-safety.deas.harvard.edu/services/seminars.html#hazardouswaste.
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.(c) Training Database
A database is maintained on the Committee's web site to keep an up-to-date record of the training needs of DEAS, Physics, and EPS personnel and students. Lenny asked all the safety officers to create a username and log on to the online database. 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/EPS Safety Committee 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.
(d) Safety Equipment Testing - Safety showers, hoods, fire extinguishers, etc. are tested annually. Showers are flowed quarterly. Eyewash stations should be flowed weekly for 5 minutes. The building at 60 Oxford Street needs to schedule flow checks. 40 Oxford Street has ambient temperature water tanks in the basement for eye wash stations.
(e) Fire Drills - The Safety Committee tries to provide fire drills at least once per year.
- New evacuation maps have been posted in many buildings. Construction has changed many exit plans, so make sure you know how to get out of your lab area in an emergency.
- Most groups have been told to meet outside in front of the museum.
- Also, the lighting in the McKay stairwells has been checked to make sure it is safe.
- Please note: the safety officers are also fire marshalls.
- Notify Lenny if anyone in your lab is disabled, so that he can register this information with the Operations Center. In an emergency, police and fire department will have this information.
(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 Disposal - Certain safety officers are assigned the task of inspecting their Satellite Accumulation Areas (SAAs). These SAA Monitors need to inspect their SAAs weekly to make sure there are no violations, specifically looking for problems with the hazardous waste labels and containers. Rob will send out periodic inspection reminders. SAA Monitors should view this EH&S web page for help with the hazardous waste labels:
http://www.uos.harvard.edu/ehs/env_hw_label_tool.shtml.
a) Graphite spill - There was a graphite spill in a lab that caused a lot of clean-up problems. It was not an emergency; however, it was very slippery.
b) Hoffman Building - The fire door separating the Link from Hoffman got on fire! Apparently a motor or battery that operates the door caught fire. No great damage, other than temporary smoke odor.
Mike Labosky reported the following:
- OSHA - On Sept 29, OSHA visited the Biolabs in the Animal Care Facility. They wanted to see what sort of training documentation was kept on site. Mike reminded everyone that OSHA is coming and making on-site visits more frequently.
- After-hours -- please be aware that when there is a problem during after-hours, we rely on lab workers to give accurate information about their work area. If you need to report an emergency, please be very clear about your location, who is there with you, what the situation is, what kind of hazards are present, and exactly what happened. If you have to leave the scene, please let them know where you will be and give them a cell phone number to contact you.
Rob Stanhope (Safety Coordinator) told the Committee that he will provide monthly reports on the training and retraining of personnel in hazardous waste safety.
- Lenny will meet with the new people from EPS to train them in RSI safety.
| Send comments or suggestions to solomon@huarp.harvard.edu | Last Updated: Thu Nov 4 17:15:44 2004 |
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