DEAS/Physics/EPS Safety Committee
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Noon-1:00PM
Lenny Solomon opened the meeting by asking new safety officers to introduce themselves to the committee. There have been several changes in safety officers this year.
The October meeting was held on Tuesday instead of Wednesday because Lenny had a time conflict with the normal Wednesday schedule. Next month's meeting will be on Wednesday as usual.
Lenny took a moment to explain some of the more important responsibilities of every safety officer on 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. Communication is very important--Lenny will send email messages to safety officers quite often. He is always available to answer questions regarding safety issues if you want to give him a phone call(5-4215). If you or your group need specific safety training (such as gas, Right-to-Know, RSI, etc.), you can schedule a training session with Lenny.
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 during the fall and winter months. Safety officers inspect labs yearly. Lenny handed out a list of inspection team assignments for this year and told the Committee that all safety officers who are designated as "Chairs" of their inspection team must schedule their lab inspection and let him know the date by the November meeting. The inspection teams list can be found here at this URL: http://www-safety.deas.harvard.edu/textonly/subcomm.html.
From November through April, 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 that has been inspected will need to address any issues discovered during the inspections and make a follow-up report to the Committee at the following meeting.
(b) Safety Training
- We used to offer a "Spring Safety Seminar" series in the spring, but Lenny will not do that this year. EH&S already offers several safety training courses. If you have a specific training need for your group, contact Lenny and he can schedule special training for your group. Red Cross CPR training will still be offered.
- Laser Safety Online Training Module - after years of developing this service, the Safety Committee now offers three training videos of a laser safety lecture that Prof. Eric Mazur has given in Physics and DEAS. You can view the lectures and then take a short quiz online. There is a link to the laser safety training videos on the front page of this website.
- 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 Wednesday 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 a Lab Safety Training lecture! 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/training/training.shtml.(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 at http://www-safety.deas.harvard.edu/services/dbintro.html.
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--Ed Jackson, Stuart McNeil and Paul Kelley are in charge of this. Eyewash stations should be flowed weekly for 5 minutes.
- Safety officers should remember to flow their eye wash stations at least once a week.
(e) Fire Drills / Fire Marshals
- The Safety Committee tries to provide fire drills at least once per year.
- The safety officers are also fire marshals. Safety officers should make sure all their lab workers know where to meet outside of their building in the event of an emergency evacuation (designated meeting place should be at least 100 feet from the building). During an evacuation, safety officers should make sure their all of lab workers get out of the building; however, if the safety officers are at risk, they should leave the building and immediately tell the firemen or rescue workers where people are in your lab.
- 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 has been maintained by the Safety Committee in the past; however, it has become to difficult to keep up with this task in recent years. Lenny wants to reinvigorate this program, but he has not figured out a way to keep track of every chemical that is bought and used in our three departments. In any case, all safety officers should let Lenny know if people are leaving their group, so they can be questioned about any left-over chemicals. All chemicals should be labeled with the student's name, date of purchase, and chemical name.
(g) Hazardous Waste Disposal and SAAs - 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. 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.
- SOPs - many are old and need to be updated by safety officers. Please check your SOP online and email Lenny your updates.
- Laser Eye Exams - People with Class 3B and 4 lasers have been expected to get a "baseline eye exam." Someone contacted Lenny and asked him who pays for the exam. He spoke with UHS about it and they didn't know what he was talking about. Later they said such an exam would not be covered under student health insurance. Someone named Joe Ring has finally told Lenny that UHS will perform the exams but they do not yet know what it will cost. Lenny has received many different cost quotes from a variety of sources. At this time Lenny is still trying to solve the billing issue around this and trying to establish a "laser eye exam" contact person at UHS.
| Send comments or suggestions to solomon@huarp.harvard.edu | Last Updated: Wed Oct 18 16:59:58 2006 |
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