DEAS/Physics Safety Committee
Wednesday, October 13, 1999
Noon-1:00PM
Lenny Solomon opened the meeting by welcoming everyone back from the summer break. Safety Committee reps and members introduced themselves for the benefit of anyone who was new to the Committee.
Lenny explained that the Safety Committee was started in 1983 to promote safe practices in labs at DEAS and the Physics Department. It meets on the second Wednesday of each month from October through June, and the appointed Safety representatives are expected to attend these meetings. The Committee's web site at http://www-safety.deas.harvard.edu is a key point of reference for any safety related issues, and Lenny encouraged everyone to bookmark it in their web browsers. 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.
(a) Lab Inspections - Safety reps inspect labs yearly. In November, Lenny will create inspection teams consisting of 3 to 5 safety reps. 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 with Ed Jackson (DEAS) and Stuart McNeil (Physics).
(b) Safety Training
- Training Videos - short training videos are shown at the beginning of each Safety Committee meeting. A selection of 20-30 training videos are available for private and group viewing. The list of available video titles is on the web site. Videos can be borrowed by contacting Lenny Solomon at 5-4215.
- 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 1999/2000 series will be posted on the web site in the coming months.
- Online Training - With a new digital video work station from an Intel grant, the Safety Committee and DEAS will produce an online Laser Safety training video. The streaming video will be viewed from our web site and participants will be registered in a web-based database maintained by EH&S. Lab workers can also retrain themselves in Hazardous Waste Safety by completing a brief online retraining course on the EH&S web site.
- 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 and Physics personnel and students. To keep the information as accurate as possible, Lenny encouraged all of the safety reps to log on to the online database and look for records pertaining to their specific group. They should notify Lenny Solomon or Rob Stanhope, if any new group members are not in the database, or if anyone in your group needs a particular kind of safety training.
- 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.
(c) Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) - EH&S reports to the Committee on current safety related legislation, new regulations and impending EPA visits.
(d) Equipment Testing - Safety showers, hoods, fire extinguishers, etc. are tested yearly.
(e) Fire Drills - The Safety Committee tries to provide fire drills at least once per year.
(f) PhD Hit Squad - Graduating doctoral students 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) Waste Disposal - In accordance with EPA regulations, anyone who works with chemicals must be trained by attending a live lecture on hazardous waste safety. Henry Littleboy provides these training lectures on the 2nd Tuesday of each month. See the schedule for time and location at the following web page: http://www.uos.harvard.edu/ehs/training/ehs_class_sched.html. 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.
(a) Summer Inspections - As usual, EH&S conducted summer lab inspections. In some labs there was evidence of food and drink. Some rooms needed fire extinguishers, some sinks needed labels, and some rooms had blocked egresses. The refrigerator in McKay 312 is not labeled and is not explosion proof. The pump room in Lyman 130 needs cleaning.
(b) Summer Incidents - There were no major incidents. There were 58 emergencies, none in DEAS.
(c) EPA follow-up - We have not received the report from EPA yet.(d) Facilities Maintenance - The facilities maintenance staff has been trained to do blood-spill clean ups.
(e) Hazardous Waste Training - The EH&S training web site has been augmented to provide automatic email reminders for retraining. Beginning in a few weeks, email reminder messages will be sent periodically to all who are due to be retrained in hazardous waste safety.
Henry Littleboy mentioned that Richard Contarz will do excellent training in the use of fire extinguishers. Contact Henry if you have further questions.
Lenny Solomon added that there was a laser accident in the summer in the Mazur group. The accident was preventable, which reinforces the need for this Safety Committee and its associated training programs. The soon to be produced online multimedia laser safety training video will address the training needed to eliminate laser accidents.
Rob Stanhope (Safety Coordinator) told the Committee that he will provide monthly reports on the training and retraining of personnel in hazardous waste safety. He will provide safety reps with a list of people who are past due for training, so that they can personally remind them to complete the retraining.
Rob also handed out a list of the Satellite Accumulation Area Monitors and ask the people on the list to make sure it was accurate. He explained that he will send weekly email reminders to the SAA monitors to inspect their assigned SAAs.
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