DEAS/Physics Safety Committee

Meeting Minutes

Wednesday, November 12, 2003
Noon-1:00PM

1. Video - "Chemical Hazards" (10 minutes)

2. Subcommittee Assignments 2003-2004

Lenny distributed the subcommittee assignments. Among the many assignments are the lab inspection teams. Each team must determine when it will inspect its assigned lab areas in January or February. The actual inspections are usually completed in one day. Team chairpersons should report their inspection schedules to the Safety Committee at the December meeting (December 10, 2003).

3. Web Site Upgrades

• Machine Shop Safety Guidelines - Stan Cotreau wrote new safety guidelines for Machine Shop workers. The guidelines are now available online in the Safety Training section of our web site or at this URL: http://www-safety.deas.harvard.edu/services/shopsafety.html

4. Summer Lab Inspection Reports - Howard Herman-Haase (EH&S)

• All labs were inspected during the summer 2003.
• EH&S worked directly with our safety officers during the inspection process, which was very beneficial. Howard thanked everyone for their assistance.
• The reports are being entered into a database, which should be completed today. Howard will send the reports to Lenny.
• Most labs had only minor issues:
  • Eye wash stations - The water flow in some stations appeared to be either too low or too high; some had air pockets causing spitting water flow.
  • Respirators - There were many respirators in labs. EH&S should be contacted for respirator training to make sure all labs comply with safety laws.
  • Hazardous Waste - Spill bags were left in SAAs without dates or labels. This is a violation of safety practices.
  • Sharps - All sharps need to be placed in a sharps container. When the sharps containers are filled, you can place them in large boxes (supplied by Sid Paula) and call Sid Paula.
  • Hoists & cranes - EH&S will be offering safety instruction in the use of hoists and cranes in a lab environment. They need to be inspected and the load limits need to be displayed.
  • Electrical panels - Some panels were not labeled and/or were blocked.

  Someone asked when an eye-wash station is required. Whenever you are using acids and bases. Wet labs with dangerous chemicals should have eye-washes.

5. EH&S Report

• DOT Shipping - there will be two training sessions scheduled in Cambridge.
• Emergency "Table-Top" Exercise - The Cambridge Fire Dept. recently conducted an emergency exercise with Harvard to review our emergency procedures during off-hours. The drill went well:
  • Chemical Emergency - during a chemical emergency event, please have an MSDS available for the Fire Dept. Make sure the chemical name is spelled correctly.
  • When reporting an event, leave a real contact number for the Fire Dept. to call, such as a cell phone. If you leave the number of the phone in your lab where the event is occurring, it is likely no one will be there to answer the phone if the Fire Dept tries to contact someone!
  • If you pull a fire alarm, inform other people in the area what you know about the emergency. If you leave the area, someone will be able to inform the Fire Dept.
  • Make sure emergency contact info on lab doors is correct.

6. Accident in Weitz Lab

A lab worker in the Weitz lab had acetone squirted in her eye when a squeeze bottle tipped over. She is ok now. Lenny told her to flush her eyes at an eye-wash station immediately and go to UHS, which she did. Despite this, her eyes continued to hurt, so they measured the Ph level of the water at the eye-wash station and found it high. Since then, Lenny said he was looking into the Ph level of water in our eye-wash stations. Lenny tested our tap water and found it in the 9s. Many samples of water were taken at the lab worker's eye-wash station and the Ph levels remained high. In the meantime, Ed Jackson has purchased some disposable eye-wash bottles.

Doctors at MGH said that eyes are always irritated after an eye wash. It's a natural result of the process. The doctors were more concerned about the buffering properties in the water than the Ph level. The bottom line advice from the medical community: ALWAYS flush eyes immediately after a chemical accident. Irritation will go away after one day.

Apparently, some communities deliver water at a high Ph level to control corrosion in pipes. There is no way around this. We are still looking into this issue, since we do not know if there is anything we have to do about the Ph level.

Safety officers should flush their eye-wash stations weekly.

Lenny reminded everyone that the best safety procedure is to wear safety goggles.

UPDATE (12/1/2003): Lenny sent an email to the committee explaining the results of his investigation into this issue. You can read the email at this link: http://www-safety.deas.harvard.edu/textonly/eyewash.html

7. Hazardous Waste Training

• Rob Stanhope read a list of names of people who need to update their online training.

8. Old Business

1. Emergency Forms - Lenny and Norton Allen are creating a database for the web site that will be a place to gather emergency contact information. All safety officers will be able to edit their information whenever they want to. They will be able to print the information for posting on their lab doors.
2. Erli Chen is creating a training module for Cleanroom users.
3. Laser Training lecture - November 20th, 1:00-3:00pm in Pfizer Auditorium.
4. Online Laser Safety Video - We have had continuous problems with serving the training videos and are working on alternatives.
5. We may need to make some enhancements to our training seminars to comply with the Patriot Act. Lenny will talk with Mike Labosky about this.

9. New Business - none

Next Meeting: Wednesday, December 10, 2003, 12:00 noon, Maxwell/Dworkin 119