DEAS/Physics Safety Committee

Meeting Minutes

Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Noon-1:00PM

1. Video - no video was shown due to technical problems with the projector.

2. 2005/2006 Lab Inspection Schedules - Team Chairs

Lenny discussed the schedules for the upcoming winter lab inspections. Half of the team chairs still need to respond to Lenny with their inspection dates. Joe Ustinowich will be taking over as Chair of team 6. The lab inspection schedules are as follows:

1. Team # 1 Yu Ching Yung - January ?
2. Team # 2 Greg Eischeid - Feb 9, 2006
3. Team # 3 Greg Kennedy - February ?
4. Team # 4 Damon Clark - March 6, 2006
5. Team # 5 Edem Tsikata - Feb 7, 2006
6. Team # 6 Joe Ustinowich - March ?
7. Team # 7 Andrew Howard - March 7 @ 1:00pm
8. Team # 8 Yuan Lu - January ? - not here
9. Team # 9 Lenny Solomon - April ?
10. Team # 10 Patrick McClusky - January ?
11. Team # 11 Mike Ranen - April ?
12. Team # 12 Megan O'Grady - April 4 or 5
13. Team # 13 Xiang Zhang - April ?

3. Evacuation Plans

• Lenny selected meeting areas in the event of evacuation:
  • Lyman, Jefferson, Pierce, Cruft, Maxwell/Dworkin -- assemble in the Law School quad, close to Langdell.
  • ESL and 60 Oxford Street -- assemble in parking lot in back of Perkins Hall. Note: 60 Oxford Street plan needs to be coordinated with UIS--Lenny and Mike Labosky will contact the people at 60 Oxford about their evacuation location. [call Joe Jones with Harvard Real Estate]
  • Link Hoffman, Museum -- assemble in quad in front of MCZ at least 100 feet from building.

4. Floor Plans

• Lenny mentioned that a number of the floor plans on our web site need to be more accurate. Floor plans should be posted in the hallway and on our website.
• Hughes Assoc. is working on new maps for other areas at Harvard. Perhaps they could map our areas? Someone should contact Leanne Ross at Risk Management Office about this. Cheryl Lee Field was mentioned as well [???].

5. EH&S Report

• There was a serious accident in the Chemical Engineering department at Stanford--a student was severely injured.
• Fume hoods - EH&S will be visiting all labs to check their fume hoods. They will place a blue sticker on each one as the fume hoods are entered into a database.
• Machine shop inspections will be coming up.
• Mark Collins is the new Life Safety Officer at EH&S. He deals with evacuation plans.

6. Hazardous Waste Training Report - Rob Stanhope

Rob reported on several people needing retraining.

7. Old Business

• Tracking chemicals - Lenny mentioned that we used to track by hand all chemicals that had been ordered; however, this has become to time-intensive. He looked into another way of doing this; called Alan Long who said he would talk to VWR about it. VWR could not help us. At this point Ray Weiss in the Procurement Office is looking it options for tracking.
• Door signs with emergency information -- EH&S is looking into a way for us to maintain a database with emergency lab information. They have been talking to ChemTracker about modifying their product to do what we need it to do. They are hopeful it will work out in our favor.
• A post doc in the Weitz Group in ESL uses decalin. Lenny had asked EH&S to talk to him about it. Chuck did speak with him and Lenny said Chuck did an excellent job.
• Do not mix nitric acid with organic solvents--they over pressurize!

8. New Business

• Flammable and Combustible storage:
  • ESL - in January they have to store more ethanol than they normally do and they don't have enough cabinets. In ESL they have an area called a "moat" outside the building and they are considering storing the ethanol there for a month. Is this ok? Mike Labosky said probably not; however, he could look into it. Lenny said the ethanol cannot be stored temporarily in an MAA. Kristin Bearce said she has some room in her cabinets in ESL if Katharina wants to use them.
• The Fire Department will conduct random visits to local bio and chem labs. Harvard labs are part of this. They will be looking for flammables and reactives.
• Joe Ustinowich had a small fire and needs his fire extinguisher refilled in G11. Ed Jackson will do this.

Next Meeting: Wednesday, January 11, 2005, 12:00 noon, Maxwell/Dworkin 119