Emergency procedures general steps

The first problem is that evacuation responsibilities (or emergency procedures more generally) do not seem to be assigned to anyone but can be initiated by all employees. While this may seem like a good idea, it has a serious drawback because one consequence of such a lack of assigned control responsibility is that everyone may think that someone else will take the initiative—and the blame if the alarm is a false one. Although everyone should report problems and even sound an emergency alert when necessary, there must be someone who has the actual responsibility, authority, and accountability to do so. There should also be backup procedures for others to step in when that person does not execute his or her responsibiUty acceptably. 

Interference from endogenous biological materials in the sample poses problems with all these techniques and many workers routinely use preliminary digestion procedures. However, such an approach is not expedient in an emergency situation and generally, the simplest preparative steps yield the best results. 

Defining a balanced scope is not generally a one-step procedure. Starting with preliminary scope, the audit team may modify the scope as the audit is undertaken and new information emerges, which may need extension of scope to certain target processes and elimination of certain other sectors that may not significantly contribute to the overall objechve. The scope should also be subjected to debate by all team members of the program to arrive at a consensus. 

Section 2.1.3 concluded with the general procedure for responding to chemical spills and releases. We repeat these steps here and remind you also that for any response to a spill (or any lab emergency) the top priority is your own safety and the safety of others. Do no put yourself at risk to accomplish these tasks. Evacuation and communication are important and can be done at little risk but the isolate and mitigate steps should be ignored if they put you or others at risk. 

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