Health and safety officers

Having qualified persons in the role of health and safety officer is required. How to determine minimum qualifications at each site is a site-specific task. It would depend on site activities, required and anticipated levels of protection, training requirements, general joh knowledge, and a variety of other factors. Sometimes choosing a qualified SSO can he quite difficult. The authors are in agreement that personally contacting references is very important. 

Your occupational health and safety officer at work can and should tell you whether chemicals you work with are dangerous and likely to be carried home on your clothes, body, or tools. Ask if you should shower and change clothes before you leave work, store your street clothes in a separate area of the workplace, or launder your work clothes at home separately from other clothes. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requires Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDSs) for many chemicals used at your place of work. MSDS information should include chemical names and hazardous ingredients, and important information such as fire and explosion data, potential health effects, how you get the chemical(s) in your body, how to properly handle the materials, and... 

As mentioned in Section 1.3, workplace exposure to PBDEs can occur during their production and the manufacture of PBDE-containing plastic products. Workers involved in recycling plastic products, computer repair in confined workplaces can also be occupationally exposed to PBDEs. If you are exposed to PBDEs while at work, it may be possible to carry them home on your clothes or body. Your occupational health and safety officer at work can tell you whether the products you work with may contain PBDEs and are likely to be carried home. If this is the case, you should shower and change clothing before leaving work, and your work clothes should be kept separate from other clothes and laundered separately. 

The cleaning of a mercury diffusion pump is somewhat simpler because mercury does not break down as most pump oils do. However, mercury gets dirty, and a dirty mercury pump still needs to be cleaned. After you have drained the mercury out of a glass diffusion pump, refill the pump with approximately a 6 molar nitric acid solution and let it sit until the mercury has been removed. Do not pour this liquid down the sink Check with local waste management and/or your health and safety officer. The pump should be flushed with distilled water and then rinsed with methanol for drying. 

Biohazard handling. All sample handling and disposal procedures should be performed in compliance with the guidelines of the institutional Environmental Health and Safety Office. Gloves should be worn when handling the samples. Discard tips, pipettes, and tubes into a radioactive waste bag, or an autoclavable biohazard bag. 

Disposal of formaldehyde solutions requires their collection and disposal as hazardous waste. Collect fixative and rinse solutions after fixation in a glass bottle for disposal by Environmental Health and Safety Office at your institution. Do not put formaldehyde fixatives down the drain unless the solution is deactivated with a commercially chemical treatment or unless the concentration is less than 0.1%. 

Various year books and guides are issues by organizations and these are very handy reference books. Some of the more relevant include Encyclopedia of Occupational Health and Safety The Environmental Health Yearbook Health and Safety Directory The Industrial Safety Yearbook The Industrial, Safety (Protective Equipment) Manufacturers Association (ISPEMA) British Safety Council Buyers Guide to Safety Equipment The Health and Safety Marketguide The Health and Safety Officers Reference and Buyers Guide and. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA). 

The use of H2S is diminishing due to the influence of overzealous occupational health and safety officers, who naively equate the gas s odour threshold [ca. 0.5 ppb) with toxic levels (LC50 = 800 ppm). Indeed, the smell (stench) of many sulfur compounds, often but not always associated with hydrolysis to HjS, deters many officers/workers and stymies work in this area. 

Small colleges and high schools often do not have an environmental health and safety office or the resources to manage laboratory waste. Teachers are thus left to shouldw the burden of waste disposal, and their attention can be diverted from core science teaching as a result. 

As the first step in a risk assessment, laboratory workers should examine their plan for a proposed experiment and identify the chemicals whose toxicological properties they are not already familiar with from previous experience. The MSDS for each unfamiliar chemical should then be examined. Procedures for accessing MSDS files vary from institution to institution. In some cases, MSDS files may be present in each laboratory, while in many cases complete files of MSDSs are maintained only in a central location, such as the institution s environmental health and safety office. Some laboratories now have the capability to access MSDSs electronically, either from CD-ROM disks or via computer networks. As a last resort, the laboratory worker can always contact the chemical supplier directly and request that an MSDS be sent by mail. 

Store volatile toxics and odoriferous chemicals in a ventilated cabinet. Check with the institution s environmental health and safety officer. 

A bill has been promoted in Congress to allow small-scale treatment by laboratory personnel. Howeva-, specific legislation has not been enacted at this time. The fact that regional EPA offices have interpreted such small-scale reactions differently further complicates decisions at the laboratory level. Because illegal treatment can lead to fines of up to 25,000 per day, it is most important that, before carrying out any processes that could be considered treatment, the responsible laboratory workw or the institution s environmental health and safety office check with the local, state, or regional EPA to clarify its intapretation of the rules. 

If the moisture content of the picric acid is high, there is httle cause for concern. However, if you suspect that a bottle of picric acid is dry, do not touch the container. Do not attempt to screw the cap off a bottle, since the friction of unscrewing the lid could detonate the picric acid. Metal caps are the most dangerous since metal picrate salts may also have formed. Seek assistance from your institution s health and safety office. They will likely call... 

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