Safety requirements research laboratories

Research laboratories are very unique facilities which require a great deal of preparation and coordination to produce a proper design. Much like the research that will be performed in the facility, each laboratory has specific needs and requirements. The primary considerations in the design of a research laboratory include the ventilation system, types of research and associated equipment, and safety and health of the work environment. Each of these primary consideration are of equal importance to the development of a successful design. 

Once the team is assembled, it is important to have a "kick-off" or pre-design meeting so that each representative is given the opportunity to present their needs and requirements. The remainder of this chapter will be devoted to health and safety requirements in the design of a research laboratory. 

As may be discerned from earlier discussion, in comparison with preparation in the laboratory, the industrial manufacture of azides requires processes which are not only suitable for quantity production, but which confer superior handling characteristics to the bulk and to the milligram quantities into which the bulk is subdivided. The processes must assure a reliability of performance and margins of safety which the laboratory researcher does not require. At the same time the quantity production must be achieved within acceptable bounds of economy (in both time and money), yet with a degree of control normally obtainable only in a laboratory. 

Collaboration between academia and the pharmaceutical industry on basic research diminished steadily between 1940 and the 1970s as alternative sources of support for university research (mainly the government) increased and as the growth in industrial research laboratories reduced firms reliance on academia (415). Yet, the amount of clinical research sponsored by the industry and conducted by academia grew significantly over this period, particularly after the 1962 amendments to the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (21 U.S.C. 301 et seq.) required drug sponsors to establish effectiveness as well as safety of new products. 

Affens, W.A. "Shipboard Safety - A Meaningful Flash Point Requirement for Navy Fuels," Naval Research Laboratory Report 7999, Oct. 28, 1976. 

The laboratory shall be equipped with a fume hood. The fume hood should meet any specific safety requirements mandated by the nature of the research program. A discussion of hood design parameters will be found in a later section, but for high hazard use the interior of the hood and the exhaust duct should be chosen for maximum resistance to the reagents used the blower should either be explosion-proof or, as a minimum, have non-sparking fan blades the hood should be equipped with a velocity sensor and alarm should the face velocity fall below a safe limit the interior hghts should be explosion-proof, and all electrical outlets and controls should be external to the unit. It may be desirable to equip the unit with an internal automatic fire suppression system. 

A key item of the fixed equipment in most research laboratories other than those employing only the least hazardous materials is a work enclosure, usually denoted, at least for chemicals, by the common name fume hood. The OSHA Laboratory Safety Standard, while stopping short of requiring a fume hood in each laboratory, does point out that work with almost any hazardous substances can be done safely if done in a suitable, properly functioning, hood. Some laboratory facihties have been constructed recently with no open bench space, with all work within the facility being done within... 

Ideally an alternative test for toxic chemicals would be inexpensive. It would not require any specialized equipment, only equipment normally found in a laboratory should be required. The test should not require that the personnel be specially trained in the techniques. It should involve only the procedures that any laboratory worker would know. It should be the sort of test that any laboratory with a tangential interest in toxicology could carry out. Water quality laboratories, industrial safety laboratories, agricultural research laboratories, should be able to carry out the procedure. Small samples should be tested. Tests with fish often involve quite large volumes of toxic chemicals and this can limit their utility. This has been diseussed in detail by Blaise (1991). 

The effort needed to perform a risk analysis is another important aspect, which influences the feasibility of a method. An ideal risk analysis method for academic research laboratories should not require too demanding resources, since both qualified personnel in safety and time is a rare commodity in this environment. The systematic approach... 

Suggestion 4 Create a different checklist for each area. The research studies used checklists of specific safe behaviors that were job and area specific. Unless you are in a small facility, do not try to develop a generic checklist that works for all work areas. Maintenance has different safety requirements than a laboratory, for example, and their respective checkhsts need to be different. To maximize the value of the checkhsts, they should be exphcit enough to address the specific safe practices of different job functions. 

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