Training academic laboratories

Radiation safety staffing levels may vary widely among facilities on the basis of facility size, radioactivity levels, and number of samples processed. Each facility is required to have an RSO that meets the education, training and experience requirements by the NRC or DOE. The DOE protocol is for government laboratories while NRC and Agreement State licenses control other radionuclide-using entities, including commercial and academic laboratories. 

Companies that care about safety and security are always looking for well-trained employees. That presents an opportunity for academic institutions to foster strong safety and security practices and build relationships with industry to ensure employment of their students, and enhance the culture of safety and security compliance within academic laboratories. 

New employees in non-academic laboratories and the chemical industry should be made aware of their rights, responsibilities, and expected extent of knowledge in regard to CH S related to the Laboratory Standard and/or Hazard Communication Standard immediately on starting the job. They should be told what education and training they can expect from their employer. With this evaluation new employees will have some idea of what they need to study on their own. 

The status of chemists in the eyes of executives was boosted by the successes of chemists in fields such as plastics, petrochemicals, and synthetic textiles. The industry s growing demand for trained chemists forged a new relationship with many academic chemistry departments. For example, universities supplied industry with chemists and with basic research to supplement work done in industrial laboratories. In turn, industry provided financial support to chemistry departments. Many of the increasing number of chemistry students in American universities were supported by pre- and post- doctoral fellowships from chemical corporations (Thackray et al., 1985). 

In accreditation the assessment team should consist of assessors/technical experts able to assess all relevant issues including the competence of the staff of the laboratory. This competence needs to be documented by relevant academic/technical qualifications, experience and training as well as successful participation in proficiency testing. 

Problems relating to measurement and interpretation of the hardness of brittle materials are still awaiting suitable analysis and assessment, to give valid evaluation of the results of measurements often carried out by methods very different from the technique applied to the tested material. This idea has served as the basis of this book. It is addressed primarily to industrial laboratory workers and theoretical research workers who are trained at academic level. The material it contains also qualifies it as a practical training textbook for students of mineralogy, solid body physics and materials engineering. 

The WWC laboratory program, developed under the auspices of an NSF grant (DUE No. 96-53080), was designed to provide explicit examples of how chemistry is used by professionals who are not educated and trained as chemists per se. The program serves as an excellent example of an academic interdisciplinary project that was successful as it was the result of the efforts of a network of faculty in different disciplines and from different institutions. The primary goal of the WWC laboratory program is to develop an understanding of how... 

The survey should include all units of the institution. Some laboratories will find units that are using chemicals and generating hazardous waste without the awareness of any hazard. This situation is particularly likely in academic institutions, where chemicals are used routinely in many areas, such as the biology, geology, electrical engineering, art, and physics departments, and in hospitals where workers may have little or no training in chemistry. 

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